Messing around with graphic design Pt. 4: 18xx tiles and 18xx maps
(It’s a long one. Lots of pictures though, so don’t let the tiny scroll bar scare you.)
Given the recent discussions about 18xx graphic design/aesthetics and a certain Matt Roy posting my blog on Twitter, I felt compelled to return to my graphic design series.
I actually spent quite a bit of time working on a blog about tiles and a blog about company identities earlier this year, but I ended up tossing them since they didn’t really gel that well. Today, I’m revisiting the challenge of writing this series and will be addressing 18xx’s most controversial components: tiles and maps. These take up the most visual real estate and are often what people refer to when talking about 18xx not being visually appealing.
I would like to first preface this by saying that I think 18xx can definitely look better than it currently does. However, below I would like to make the case for why attempts to update 18xx’s appearance are often rejected by the community. Many fans are quick to defend the aesthetics of 18xx when in reality they are actually defending its graphic design. It’s important to separate these two because only once we understand why the graphic design is needed can the aesthetics successfully be improved.
NB: I’ll be using the term “hex” to refer to information on both the map and on track tiles.
What information do hexes convey? Hexes will contain track which is used to operate trains. Hexes will have city spots where companies can place their station tokens. Some city spots will be reserved for station tokens from specific companies. Hexes might have terrain costs. Hexes have a corresponding color to indicate which phases it is available. Hexes might contain revenue centers which can be represented as a city, town, or off-board location and each of those revenue centers will have a revenue value. Hexes might have specific options for upgrades indicated by a letter. Hexes have an ID number to help organize and track them. Hexes may have conditions to be laid or upgraded based on corresponding private companies. Some hexes may have icons related to special bonuses.
How are players going to interact with them? Players are analyzing connectivity via track connections of the operating company. Players are looking for opportunities to place station tokens. Players are comparing starting locations of the various companies. Players are looking at tile upgrades to see potential track connections that can be made or city spots that can open up. Players are operating trains, checking for connectivity while not reusing any track segments. Players are counting revenue center values on a train’s route and checking for any revenue bonuses. Players are evaluating track costs against their company treasuries. Players are counting how many tiles of a particular type are still available based on the tile manifest.
Comparison of information: If you’re already feeling overwhelmed, I don’t blame you. As it turns out, there is a LOT of information that can be contained on a given hex. Let’s look at the anatomy of a hex using New York from 1830.
Not only is this a lot of information, but all of it is contained on a hex that is 1.5 inches (~3.8 cm) flat-to-flat. Of all the information shown above, only the city names are thematic. Everything else serves some functional purpose. It could even be argued that the city names aren’t entirely thematic since you may reference them as a map location.
Let’s compare these hexes to some map hexes from Scythe — a game that is widely regarded as being visually stunning.
I love the look of Scythe. I think it does a great job of immersing players in its setting and the board is a large part of that experience. However, I think a big reason this is possible is because each map hex usually only has to convey one or two pieces of information. Granted this needs to also be weighed against the fact that resources, workers, and miniatures will be on top of these hexes and will add to that information. But if I were to strip away all the aesthetics of these Scythe hexes, the image below is what you’d be left with.
The parts of Scythe’s board that might be considered beautiful are largely the parts that are not conveying information. It’s true that the background in each hex corresponds to its type, but that’s actually just repeating information communicated via the hex’s icon.
Foreground vs background: I’d like to introduce a concept that I’ve been thinking about for some time which is foreground vs background. While I’ve never been a graphic designer professionally, this is something I’ve been observing while working on 18xx the past 2 years and this is my best way of explaining it. It’s certainly possible I piss off a lot of graphic designers and they view what I say as misinformation. (sorry!)
To me, board game components have a foreground and a background. The foreground’s job is to communicate information effectively. The background’s job is to make the game visually interesting. When we think of a board game being aesthetically pleasing, the foreground and background are working in unison. However, in the hierarchy of visual elements, the foreground should always take precedence over the background.
In my observation, many attempts at improving the look of 18xx have conflated the foreground with the background. In these attempts to make the foreground beautiful, which is certainly welcome, aesthetics were prioritized over communication of information. As a result, visual distinction from the background was lost and thus information was obfuscated.
Let’s look at some ways 1830’s map has been presented to explore this more.
Mayfair’s 1830:
Something that this board absolutely captures is the look of a vintage map. There is a yellow undertone for the entire board and it gives the feeling that it was hand drawn onto an old scroll. However, this comes at a cost. It appears that the foreground was intentionally blended into the background. It gives it a better aesthetic, but now the visual cues that your eyes would normally be drawn to are gone.
Look at the mountains that divide east and west. I don’t mind that these illustrations are there, but the only thing to indicate that these illustrations mean something are the small costs printed in the bottom corner. This is a specific type of hex and we are relying on the background to convey that. Imagine if the hexes in Scythe only had the background without an accompanying icon. It could work, but you may occasionally confuse some hexes.
Now let’s take a look at the New York hex. Some changes you’ll notice is that the yellow background is much more faint, map features show through the hex, track looks more realistic, and the open cities have a city grid watermark. The largest text on this hex are the city names, which aren’t as immediately important as the hex label “NY”, the revenue icon “40”, or the upgrade cost of “$80” which are all tiny by comparison. The important information feels very minimized and does not stand out against the background.
If it sounds like I’m being nitpicky, it’s because I am. It’s not that you can’t look at this New York hex and figure it out. But the foreground does not stand out against the background and the graphic design is not making information clearly understood. Having a blown up image with good lighting is doing a lot of work in terms of making this clear. Sitting across the table from this hex in dim lighting is something I have done and do not recommend.
Another thing to point out is that when you choose a particular aesthetic for a component, it has to work across all variations of that component. The track for the New York hex above isn’t too bad because the track is simple. Let’s look at an example of some more complex track.
When the realistic looking track is on just the tile background it actually looks fine. But when it starts crossing other track it gets very muddied as the segments of each connection are being hidden by adjacent segments. Track also blends in with gray map hexes and you may even be surprised to realize that track is there! Scroll up to the image of the entire map above and try to pick out the track in gray hexes. Track drawn on top of borders where water meets land can hardly be seen.
Luckily, Mayfair’s 1830 tiles came double-sided with more traditional looking tiles on the back. Let’s see what this same build looks like.
Objectively, the distinction between track segments is clearer. The white outline on the track helps to make the track pop out on the background. Foreground and background are distinct. One nitpick about this track is that the trestle bridges used to show where track does not cross actually gets in the way. I think the white outline on the track actually makes them unnecessary. Below is an example of what this style of track looks like without bridges.
Peter “Photocurio” Mumford’s 1830:
While a non-18xx player may not care for this style, this is a popular redraw and the preferred substitute for Avalon Hill’s 1830 map. However, it is not without its problems.
The Americana style shines through, but the background is sometimes overpowering. For example, water in the background often is a gray mass which makes it difficult for text to stand out. You can see how the text for Cleveland or Atlantic City are not even on their corresponding hexes or how the name “Hamilton” has to be squeezed between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
The same issues with the mountains highlighted in Mayfair’s 1830 are present here. In fact, no terrain costs or revenue values have bubbles to help them stand out, just text getting swallowed up by the map’s features.
Karim “Carthaginian” Chakroun’s 1830:
I feel that Karim received WAY too much blow back for his 18xx redesigns. Many experienced 18xx players will refuse to play with his components with little appreciation for how much he actually got right. My main criticism of Karim’s redesigns is how many of the map’s features are faint due to the muted color palette. I believe this was intentional because 18xx colors can often be jarring with Spongebob Yellow immediately next to Lime Green. That said, it was possibly an overcorrection.
Dividing lines between hexes become faint and cities/towns don’t jump out as much as they should. Not egregious by any means, but again, it is blurring the layers of foreground and background. Let’s take a look at his version of the New York hex.
Dark yellow on a light yellow background doesn’t exactly stand out. The track, city outlines, and terrain cost all use this dark yellow color and blend into the tile as a result. The black fill on the revenue values looks great and makes them visually distinct — probably the best feature of this hex. While the city names are present, the special tile upgrade letters are missing. You can find them on the tile upgrades themselves, but they are actually on the city spots and would be hidden by any placed station tokens.
A final (and possibly the most shared) criticism against this style is that because the track can change color, this makes it harder to follow the train’s path when moving from hex to hex. I personally don’t have an issue with this, but perhaps you do. Look at the image below and try to follow the track between cities and see if you feel it’s challenging to follow the track as it jumps from yellow to green to brown.
These are minor criticisms in the broader context of what Karim accomplished by creating a visually appealing way to present 18xx while still hitting the majority of usability marks. The objections to his style should really have been points of feedback rather than a sweeping denouncement by the community. I would be curious to find out how many current 18xx fans made Karim’s 1889 PnP as their first 18xx game and introduction to the genre.
Making the foreground and background more visually appealing: Despite each hex needing to convey so much information, I think there is plenty of low-hanging fruit to improve 18xx’s appearance. Fonts don’t have to only be Benguiat or Copperplate. Icons don’t have to be clip art. Railroad heralds don’t have to only be colored badges with letters in them. The color palette doesn’t have to adhere to printing standards from the 1980’s. Hex borders don’t have to be solid lines. Once we have these small wins with the foreground, we can then see what can be improved with the background. Details surrounding the map don’t have to be the same tired vector maps. Backgrounds on tiles don’t have to be a single solid color. Flavor text that matches the game’s setting can be added to create a more immersive experience.
Experimenting with tiles: Karim and I explored many variations of track tiles. I knew from the get go that track would be double-sided with fancy track on one side and traditional track on the other. We looked at various presentations adjusting tile color, city color, track color, track width, track border, revenue bubble, revenue font, and track style that we felt could improve both traditional and fancy track.
Below is what we came up with for traditional track.
The traditional track is fairly close to what you’d find in most 18xx games. A few exceptions being we eliminated the sharp bend for yellow cities with either a tight or gentle curve, we made the fill around cities with multiple city spots black instead of white, and towns will remain circles in yellow (instead of becoming dashes).
For fancy track, we wanted to apply those same updates that we did to traditional track but also experiment with other presentations. Namely, we dropped the white track border, made the track thicker, switched the city’s fill color to match the tile, and added decorative edge spots to the tiles.
We found that some players actually have an easier time following the track when all features of the route are dark. The white track border and white city spots seemed to be jarring when trying to follow along with the route, so we wanted to come up with a presentation which addressed that.
An 18xx board might start by looking like an actual map, but by the end of the game once the board is completely filled with tiles, it definitely takes you out of that experience. Many have had ideas about adding terrain textures to tiles, but this solution isn’t really going to bring you back to the feeling of playing on a map. So instead, we decided to admit that the tiles will feel abstract, but try to incorporate a thematic element anyway. Since 1861 takes place in Imperial Russia with ornate decorations, we added fancy patterns to the edges of the tiles so that by the end of the game you have a magnificent, sprawling tessellation.
Experimenting with the board: I sadly don’t have pictures of the board as it went through all of its iterations, but a lot of the aesthetic improvements on the board stayed consistent through those iterations anyway.
Dividing lines between hexes were swapped for caltrops on hex corners but with more distinction. The map around the edges of the map has finer detail. Map details are shown in playable hexes but do not conflict with the foreground. Fonts are nicer and city names have Cyrillic spelling below their Romanic spelling. Hexes with water terrain costs are color-coded. Cities and towns are centered in their hexes for uniformity. Track leading into off-board locations is slightly rounded. The result is a pretty standard 18xx map with lots of little improvements to details. Overall, those little improvements made it into not only one of the most functional 18xx boards, but in my opinion one of the best-looking ones as well.
The future of 18xx graphic design: Those who are used to games with gorgeous illustrations may look at the above board and be disappointed… and that is completely okay! This is the beginning of a long and deliberate process of trying to improve a graphic design and aesthetic style that has existed for over 40 years. I do not believe what we came up with for 1861/1867 is the best way to present 18xx. However, I do believe that we have done more than anyone else to research, experiment, and iterate on 18xx’s graphic design. I’m looking forward to upcoming projects and improving upon what we learned from 1861/1867.
