It's been awhile since I have posted any progress about my Sword and Planet design, but unfortunately, I've not had much time to work on the design since my last blog postings. School has been busy, as has work, but now that I have some time off, I'm going to try and get some more progress and hopefully feedback.
When I posted the previous map, I had some concerns over the point-to-point movement, so I've tried to come up with an alternate hex-based map. The hexes are pretty enormous as they have to be able to accommodate the size of the cities and their relevant information. Of course no facet of this design is concrete, so even those may change, but I feel that the changing value (generally the degradation of the cities) is an important part of the theme.
My biggest concern about the big hexes, is the lack of variable terrain (I can only see 2 terrain types working on such large hexes, clear and obstructed) as well as the lack of maneuvering. One of my ideas for the design, is small armies chasing one another around terrain. This would not be the case with hexes. Army movements would only be two or three hexes with this map. Not sure how I feel, but I thought I'd get some ideas.
Here's the point-to-point map for comparison:
One issue I have with the design is fighting my natural inclination to make everything extremely complicated. I do, however, wish to keep armies in particular very diverse, with each unit type having a host of strengths and weaknesses. I'm not looking to just have armies and cavalry, I want to have Antorgan Royal Cavalry. I want to have Mercenary Rocket Infantry! When it comes time to playtest, I'll have the counters with more information than needed. If I feel they are too complicated, I'll strike details from further counters.
Here is my mock-up for the design. Of course, the graphics are terrible, but I just wanted to put something together for the time being.
I've already made a large amount of cards, so that's pretty time consuming. I hope to get a draft of the rules sometime in the near future, to finally get the pieces together from the void of my mind.