I often have a lot of data charts and Chapter H notes in my scenarios, so I sometimes need to add blank boards to the side or bottom of my playing area to have space to put them in. However, this
sometimes stops me from placing counters in arbitrary positions, I assume because they're snapping to an imaginary hex grid:
View attachment 13204
It's not a big deal, but it's a bit annoying. Is there any way of turning this off? Could I create a board that declares itself to not having a hex grid?
In possibly related news, is there any difference between the Blank0 and Blank1 boards? Looking inside the files, they seem virtually identical.
I have noticed and mentioned this several times over the years.
'Offboard', there is no grid and if you want to place an OoB there for a scenario setup, it is tiresome to get the counters correctly aligned because they tend to snap to some pseudo-grid positions. This is most notable if you attempt to reposition a counter only for a very short distance (say a mm or so to get the alignment nice and neat).
Generally, it is a good thing, that there is no grid offboard, because the onboard-grid is too rough/wide to allow for sufficient space to place larger OoBs on the margins offboard. But the strange 'pseudo-grid snapping' on the margins is a pain.
That said, the following is my method to minimize the trouble by means of workarounds:
You can use Perimeter Lines from the Draggable Overlays 'Map Annotations' tab to assist you in placing counters offboard neatly aligned. The 'Moved' flags can help you to establish gaps between counters of 'standardized' width.
Still, this does not free you from the cumbersome alginment work and 'pseudo-postition' snapping.
However, you can get around much of it if you use an existing VASL setup with the same board dimensions as the template of another setup. As the board dimensions are the same, so will be the places where you want to line up the counters for another setup.
Rename the old setup, then 'Pick New Boards'. You will have to manually delete Perimeter Lines on-board because these will not be deleted, when you select new boards. But this is normally quickly done. The good thing is, however, that for most things offboard, you can use the old positions of previously (and tiringly) placed counters as templates.
Say you had a 2 board-scenario Germans vs. Russian. Now you want to create a 2 board-scenario US vs. Japanese.
Delete all counters of the off-board stacks EXCEPT the bottom one. Then pull the new counters directly onto the old postions and clone accordingly. For example, you'll now have 3 new US counters placed above 1 old German counter that defined the position. Then, afterwards, delete the bottom German counter.
This works much faster than deleting all offboard counters and placing everything new as it circumvents the pseudo-snapping problem at least in part. Of course, you will still have to place some new counters 'manually', for example when the new OoB is bigger or when 5/8" counters come into play and require different spacing. But I found, that my method provides at least some relief.
That said, I subscribe to Pacman's proposal that the 'pseudo-snapping' offboard is an issue that should be addressed.
von Marwitz
