Captain Anorak's Guide to Gaming
Digital versus Analogue Movement in Wargames and Boardgames
Digital movement has a board divided up into units, such as squares or hexes. Analogue movement has just a single continuous field. In digital movement, a unit's move might be 3 hexes. In analogue movement, it might be 60mm.

PROBLEMS WITH ANALOGUE MOVEMENT

In games with analogue movement, there are always arguments over distances. Perhaps I have a unit with a movement of 80mm. I measure the distance to an enemy unit and find that it's exactly 80mm away, so I move my unit up to attack it. Then my opponent objects 'You can't do that - I deliberately left it 81mm away!' Players can disagree over measurements, and if the table gets knocked the models can move slightly, changing what's possible in the game. Digital movement removes all that: something is either three hexes away, or it's four hexes away. This is obvious from looking at the board, and there is no possibility of dispute (unless a careless gamer has left a model half in one hex and half in another - such people should be whipped).

PROBLEMS WITH SQUARES

The simplest way to do digital movement is with squares. The problem with this is that there is a difference between directly adjacent squares and diagonally adjacent squares. Can two diagonally adjacent units fight? Do movement and range count a diagonal movement as 1, 1.5 or 2 squares?

Also, some games with square boards let a character move diagonally, slipping between two diagonally adjacent enemies. This seems like something that really wouldn't happen.

PROBLEMS WITH HEXES

If squares don't work, another possibility is hexagons (hexes). The advantage of hexes over squares is that the relationship between one hex and the next is the same in all directions: from one hex to the next is always one hex away. The disdvantage is that rectangular structures don't fit easily. For instance, if you have a rectangular house on the board, at least two of its walls will probably cut hexes apart in an odd way.