Starting Portable Wargaming - First based units on pg 3

[AndrewBeasley]

Having been a rule heavy gamer for many a year (Star Fleet Battles with ALL supplements anyone) I have realised that simplicity has its advantages and I have drifted away from such tomes to games such as Songs of Blades and 'one page' games from the 'net.

Recently, my eye has been drawn to the series of games by Bob Cordrey based on the 'Portable Wargame' series of notes / rules and the fixed grid and limited set of options you have.

I'm not heading down the chess board route but a slightly larger table for me has its advantage so this thread may give you a smile or two as I battle with new ideas for myself.

First thing - scale or size.

Not a hope as:
Figures are going to be 15mm
Buildings 2mm
Trees - depends on what is cheap on eBay
Hills - a bit smaller than a 2p

If you look at the examples around the web (links to follow), you will see it really does not matter so I'm starting with a few Brigade 2mm Arab buildings and a fort:

and for an idea of size these are on/with a UK 2P coin:

The Fort:

The hills:

Second - The 'table'
The board was going to be a 2x2 canvas frame but to start with I am going to try a 24x18inch canvas board with the grid made out of balsa strips.

It will be a desert style board based on an undercoat of pale umber with a 'sand' texture spray over it to break up the pale single colour.  I am hoping the spray (Plastikote Stone) will save me using the classic sand / glue mix.

If anything the grid is giving me the pain - I'm not sure the balsa I have will be thin enough (hence the board rather than the framed canvas) but it will be worth trying to see the result…

Third - the figures
To start with I am going for the Peter Pig Sudan range
I've even ordered a copy of Khartoum on DVD to get me in the mood  

So thats it for now - just a few tasks during the week to do:

• Get the flash off the 2mm buildings and get them undercoated
• Get the resin hills washed and dry and if possible undercoated

With luck I'll get the first game this year.

[Momotaro]

Looking forward to your build thread Andrew!

[sundayhero]

So buildings acts just as mission objectives ?

[YPU]

Ooh, I like the look of this. Thanks for pointing out the whole portable wargames page, it looks rather interesting. I have been looking for a ruleset that is enough of en excuse to get germies 2mm sci-fi minies and this might be it.

I really like the idea you are going with, the out of scale buildings and terrain reminds me of tactical computer games like advanced wars. Very stylized but that doesn't mean it can be an intense wargame. 

[DoctorPete]

Very interesting.  I want to follow your progress.   

[AndrewBeasley]

Thank you all for the support and interest.

So buildings acts just as mission objectives ?

With the simplistic rules I am thinking of using, terrain effects combat or movement by +/-1 factor or may block line of site / movement for that turn and as scale is irrelevant (i.e. 1 block of figures represent a 'bunch of people' or buildings rather than anything formal), the idea of fighting house to house in a town does not fit.

One advantage seen on the original games is that hills / mountains where flat topped so troops can be placed on them.  I may rule the resin ones are 'impassable mountains' and make a few small hills along the lines of my islands (but flatter of course):

[YPU]

Its a bit hard to judge from the pictures, and I'm not sure what scale grid your using either... Anyhow, some of those maintains look like you could place them in between two positions. On the borders of your grid so to speak.

[AndrewBeasley]

Its a bit hard to judge from the pictures, and I'm not sure what scale grid your using either...

The reason I hand not mentioned the grid size is that I do not know    With the trial board being 18inch I will get 9 squares at 2inch allowing a fair bit for movement across the table compared to 6 three inch squares and when each move is taken as whole squares every square counts esp. as infantry move at 1 square and light artillery having 8 squares range.

I do like the idea of sitting the mountains along the edges and hereby steal the idea

In my mind I am not even sure about laying out the grid itself:

• Balsa gives a clear grid but it will need careful cutting and remains raised
• Masking lines off with tape has never worked for me as I end up with rough edges or the mask not lifting correctly
• Drawing the lines gives a jagged look or runs from the pen as it goes up and down over bumps
• Putting dots on the board may work well if I use a fair sized dot (and gets over the raised edge issue)
• Marking the corners with '+' symbols somehow may work - tile spacers would be too big/deep

Maybe I'll junk the balsa strip for now and go with dots / corners punched out of card / plastic to raise them up.  I have a good industrial hole punch at work that will do the job and some spare plastic sheet…

Too many ideas in my mind me thinks…

[YPU]

I'm not sure what you have in mind for flocking or base material for your board as that might be important when considering things.

I do think you might profit from looking at some custom bloodbowl boards, I have seen tables of all sorts of terrain (snow to desert and swamp to urban) and all of the methods you described and more are used to denote the spaces.

How are you planning to base the miniatures? because 2 inches sounds quite large. I mean for reference DnD miniatures are 28mm and they tend to use a 1 inch grid just fine...

[AndrewBeasley]

I'm not sure what you have in mind for flocking or base material for your board as that might be important when considering things.

Simple paint job for the undercoat and a 'sand' type spray over it to add texture / colour

I do think you might profit from looking at some custom bloodbowl boards, I have seen tables of all sorts of terrain (snow to desert and swamp to urban) and all of the methods you described and more are used to denote the spaces.

The bloodbowl boards gave me most of the ideas running rampant in my mind now My fave had to be the guy who nearly gassed himself heating a wire to 'melt' foam board   Decided that was not for me.

How are you planning to base the miniatures? because 2 inches sounds quite large. I mean for reference DnD miniatures are 28mm and they tend to use a 1 inch grid just fine...

Plain MDF bases with multiple figures (15mm) per base - very little scatter / plant material on them.

[Cherno]

Cool project. I will surely watch this as it unfolds.
If I were to start something like this, I'd probably go with a bunch of terrain tiles that store easily but are geomorphic for lots of different configurations. For scale, I'd go with 10mm because there's a great selection, small enough for sizeable armies to face off, and still big enough that single figures can be used as heroes or whatever.

Keep it coming :]

[YPU]

Plain MDF bases with multiple figures (15mm) per base - very little scatter / plant material on them.

Ah yes then I can see why you would want larger spaces.


I am very much thinking of adapting those rules to a sci-fi game. Sounds like a "simple" project for once. 


I would either go with a scorched in grid tough that might be dificult. Alternatively I would do dots or plusses in a lighter or darker shade of the base. In my experiance the human eye is trained in recognizing those kind of paterns so dots or crosses when done consistandly would be enough.

[AndrewBeasley]

Cool project. I will surely watch this as it unfolds.
If I were to start something like this, I'd probably go with a bunch of terrain tiles that store easily but are geomorphic for lots of different configurations. For scale, I'd go with 10mm because there's a great selection, small enough for sizeable armies to face off, and still big enough that single figures can be used as heroes or whatever.

Keep it coming :]

Thank you for the support (and all others to be honest).

Be warned this can be strangely addictive - I started with wood hex tiles, then collected Heroscape tiles (but ducked out on the flock to date) and now moving to a solid board  

[AndrewBeasley]

I am very much thinking of adapting those rules to a sci-fi game. Sounds like a "simple" project for once. 

Interesting idea - would you go for a 19th cent War of the Worlds style or futuristic version?

I did get a couple of old Metagames (Hot Spot and Sticks and Stones) but never took the idea further - I wonder if many board games could be simplified and moved to this format?

[YPU]

Interesting idea - would you go for a 19th cent War of the Worlds style or futuristic version?

I did get a couple of old Metagames (Hot Spot and Sticks and Stones) but never took the idea further - I wonder if many board games could be simplified and moved to this format?

... I hadn't even considered WotW style, but that would be rather nice also. 
No I was thinking more along the lines of using pretty much the modern rules but using sci-fi version of the unit types. Scout cars are still scout cars and artillery is still artillery. Sure the ranges would be higher but that's a non factor as the board is an abstraction. From there I would see what I needed to add on, perhaps rules for alternative types of movement grav and walkers and the like.