What to do with strategy game board?

What are you designing? A "Video Game" or a "Table-Top Game"??? There is no way you can simulate 3D terrain like the link you have shown. During my university studies, I did a 3D terrain project which was kinda what you are showing, it uses a plasma image map followed by texture map on the top to create the colour for the terrain... It looked even MORE realistic than your sample.

But in "Table-Top" gaming, you want 3D terrain? Seriously? If you need ideas, one idea would be: "Forget about 3D terrains in a Table-Top game!" One thing is that MOST board games are viewed from the TOP. So you get a top-most view of the game... They all do, Monopoly, Clue, Snakes & Ladders, Settles of Catan, Ticket to Ride, etc. They MOSTLY all do!

3D is left for Star Trek (and their 3D game of Chess)! Just a joke! But I mean it... If you are going to design a Table-Top game, it will need to use a TOP-VIEW. Even isometric views, I have never seen a Table-Top game use that either.

I take it back, I have seen 3D games such a Jenga and another such games... Can't remember the name, it's not my style of game so I did not pay much attention to it.

Okay, so you want a "different" game each time. You can use Hexagon tiles or Square ones. You could use a MAT which can be rotated in combination with other mats. You can even use cards to make up your *dynamic* board...

BTW your post is so *general* I have no idea what kind of game you want to make... Just don't think about 3D or isometric views... MOST Table-Top games are Top-view!

I looked into Heroscape, watched a 5 part series on YouTube from Tom Vassel and the Dice Tower.

Personally it reminds me of the video game called "Final Fantasy Tactics" (FFT). It is a turn-based game, some players can do range attacks, sometimes a character can be protected by a wall, it takes extra-moves to go up in terrain, etc. Obviously FFT has the added bonus of having SPELLS that can be a special ranged attack in Heroscape. Maybe characters in the D&D sets... Not sure Tom didn't cover that.

BUT for 3D games - Heroscape is an EXCEPTION to board games. Not every game is almost a game of Legos. And Heroscape is very much akin to Legos.

Personally I think 3D games such as Heroscape are a little bit OUT-THERE. They are costly productions to make and they are not the NORM. I still think if you are going to develop a table-top game, to forget about the rare 3D boards from games such as Heroscape and try to focus on more traditional table-top gaming...

But that is just my opinion.

Okay here is a simple way to simulate terrain:

1. Cut out a Hexagon shape.
2. Put the word "FOREST" on the top of the Hexagon.
3. Put on the REVERSE SIDE: "Dense forest, takes 2 turns to traverse."

And there you have it: a tile which is part of a terrain, that has a movement penalty... Do you need something more complicated??? You could add something like "Defensive BONUS, +3 DEF." so that there could be a variance on what happens should your character battle while in the forest!

In this terrain tile, the player is LUCKY he gets a bonus from it... But here's another example with a penalty:

1. Cut another Hexagon shape.
2. Put the word "SWAMP" on the top of the Hexagon.
3. Put on the REVERSE SIDE: "Foggy swamp, takes 3 turns to traverse."

You could add a PENALTY this time like "Defensive PENALTY, -1 DEF. Offensive PENALTY, -2 ATK".

So in this terrain tile, things go south real fast... Not only does it take 3 turns to traverse, there are 2 penalties while in the "Foggy swamp".

If you don't like Hexagons, you could use 2.5" x 2.5" Square cards... They are ALMOST Poker size, but the height is incorrect (should be 3.5"). Instead of being cards it could be Chipboard 4/4 which means 4 Colour process on both sides (colour on both sides)...

If you're not convinced, you could ADD MORE to the tiles... Something like a *Random Encounter* (not your opponent but some creatures in the "Dense forest" for example). Like "Roll 1d6, if you roll a 1 or 2, random encounter with a pack of Wolves". Obviously instead of WRITING all of that, you could use a "SQUARE DICE SYMBOL (with a six) -> 1, 2 = Wolf Pack". You could use CARDS for the random encounters or a lookup table in your rulebook. Personally I would go with *Random Encounter cards* - but a lookup table is also possible.

Let's say you use a lookup table INSTEAD:

• Health: 3
• Attack: 3
• Defence: 2
• Range: 1
• Quantity: 3

So if a player encounters a Wolf Pack, he will need to defeat 3 wooden pawns (one for each Wolf). So you would place 3 wooden pawns on the tile along side your pawn/meeple...

And there you have it, terrain tiles with movement, bonuses or penalties and even *Random Encounters*.

You still WANT MORE??? Okay, you could add "Special Attacks" if you use *Random Encounter cards* as opposed to the lookup table... "Special Attacks" could vary from one creature to another...

So you have terrain tiles with movement, bonuses or penalties, *Random Encounters* with Special Abilities!

Note: the two (2) tiles I designed do not have a ROAD... But if they had a road, maybe there would be no *Random Encounter* (for example)...

There are games that use puzzle pieces (large flat tiles that are puzzle piece-shaped, or actual small wooden puzzle pieces), eg Excalibur (80's strategy game, but assemble to same map every time) and some children's and trivia games that use them to make different roll-and-move-tracks for every game.

But for this type of game, not sure what the benefit would be compared to just using rectangular geomorphic map boards like many existing games do. Is it worth the extra production cost just to get the little whatever-they-are-called things on the sides to keep the pieces attached to each other?

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/22845/games-with-geomorphic-mapboards-...

Not sure what you are after with movement that is not just from tile to tile, but I can't think of many games that have something different.

Star Borders Humanity has smaller map boards with point-to-point maps on each, that connect when placed adjacent, so you can build up bigger maps.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/86406/star-borders-humanity

Fields of Fire have a random map made up of playing cards placed in a rectangular grid, but movement is not only between cards, but also between cover ("micro terrain") (buildings, generic cover, entrenchments etc) that are placed as cardboard markers on each card, so a lot of time you move units just between different cover locations on the same tile, and less frequently do you order them to move on to an adjacent card. There is no tracking of the relative location of cover in a card, you can always move or fire between any of them (or to/from just being on the card without being in cover, which is sort of an extra possible location).
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22877/fields-of-fire

I have some questions if you don't mind.

Did it take long before you had those hexagon maps?
What computer program did you use to get the hexagons right? If you tilt 60 degrees, or 120 degrees, does it still fit?
Or did you do this with a pen and ruler?

Eventually I had to go old school and used an old version of paint. And the printing went right.

May I suggest that you go through the hexagons at the edges? But I guess you need to think of something for the half and thirds of the hexagons.

If you find trying to align all the hexagons together a challenge, you could go to a SQUARE mat with hexagons in it... This will be simpler to get the aligning correct especially along the borders.

If this STILL is a challenge, you can do in what I have seen in another game is use a Square mat with SQUARES in it... This is a simple as it can get.

In the game that used that, they used *walls* to control the movement in the mat. And obviously you could rotate the map to your liking and place several mats next to each other. Different game every time...