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Tuesday, 28 April 2020

Other people's Portable Wargame battle reports ... and ideas for a game in a pizza box!

Alan Saunders has been revisiting the English Civil War, and has fought a couple of battles using his variant of the PORTABLE WARGAME rules. His battle reports can be read on his blog, and here a few of the photographs of his battles in progress:







Meanwhile, Marc Pavone has been working on putting together a truly portable version of the game. He described how he had done it in an email to me:
'My little setup came out nicely. I made basic hills out of 1/2" polystyrene, foliage is made from green pompoms glued to small circles of poster board. I make roads and streams from masking tape. The houses are cut from some pine wood I had laying around. The tan squares are corrugated cardboard with one side of the paper stripped off and glued to a backing to make plowed farm fields. I made some geomorph tiles like Peter uses on Grid Based Wargaming. That gives me over a million possible random battlefields! Paper minis and a copy of your rules finish the whole thing.'
He illustrated his 'game in a pizza box' with some very interesting photographs:

The figures.
The terrain tile masters.
A hill, some ploughed fields, some 'pompom' woods, and some small wooden buildings ... all homemade!
A battlefield designed using the terrain tile masters can quickly and easily ...
... be turned into a tabletop terrain..
The pizza box of delights ...
... contains everything one needs to fight a tabletop battle.

Please note that the photographs featured above are © Alan Saunders and Marc Pavone.

12 comments:

  1. Some great ideas Bob - I like the terrain tiles; if they were made big enough they could form a 2D battlefield.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maudlin Jack Tar,

      I also thought that the terrain tiles were a great idea. If designed properly, they can literally generate thousands of different battlefields.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
    2. That was my plan originally but it would have taken more cardboard than I have laying around. I guess if I save all the boxes our groceries are delivered in I could have a set, but that would take a month.

      Delete
    3. Mr. Pavone,

      It looks like something that might be worth doing as and when you have enough cardboard.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
  2. I might have to try your photo-cropping method sometime :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kaptain Kobold,

      I use a free version of a piece of Serif software that is a bit like a Photoshop. It allows one to do some basic photo manipulation, including rotating and cropping images.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
  3. Thanks for letting me share my PWG with you and your readers. I like the buildings Alan uses on his table. It's fun seeing what people come up with to play their games. And he uses paper minis too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mr. Pavone,

      The internet does lend itself to the sharing of ideas ... and there will some more in tomorrow’s blog entry.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
    2. Those wooden buildings are quite popular with gamers since they're cheap, versatile in terms of scale and generic :)

      And, yes, for certain things I do use paper figures; I have my ECW forces, some South American Wars if Liberation armies (although I have those in 6mm metal as well) and a WW1 skirmish setup too.

      Delete
    3. Kaptain Kobold,

      The ‘Town in a bag’ set is very useful, and I know lots of wargamers who own and use them.

      I love your paper figures. They have a crispness that’s missing from the ones I made a few years back.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
  4. Replies
    1. Geordie an Exiled FoG,

      If I can misquote Blackadder, ‘it’s as cunning as a fox that used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford University’.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete

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