Developing The Portable Wargame: Almost there!

I have finally finished writing and illustrating the DEVELOPING THE PORTABLE WARGAME, and it is now being proof-read prior to publication. It is currently 128 pages long and contains three full sets of rules and 82 illustrations.

The contents remain pretty well as they were in my last update, and looks like this:

• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Pinning and Unpinning Units
• The Two Kills Option
• Army Lists, Balanced, and Unbalanced Forces
• Army Lists: Some generic examples
• Army Lists: A pair of historically-based examples
• Balanced Forces: The 40 SPs per side method
• Balance Forces: The randomly-generated number of SPs per side method
• Unbalance Forces: The randomly-generated number of SPs per side method
• Elite, Average, and Poor quality units
• Fortifications, fieldworks, and prepared defences
• Big Board – and Small Board – Gridded Wargames
• A few observations about Portable Wargame Rules: Ancients
• Portable Wargame Rules: Ancients
• Army Lists for The Portable Wargame: Ancient Army Lists
• Tactical Formations
• The Portable Wargame in Action: Some example from the Ancients Rules
• A few observations about the Developed Portable Wargame Rules: Early and Mid Twentieth Century
• Developed Portable Wargame Rules: Early and Mid Twentieth Century
• Adding another dimension: Some thoughts about Air Combat Rules
• Types of Aircraft
• Aircraft Arcs-of Fire
• Turning
• Portable Wargame: Air Combat Rules
• The Portable Wargame in Action: Some examples from the Air Combat Rules
• Simple Mini-Campaigns
• An example of a mini-campaign: 'Long live the Revolution!'
• Scenarios
• Bibliography
• Endnotes

To give a bit of flavour of what the new book will contain, here are a few of the illustrations I have used, with their original captions:

Figure 27: The same wedge formation as that shown immediately above, but on a hexed grid. The wedge formation is the one of the tactical formations that is easier to reproduce on a hexed grid rather than a squared grid.

Figure 29: The same Barbarian army in wedge formation as that shown immediately above, but on a hexed grid.

Figure 47: Let battle commence! The War Elephant unit has moved into contact with an enemy Heavy Infantry unit.

Figure 67: An example of a point-to-point campaign map of the Waterloo Campaign (1815). The forces involved move from one point to another.

Figure 75: The leader of the Revolutionaries prepares to fight to the last surrounded by his loyal troops.

Figure 82: A hexed grid version of the original Sittingbad map, modified to represent Sittingrad during the Rusland Civil War.

With luck the book should be ready for publication at some time during June or early July.