The Problem with Hexagons – an article about war gaming design by Dr. Ezra Sidran, the designer of The Universal Military Simulator
The Problem with Hexagons By D. Ezra Sidran, PhD General-Staff.com Hexagons are ubiquitous in wargames now (indeed, both Philip Sabin’s War: Studying Conflict Through Simulation Games and Peter Perla’s The Art of Wargaming feature hexagons on their book covers), but this wasn’t always the case. My first wargame – the first board wargame for many of us – was Avalon Hill’s original Gettysburg (by the way, $75 seems to be the going price for a copy on eBay these days). No hexagons in Avalon Hill’s original Gettysburg. Remember how the map contained the original starting positions for the Union cavalry and out posts? From author’s collection. The American Kriegsspiel by Captain Livermore (circa 1882) only had a map grid for estimating distances. We also have a map grid in General Staff to facilitate estimating distances but you can turn the map grid on or off. Plate 1 from The American Kriegsspiel by Captain Livermore. This image is from GrogHeads wonderful blog post on Nineteenth Century Military...
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