As I had made a squared cloth once before, I figured "This will be easy." Famous last words.
While using fabric paint in a similar, but not quite matching color of the cloth, to indicate vertices worked well, the size of the squares fluctuated wildly. I figured this was in large part due to working with a 12" ruler and a only slightly larger square.
A reasonable but wrong conclusion.
My roommate sews quite a bit and has a proper yard stick and a humongous square. Even with these tools my squares varied considerably. The inescapable conclusion was that this was more of a "me problem" than a problem of the tools. Rulers are apparently outside of my skill set.
I realized, after I thoroughly botched the grid on this cloth that the last time I did this I had a bird-house with a 6" square base that I used as a template. Even if I still had the bird-house, I want to move to 5" squares. Making my own template this time didn't occur to me but if it had, well, I clearly have issues measuring (never mind cutting) and I feel it likely that I would have run into a similar problem.
To soothe my battered ego, I made a grid on some kraft paper using pencil, so I could erase as needed. Twenty or thirty times erasing squares and a few hours measuring was all it took. Sigh.
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| An experiment. A battalion of 3 infantry companies and a heavy weapons company + regimental support from an ATG coy. and a howitzer coy. Also I have yet to redo the bases in a uniform fashion. |
"Someone," I thought, "must make square templates."
Of course, they do. You can buy 6" square cork tiles or even MDF - well, not coasters, but that's what I'm calling them - coasters. But, it turns out, quilters are way ahead on this. Yes, quilters.
They use laser cut acrylic squares (ruled or not). And they come in all sorts of sizes (the squares. I mean, I guess the quilters do, too). And, hold on to your hats, but there are HEXAGONS for quilters!
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| Quilter's hexagon template. Picture "borrowed" from Amazon. |
Now, I am fond of the humble square. Bob Cordery's original Portable Wargame is a charming sight, in large part, I think, due to the simplicity of the squares. However, there is an argument to be made for using hexagons, particularly in the 20th Century and onward, where gathering up great masses in orderly lines and ranks fell out of favor.
That being said, I have trouble enough marking up the cloth with four-sided grid spaces, never mind six-sided, so I decided to stick with squares for now.
I ordered an acrylic square ruler (like the one pictured below) to test this out but if it works, and I suspect it will, I may consider a hex next and make one cloth of each.
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| Square quilter's ruler. Picture "borrowed" from Amazon. |
I feel your pain. I wrote off a perfectly good terrain cloth a few years ago because of my inability to simultaneously wield a ruler and fabric pen.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the origin of the Panzer IV in the first photo?
That Panzer is by Classic Toy Soldiers (www.classictoysoldiers.com). The scale is 1/38. They are solidly built - just 3 or 4 pieces /(barrel, turret, turret machine gun if present, hull/tracks/etc.)- and relatively inexpensive (at least here in the US).
DeleteI don't draw grids on cloths - I simply mark the corners of the squares. If you mark them out roughly first it's easier to correct mistakes.
ReplyDeleteLook at this post, for example. You can see the green dots marking the square corners. And terrain and units (one per square) help make the layout of the grid obvious as well.
http://hordesofthethings.blogspot.com/2019/06/symplicity-squard.html
Thanks, Kaptain Kobold - you've given me an idea. I was marking corners - I only drew the full grid on the kraft paper because the pencil was hard to see otherwise - but my squares ended up all wonky never the less. And since I was using a paint marker, mistakes were permanent.
DeleteAt first I thought the dots on your example were tape or stickers. I'm thinking they aren't on closer examination but I think using tape dots plus the template might work very well for me - I could rough out the grid with tape dots, and then replace with paint/ink once they're in the right spots.
I like to remind myself that nature is adverse to straight lines and square corners.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the exact size and squareness of a grid area isn't really important: an area is an area is an area, otherwise why not just measure? I've seen some very attractive boardgames where instead of hexes or squares, there were irregular shaped areas.
Not that there's anything wrong with a very square grid.
I think if it was consistent I'd have been happier with the end result - if all had been irregular or all had been rectangular even, but the mix of squares, rectangles and other four-sided shapes was too much for my brain.
DeleteMy dots are acrylic paint, but I pencilled them in first.
ReplyDeleteAh! I will have to try that. Thanks!
DeleteI have played plenty of games on hexes, and I've been playing on grids lately. Overall, I prefer Grids. Couple of reasons:
ReplyDelete- Hexes "seem" more accurate, but they ovver distortion in alignment depending on which way you fight across them.
- grids, or squares, is how the military actually thinks, measures and fights. They don't call artillery down on "hex coordinates" they call it down on grid coordinates. Even a simple A-E / 1-5 grid is therefore more realistic. Yes, there's the diagonal issue, but it can be ignored with a couple of simple rules [e.g. one diagonal is free, second diagonal counts as 2 squares, et al].
I agree with Kaptain Kobold [as is often the case, it seems] that dots are easy. Personally, I went a little better and used a + at each corner for a medieval game I posted here:
http://darkages40and25.blogspot.com/2019/06/grid-game-aar-ohw-scenarios-23-30.html
and actually the preceding post is the original experiment. You can "just" see the "+" marks on the cloth, and the only suggestion I got was that they should be a bit easier to see.
I found them to be very helpful, and reading the posts on your WWII game I am more inclined than ever to use grids. They are - literally - more realistic in terms of how actual army people think and act than measuring little bitty distances on the table. If one gets concerned about ease of movement, you can just use a dice system like Peter Pig's "PBI" where it's something like 2+ to enter an easy hex, 3+ a mixed hex, and 4+ for a rough terrain hex. Haven't read it in years, but I think that's it. If it's not then it's just my own genius at work! ;)
Lot's of food for thought there. I think I'm inclined to like the square aesthetically, but the parallel to real artillery fire makes a nice supporting argument for their use.
DeleteHad you not told me your cloth had +'s on it, I doubt I'd have ever been able to find them! What I like about your and Kaptain Kobold's approaches is the dots/+'s make using the cloth for non-gridded game easy. I find my own gridded cloth terribly distracting if I play a game that requires measurement. I end up falling back on the grid and just eyeballing distances (not terrible as I play solo, but I doubt an opponent would be so forgiving!).
Thanks again for commenting!