Synchronicity … or the possibilities of creating a very portable and light wargame

The sight of the green baize tables in the card room of the cruise liner I have just been on – P&O’s MV ARTEMIS – started me thinking about the possibility of creating a very portable – and light – wargame that I could take on cruises. It was whilst I was having these thoughts that I read the following on the Internet:

‘Firstly you should know that I actually do all my playtesting with various bit of card cut from artists mounting board rather than wait until I’ve scratch built and painted up appropriate models. If I did that you’d never see a game out of me!’

Matthew Hartley – another member of Wargame Developments – wrote this in his column, TANKARD TALES in the July 2009 issue of ORCS IN THE WEBBE. This is not very dissimilar to my own practice, and I wondered how many other game designers do the same? I also thought that this might be a possible way forward if I wanted to create a light, portable wargame.

And then the third synchronous event occurred; I went into my wargames room to look for something … and found my box of cardboard wargames figures for the Russo-Turkish War.

I made these figures some while before I began blogging. At the time I was trying to reduce my spending on wargames, and my painting ability – which I think is not particularly good – had taken a nosedive in quality. I came across the JUNIOR GENERAL website, and this showed me the possibilities of making cardboard wargames figures.

Now I am not to bad a practitioner with various drawing programs, including the much despised but very easy-to-use Microsoft Paint, and after a few hours work I had created a number of basic figures that I could manipulate to create a whole range of mid to late nineteenth century wargames figures.

Using these I then created two small armies for the Russo-Turkish War. The whole thing took me less than a week from start to finish, which is a much short time span than I would have needed if I had wanted to create similar-sized painted armies in metal or plastic.

As they are made of cardboard, I stuck the figures onto thin plywood bases to give them a bit of weight. I then painted and flocked the bases as usual, and the results looked quite adequate for my purposes.

It was at this point that my financial situation took an upturn and my enthusiasm for painting returned, and I did not pursue this project any further. However such figures would be ideal for a light and portable wargame and if time – and other projects – allow I might just make a couple of small armies for WHEN EMPIRES CLASH!