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Two of my friends and I are developing a board game based on moving around a hexagonal board. We're testing it on the map printed on 4x A4 sheets merged with adhesive tape. What I'm trying now is to make it on a cork board.

Do you guys have any ideas of how to construct hexagonal grid on a cork board? I've already tried to draw it using a pair of compasses, but it isn't a good idea to do this on a cork board. And the board is pretty big (about three hundred hexagons) so it would take a lot of time to draw each hex separately.

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    I'd use my laser cutter, either to etch the lines, or to create a stencil. Unfortunately, most people don't have one of these handy, but there might be a maker space with one near you.
    – ikegami
    May 26, 2014 at 13:26

6 Answers 6

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I think the easiest way to do this would be to use a stencil:

hexagon stencil

Most craft shops should stock something like this.

Paint the cork one colour, then use the stencil with a different colour / shade of paint (spray paint would probably be best).

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If you can't get a stencil (which I agree is the best way to do it), you could draw an equilateral triangular grid with horizontal, 60° left and 60° right lines, then just ink the hexes on them. 6 triangles = 1 hex, so be prepared to draw them small.

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Instead of drawing a hexagonal board where you move between spaces, you could draw a triangular board where you move between vertices. This map perfectly represents the adjacency graph of hexagonal spaces (you can visualize this as drawing a line between the centers of adjacent hexagons), and will be far easier to draw than the hexagonal grid, as it's just a series of parallel lines. Here's an image of the hexagonal and triangular boards overlaid:

enter image description here

You might run into issues if you need the spaces to carry different visual representations, like if the spaces should be different colors or represent different resources - this will be a bit harder to represent on a vertex rather than a space. But if all you need is the adjacency, a triangular grid might be the way to go.

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  • Could you provide a visual representation of this?
    – Joe W
    Aug 14, 2020 at 20:17
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You can make a paper template by printing a hex grid, then make a hole in each intersection. Use that template to put small dots where you want all the intersections on the board to be, by shifting the template around and aligning it to earlier dots. Then connect the dots.

I have not tried that, but I saved a link to a blog post that shows this method and to me it looks easier (or cheaper) than other methods I have seen suggested.

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You can make hexagons with rectangular cards.

Many years ago I did a print a play game which did had a hexagonal board printed on playing cards.

Each card had 4 blue lines added around the corners. When the cards were laid adjacent to each other the blue lines would form hexagon shapes across cards. Depending on what you're trying to do this might be good enough for prototyping without having to cut out hexagons.

Beehive board

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I and found a tutorial in the WikiHow website.

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    Answers here are expected to be more than just links. They need to be answers on their own, in case the linked page disappears. May 29, 2014 at 22:22

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