Why do strategy games use hexagonal grids?
Because hexes fix the square grid’s oldest bug: diagonals. On a square board, two diagonal neighbors touch at a corner — are they adjacent or not? Every square-grid game has to legislate an answer, and either answer distorts distance. On a hex grid every one of a cell’s six neighbors is equally adjacent, so distance is honest, connection is unambiguous, and encirclement is a natural tactic instead of a rules patch. That’s why the purest connection and territory games in the genre keep choosing hexes.
The lineage, briefly
- Hex — the mid-century classic of the family: connect your two sides of a rhombus of hexagons before your opponent connects theirs. One rule, bottomless depth, and a mathematical guarantee that someone must win — no draws. The proof-of-concept that hexagonal adjacency alone can carry a game.
- Havannah — Christian Freeling’s connection masterpiece on a hexagonal board: win with a ring, a bridge, or a fork — three different connection shapes, so threats overlap and defense is always triage.
- Hive — hexagonal adjacency without a board at all: the pieces are the terrain. Depth from piece asymmetry rather than geometry. Our head-to-head with hexodic.
- Tumbleweed — a modern favorite of the abstract community: stacks project line-of-sight influence across a hex board, and territory follows reinforcement. A reminder the space is still being explored.
- hexodic — the newest branch: a radius-3 board of 37 hexes where the cells themselves have height. One stone type, terrain you terraform every turn, encirclement capture, and three simultaneous win conditions. The full rules.
What hexodic adds to the family
The hex-grid classics each own one idea: Hex owns connection, Havannah owns multi-shape threats, Hive owns boardlessness. hexodic’s idea is elevation: every cell carries a tier (0, 1, 2), your turn includes reshaping one cell, and a stone is exactly as strong as the ground under it. Combined with three simultaneous win conditions — connection (Network), capture (Takeover), and mobility (Strangle) — the six-direction geometry stops being just adjacency and becomes terrain.
The numbers behind that claim are measured, not vibes: branching factor 911 / 1,009 / 665 at half-moves 5 / 10 / 20, a 0.25% draw rate, and 5.92-minute mean sessions — chess-class depth compressed into a coffee break. Where it sits among the classics beyond geometry is on the comparison page, and the genre-wide view is on the abstract strategy hub.
Want to feel what six directions with height plays like? Get hexodic.