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Wednesday, 8 June 2011

The portable wargame: Yet more arms-length play-testing!

The number of people who have been conducting play-tests of my PORTABLE WARGAME rules continues to grow! Brigadier Dundas has a blog entitled DISPATCHES FROM MULTAN that is devoted to wargaming the First and Second Anglo-Sikh Wars, and his latest blog entry is a report of a battle he has fought using my rules. The photographs are first rate, as are the captions for each one. This is the sort of battle that I had in mind to fight when I began writing these rules, and it is pleasing to see that they produced such an excellent wargame.

Furthermore, it is extremely encouraging to know that people seem to have very little difficulty understanding the game mechanisms I have used in the rules, and are happy that the results are not too ridiculous. It makes me feel that the time I have spent developing the rules has not be wasted.

8 comments:

  1. Hello Bob. There are probably masses of secret 'Portables' out there - I'm in the process of painting and basing two armies for a game, having cut up an old piece of tarpaulin (smelling marvellously of campfire woodsmoke and my pipesmoke) and marked it up with six inch squares.

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  2. AlFront,

    Welcome to the unofficial 'Portable Wargame' group! I hope you enjoy using the rules, even though they are not quite in a finished state.

    May I ask what two armies you are painting up to oppose each other? Please let me know, as I am sure that other blog readers will be interested to hear about what you are doing as well.

    All the best,

    Bob

    PS. Your terrain sounds wonderfully 'fragrant'!

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  3. Hi Bob,
    Just a quick 'thank you' for your kind words and link to my blog. Hope to get another game in next week; fingers crossed!

    Regards,
    Don

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  4. Brigadier Dundas,

    It was a pleasure to see how much you enjoyed using the rules.

    What is more, the 'look' of your battle was very similar to the 'look' of Joseph Morschauser's battles ... and that is something that I hope to emulate myself.

    All the best,

    Bob

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  5. Bob,

    Over on the "Multan" blog, I'd asked how your rules stacked up against the others he's used for the period.

    Here is his response:

    Brigadier Dundas said...

    @Bluebear Jeff

    The Portable Wargame gives a clean, fast paced solo game. Once you have played a couple times, the game is automatic and plays to a conclusion in about and hour to an hour and a half. This makes getting a game in easy.

    I still use Lasalle but for large groups of 4-6 players and where there is a 4 hour block of time available.

    In my opinion, Volley & Bayonet is very abstract, like DBA. It doesn't feel different when going from on era to another. Honor and Fortune was interesting in that it incorporated some role playing aspects, but because of this, I had difficulty getting folks to play.

    I really enjoy what Bob has done with TPW and hope he continues to improve the experience for all of use as he has time.

    Regards,
    Don

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  6. Bluebear Jeff,

    I don't know what to say; this is praise indeed ... and I find it very humbling.

    Thanks for letting know about Brigadier Dundas' comments. I will get in contact with him and thank him personally.

    All the best,

    Bob

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  7. Just goes to show you did a good job Bob, well done.

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  8. Conrad Kinch,

    I just do my best.

    All the best,

    Bob

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