I'm currently working on a side project. I've got a mat that will almost cover my ping-pong table. With a cut-off, it does cover the whole table. It is a little too green, so I'd like to change its appearance a bit, then mark hexes on it. The mat is one of these:
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=426540I've been marking 4" hexes overlaid on my Geo-Hex pieces (which are based on 12" hexes). It is subtle enough that they shouldn't be too awful when I'm not playing this. But you are right that set-up can be long for those that don't start with Kallistra or GHQ Terrain Maker or one of the mats that can be printed with 4" hexes. I had the impression that offset rectangles made it a bit harder to trace fire-arc lines. Titans face either hex edges or corners, and it isn't as clear to me about facing for rectangles.
I made a template for drawing hexes.
1) Pick a size for template that you can print. I did mine at staples, using their engineering print service:
http://www.staples.com/sbd/content/copy ... rints.html2) Go here
https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/hexagonal/ to make hex paper with 4" (or 10cm) hexes. Their hex size means a side length, so you have to divide your desired size by 1.7321 So I might specify 2.3094 inches to get 4 inch hexes. Specify the paper size at the top. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it actually drawing the dot in the middle. I wish it would.
3) Print the PDF at Staples (or wherever). Hope it came out right.
4) Get a cheap poster board frame. Lay your print out under the plastic and mark the corners and/or centers. (This is what would have been easier if they'd mark the center.)
5) Drill out the dots. I found this harder than I expected. The plastic can break a more ragged hole than desired. You might do once with small drill and work your way up. I wondered about melting the holes instead.
6) Sure that was some work, but now you've got a template you can use for a long time.
I want to cover the ping-pong table because I want to play large games without it being too crowded.
After that, I'll play another game. What I really need to encourage this are some more battle reports.
I expect to simplify the flyer rules and go back to the abstraction in Epic 40K. I'd hoped to give more interest to the flyer models, but I made too many changes. I still need to account for hexes.
andy