GHQ Models Forums

Hello All,

I am getting ready to start a Skirmish Board of terrain and I thought I'd post a few pictures of what the product looks like - I know some have asked questions about it's quality and what it looks like. Hope this is useful.

It comes in a pretty big box, hence the extra shipping cost.


It comes with enough 1/2 inch hexes to cover one board... there are 3 boards per pack. Since it's all made of the hex material (except the "lip") it's pretty light.


It's packaged together in shrink wrap.


You glue the plastic lip down yourself (PVA glue recommended)


Taller side goes up


There's a little bit of a gap in each corner


All glued together


With hexes laid in


I'm looking forward to working on some terrain for a change

Tanner

Thanks for the photos. Are the hexes that come with it even on each side? That is, do they fit together better than the older ones?

I have about 12 packs from 3-4 years ago, and they are not the same length on each side, so that, in certain alignments, they do not fit together well.

Pat Callahan

Pat,

Unfortunately no, the hexes are the normal TM Hexes - and they suffer from the same problem you mentioned. I spent a good 30 minutes to an hour turning hexes trying to get them into the optimum fit; and there are still a few that have a ~2mm gap between. Actually the hexes need to be places in a certain way (lengthwise) or you end up with a 1cm gap on the end and the purpose of the board is defeated.

However, the good news is the hexes don't seem to move very much (if at all) when you get them in. With painted edges and flocked landscape I'm thinking everything should look fine though. Also, I can carry the board around without hexes falling off and I placed it up in my closet .

Thanks,
Tanner

If you have to turn the hexes to get them to fit, how would you handle roads with defined entry/exit points? Rivers? Beaches? My home grown system uses 4" squares (instead of rulers) and I'm interested in the skirmish board but I wasn't aware of this hex-fit issue. Is it simply impossible to get some hexes to fit without rotation or merely a tight fit?

Timothy,

Sorry, let me clarify... you will not have a problem with tight fit. The problem is with the Terrain Maker hexes and not really with the skirmish board.... AND.... it's really only a problem if you are expecting the hexes to fit together absolutely perfectly. If you accept that there are gonna be some slight gaps here and there, then you won't have any problems using this in a modular manner.

The TM hexes are not perfectly symmetrical - this is evident when you get more than a few hexes fit together... it seems like you'll always have one or two areas where there is a gap of ~2mm between hexes. The effects of this are somewhat lessened by painting the sides of the hexes so it's not as noticeable.

This aside, I like the system and I think you can make some pretty cool terrain... so I'm willing to live with.

Does that answer your questons?

Tanner

I ordered 2 skirmish boards and I love them. I am working on putting them together. GHQ did a really great job with these. The only problem I had was that the box was damaged in shipping. I took pictures of the box and then contacted GHQ and they took care of it. As far a customer service goes this has to be the only company left that believes in customer service.

intobattle wrote:Timothy,

Sorry, let me clarify... you will not have a problem with tight fit. The problem is with the Terrain Maker hexes and not really with the skirmish board.... AND.... it's really only a problem if you are expecting the hexes to fit together absolutely perfectly. If you accept that there are gonna be some slight gaps here and there, then you won't have any problems using this in a modular manner.

The TM hexes are not perfectly symmetrical - this is evident when you get more than a few hexes fit together... it seems like you'll always have one or two areas where there is a gap of ~2mm between hexes. The effects of this are somewhat lessened by painting the sides of the hexes so it's not as noticeable.

This aside, I like the system and I think you can make some pretty cool terrain... so I'm willing to live with.

Does that answer your questons?

Tanner

Yup, thanks! I can live with gaps, no problem. Only issue would be if one couldn't rotate hexes as needed to make terrain features such as roads meet up.

This past weekend I made a new 5' x 8' terrain mat with a 4" grid. But, I might still give this a try. Whether squares or hexes I've some to prefer them to rulers. We now use terrain mats with squares for everything from micro-armor to those giant medieval figures sold at Hobbytown and Target.

Tanner:

How do you plan on filling in the gaps on the short sides of the board? The long sides can be filled in with TM hexes trimmed down. I guess you could trim off the tips of other hexes and use them. Thanks for posting the photos. I might have to speak to my CFO (wife) when I'm able to get back to building. They do look interesting. Please post more pics during the building process. Thanks again.

Gary

Gary,

I'm not sure on the short ends. I might just leave them open; that's how they are in the GHQ Catalog and it doesn't look bad.

I'll be sure to take pictures during the process and post them at some point.

Thanks,
Tanner

Here are some pics of the Fulda area that I created w/ 2 of the Skirmish Board sets. You only get 1 board's worth of hexes. So you need to order an additional 2 boards worth for each set (72 hexes).

I really like the 1/4 hexes since they allow you to make ditches, rivers w/ banking, ponds, etc.

I understand their making higher hexes than 1/2, but I decided to use a hot knife to carve contour lines on 1/2" styrofoam and hydrocaled to smooth out the slopes.

Not as good as some of the others, but I got the materials I needed only 4 days before the event... we made it in the nick of time.

I will go back and augment (improve) them in the near future, however after painting and flocking over 300 hexes I need a short break. When I go back I'll be able to detail the hexes better. I was pressed for time as it was and the result was still pleasing to all parties.

I like the flexibility the modularity provides and any weird terrain features I can sculpt on my own. With hexes it takes longer to set up/break down, but in return you can rearrange on the fly and are not tied down to 1 particular battlefield and can reposition roads and rivers (which you cannot do on terrain boards with permanent terrain features).

This is my first attempt to post pics, so any advice would be welcome.

As always, any time I have needed anything, GHQ have been there. Very good people.

Frank

http://games.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/ ... w/8731?b=5

http://games.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/ ... /8731?b=19

http://games.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/ ... w/8731?b=2

zaevor2000 wrote:This is my first attempt to post pics, so any advice would be welcome.

Zaevor:

Your links take us to a website that requires a log-in to view the pictures. So no pics can be found by those of us who are not members.

There is a "sticky" at the top of the forum page that explains how you might post your pictures to this thread. Many of us would be happy to help you if you need a little advice in order to get it all worked out.

But the first step is to find an open photo hosting site, so that anyone can see the pics. Flikr or PhotoBucket are two prime examples. I use PhotoBucket, and have never had any trouble getting my pics onto the forum.

Good luck. We'd all very much like to see your pics, so don't hesitate to ask if you need more advice.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I will go establish an account on Photobucket and post my pics there. I didn't know there would be a problem linking to another place. I was under the impression that I could link to another location.

Tomorrow I will transfer them to Photobucket and try again.

I have not seen many skirmish boards completed and I wanted to contribute and show pics of a completed set.

All in all it IS a major project to paint and build all the hexes, but at least it's just a one time thing. After that you have lots of flexibility and the size of the hexes make them more adjustable than the set of Geo-Hex I got back in 1988.

I have terrain boards that are based on Panzerblitz and have worked well since 2001, but you are locked into the same roads and rivers on each board. This gives you much more flexibility.

All I can say to some of the others is to keep at it and finish (at least you won't have to put everything together in 4 days like I did). After that you've got a fully flexible modular terrain system. We had players traveling hundreds of miles to make the event so it HAD to be finished in time. GHQ rushed me what I needed since they understood my situation. Their help through this has been MUCH appreciated. Every time I have needed help or needed to call everyone has been helpful and friendly. Great people.

Mk1, I might ask for your help tomorrow if I am unable to post the pics.

I hope this finds you well.

Frank

Extra thoughts on the Skirmish boards:

Up until now I have been using platoon-sized rules w/ 1'=100m. After much discussion on another forum, I decided to try 1'=125meters. With 2 skirmish board sets, this enables you to have a 48x108 area 2 boards wide placed longways and 3 boards long. In this scale it gives you a 6km frontage (good for 1 or 2 regiments of a division approaching side by side per Soviet tactics and 13.5km in depth (our portion of the Fulda area needed 13km so we were able to create the desired area).... the punch line is that 4" hexes = 500m. It makes it extremely easy to transfer terrain from the map to the game terrain.

Others have wondered how to deal with the empty spaces where complete hexes don't fit. I cut off partial hexes to fill in the edges of the boards and have found it looks good painting the rails and underlying styrofoam black.

Thanks for your patience and I look forward to posting pics tomorrow.

zaevor2000 wrote:Sorry for the inconvenience. I will go establish an account on Photobucket and post my pics there. I didn't know there would be a problem linking to another place. I was under the impression that I could link to another location. ...

I have not seen many skirmish boards completed and I wanted to contribute and show pics of a completed set.

Well, you know we DO love to see pictures around here. So our own selfish motivations will contribute to the number of folks who will extend to you a helping hand. Let's get them pics up, and have a look!

I don't think this forum has any difficulty linking to other sites. The question is whether the other site is open, or closed, to un-registered users.

(BTW I now have more than 350 pictures up on Photobucket. It's a pretty good service, and very easy to use.)

Thought I might add in an idea for those who have lamented the gaps that appear between hex-sides. Let me start by saying that I am not a user of hex terrain, nor have I ever even played on hex terrain. But I have played on some wonderful gameboards, and I certainly admire the hex terrain work I've seen done by some of the regulars on this forum.

A couple years back I was gaming pretty regularly with CG Erickson (used to show up occasionally on this forum). He was professionally trained in architectural modelling, and he makes some of the most magnificent gameboards you could ever hope to see.

He made his boards out of larger-sized rectangular foam tiles -- his desert terrain on 2 x 4 ft tiles, his temperate terrain on 1 x 2 ft tiles. There were of course fewer seams than on 4" hex terrain, but still there were gaps of 1 to 2mm between boards.

In our later games he started sprinkling static grass over the gaps. It worked out pretty well. Here is a picture from one of our games:


I've chosen this one because we (I?) had accidentally bumped the left-side and shifted the boards a bit in the long direction, causing the static grass on that seam to fall and expose it to your view. But if you look at the other seams around the battlefield you can see that the static grass gives pretty good coverage (except where the roads cross a seam). So you can compare and contrast how obvious the seams are when not covered, versus how well they blend in when covered. Somehow the camera / lighting makes the grass-covered seams more visible, but in person they were almost impossible to see.

It was a simple and effective technique for putting the finishing touch onto a game layout. I expect that a board that holds the hexes in reasonably securely should help to keep all the seams covered well through minor nudges and bumps over the course of a game. Y'all might want to consider trying it.

Oh, and post some pictures if you do!

I consider this to be a work in progress.

It's like painting minis, I've primered and I've painted the base coat. The next step is to detail the hexes (like drybrushing).

Thanks to the photos I've seen of everyone's work (and it is incredible the amount of talent on display).

Frank

I like it being black...the board...did you use spray paint or something else?

Spray paint did it degrade the foam if it was used?

Sean