Opinions - Hex or squares?

[peterh]

Folks-
for years now I have been accumulating and sometimes completing things like a platoon of figures or some terrain pieces - I am not a wargamer by background, just someone who picked up his childhood passion for modelling as an adult and found that the wargaming world was a very close cousin to modelling. I do intend to solo wargame at some point and toward that end have the following question and seek your opinions

Eventually I will solo wargame using loose versions of rules like Nuts as an example - single figure, ad hoc units - probably horrifying to most of you traditional wargamers! Because of my informality, I am not concerned so much about ground scale. NOW to my question:

Should I use 2 foot squares or similar sized hexagons? I have 16 large hexes I got years ago made from 2 inch from pink foam - they are nice and while additional sides allow for more variety, I am struggling with how to deal with them in more urban environments and think squares would be easier.

maybe use hexes for open country like bocage (with limited roads) and put squares flush up against them for urban terrain? Alcal was a master at large interchangeable terrain and my end goal was to achieve something along those lines - thank you all for any opinions on this!

[Fitz]

If you already have the hexes, you might as well use them, but in my experience squares are easier in almost every way.

I was experimenting with hexagonal tiles some years ago for dungeon-building. The two extra sides do increase the flexibility of the tiles quite a lot in creating unique layouts, but not enough in my view to justify the extra effort required to make them.

The thing that finally turned me away from hex-based tile layouts was the issue of accuracy: if your cutting is just a little bit out of whack, the single wonky tile will disrupt a whole table's layout. It's much, much easier to guarantee accuracy with square tiles, so if I needed more variety I could just make a new tile or two without much hassle.

[peterh]

Hey thanks Fitz for your reply - you make great points and I think I will try the hexes for the outerlying hedgrow country areas I have in my mind, with embedded roads on less than half the hexes (curious your thoughts on this - 8 with roads, less, more?). I can always add silicone/latex dirt roads on top for added variety later.
For the more built up areas, I will go with squares.
I am generally not good with large projects, so this will be interesting

[wargameroz]

Personally I’m a big fan of Geo Hex, if you head over to my Wargameroz’s 20mm Ramblings Page on Facebook you will see pictures of my 27 foot long by 5.5 wide table, buried in Geo Hex