Board modification

Been quite some time since my last post... 

I'm starting to notice a pattern: every time I try a new board game I see a cool mechanic or design feature that I want to include in my board game. Of course I can't go overboard on that because if I add too many things it'll get too crazy and complex. The one I'm posting about right now, though, will help deal with an issue that came up in my first (and only) playtest.

My first board design called for many small hexagonal tiles. As soon as I started laying them out for the very first time, I immediately noticed that it was hard to keep them all in place. Printing them on heavy card, like Settlers of Catan's tiles, would partially solve this problem, but not enough. I was also looking at the idea of a border (also like Settlers of Catan) to lock the tiles in place, but it would be a pretty big border.

The 7-hex map tile shape.

And then I got a copy of Mage Knight.

Instead of individual hexes, each Mage Knight map tile is a group of 7 hexes. Fewer, bigger map tiles means they're less likely to move around, meaning there's less need for a border to keep them in place. Also, putting special tiles in the centre of the 7-hex tile ensures that special tiles will never touch each other, which helps to keep the map spread out at the cost of a little randomness.

So I'll be redoing my map tiles in the 7-hex shape because Mage Knight's approach makes a lot of sense and solves a problem I'd encountered.