Other people’s Portable Wargames: Antoine Bourguilleau’s modern version of the Portable Wargame

Even though I am still rather unwell, I just could not pass up on the opportunity to mention Antoine Bourguilleau’s modern version of the PORTABLE WARGAME rules. He staged a game using the rules at the recent Paris Defence and Strategic Forum alongside his own game, DUEL TACTIQUE.

Antoine Bourguilleau's wargame, DUEL TACTIQUE.

The cover of the rule book from Antoine Bourguilleau's wargame, DUEL TACTIQUE.

Antoine Bourguilleau has kindly uploaded French and English language editions of his modern version of the PORTABLE WARGAME to the files section of the PORTABLE WARGAME Facebook page.

Two French defence journalists – Clément Daniez (of L'Express) and Laurence Defranoux (of Libération) – playing Antoine Bourguilleau's modern version of the PORTABLE WARGAME. It was the first time either of them had tried wargaming!

A close-up of Antoine Bourguilleau's modern version of the PORTABLE WARGAME.

Another close-up of Antoine Bourguilleau's modern version of the PORTABLE WARGAME.

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Antoine Bourguilleau is a historian, wargame designer, reserve officer in the French Army, and lecturer at the École de guerre and the Institut d'Etude de la Guerre et de la Paix en Sorbonne. He was also one of the authors of THE PORTABLE PIKE AND SHOT WARGAME.

Miniature Wargames Issue 485 September 2023

I subscribe to Readly and one of the magazines I can read online is MINIATURE WARGAMES. The latest issue was of particular interest because the PORTABLE WARGAME is mentioned twice.

• Portable Middleton by Arthur Harman is a small Portable Wargame scenario for the Battle of Middleton Cheney 1643.
• The Second Portable Wargame Companion is reviewed by Chris Jarvis in the magazine’s RECCE section.

I might buy a printed copy of this issue if I happen to see it on sale as some of the other articles look interesting, including one by Arthur Harman about edible casualty markers!

Other people's Portable Wargame reports: A plethora of new stuff!

My sister's recent death and her funeral have rather preoccupied me of late, and it was only yesterday that I realised quite how many players had written reports on the PORTABLE WARGAME Facebook page. These include Mark Cordone's Battle of Leipzig project, for which he has created a special playing board ...

... as well as painted several armies made up from replacement figures for the game of RISK.

At the same time, Slorm Chaplain has been using a slightly tweaked version of Alan Saunders' ECW rules from the PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book to fight a Horse & Musket battle ...

... and Auston Jeff Butler has been fighting an Alien Bugs vs Neo-Soviet Red Army Brigade battle in the irradiated wastes of Tibet!

Finally, Barry Carter has fought a Romans vs. Britons battle ...

... and a battle from the Russian Civil War using the rules.

The sheer range of battles being fought using versions of the PORTABLE WARGAME rules is staggering, and I am extremely pleased to see people getting so much fun from their wargaming!

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Please note that the photographs featured above are © Mark Cordone, Slorm Chaplain, Auston Jeff Butler, and Barry Carter.

Other people’s Portable Wargame battle reports: Ancients, English Civil War, and American Civil War

The last few days have seen a flurry of battle reports on the PORTABLE WARGAME Facebook page.

Ancients by Barry Carter

Barry fought a tough little battle that saw his Romans just about see off an attack by a combined force of Frank’s and Huns.

English Civil War by Russell King

Russell is new to wargaming the English Civil War and began his journey with a refight of the Battle of Tippermuir (1644).

American Civil War by Martin Smith

Martin is fighting an American Civil War Snakes & Ladders campaign and managed to fight the latest battle whilst away from home using his 2mm American Civil War armies and his simple but very effective cloth terrain. A truly portable wargame!

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Please note that photographs featured above are © Barry Carter, Russell King, and Martin Smith.

Stalled by COVID-19

We just had a phone call from the company that is revamping our kitchen … and it wasn’t good news.

Apparently, the fitter who was booked to do the work on our kitchen next Monday was ‘pinged’ this morning by the NHS COVID app and has now got to self isolate until the end of next week. As a result, the start of our kitchen revamp will be postponed until Thursday. So that they can finish the revamp in two days, the company is sending in a team of two fitters to complete the work.

This has rather thrown our plans for next week into confusion, but I am sure that we will be able to be flexible and change them. On the upside, it does mean that I should be able to finish painting the cavalry (and mounted generals) for my FUNNY LITTLE WARS/PORTABLE ARMY Army Black. If I am lucky, I might even manage to get them based by Thursday.

I’ve actually managed to do something today!

For the first time since I went into hospital, I managed to spend an hour or so in our home office. I had quite a few things that needed fairly urgent action (e.g. paying bills online), but I did manage to do a few wargame-related things:

• I uploaded the Nugget 331 Colour Supplement to the Wargame Developments website.

• I watched Stephen Smith’s recent YouTube video about his planned English Civil War ‘Snakes and Ladders’ campaign. This is based on the Jacobite campaign on the GRID BASED WARGAMING - BUT NOT ALWAYS blog. Furthermore, Stephen managed to give THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book a plug, for which I am mightily grateful!

I feel as if I have made some real progress today. Not much ... but a bit ... and hopefully things will continue to improve as the days go by.

The Portable Pike & Shot Wargame ... has been published!

I understand that both the printed and Kindle editions of THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book have been published, and are now available to buy from Amazon.

The printed, colour, paperback is on sale for £14.99, and the Kindle edition is available for £4.99. The former should be printed and delivered to Amazon Prime members by Sunday 29th November, and the Kindle edition is available for immediate download.

This took less time that Amazon KDP told me it would, and I was somewhat surprised to find that both editions were already on sale, especially as I was still revising the cover for the Kindle edition yesterday!

One of the anomalies that arises from using Amazon KDP is that as the editor/publisher, I have to wait in line for my copies of the printed book to be delivered. Lulu.com would not let a book be released for publication until I had ordered at least one copy, but Amazon KDP seems perfectly happy to do so as long as I have reviewed the book online in each edition. This means that the contributors and myself will probably not have a copy of the book until some time after it has been read by members of the paying public.

Regardless of this, the book is now on sale, and I have managed to achieve the goal of getting it finished and published before Christmas. I have a feeling that there will be several copies being bought as Christmas presents ... either to 'give' to oneself or to give to a member of the family to 'give' back on Christmas Day!

A short update

I spent this morning adding images to the draft text of THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book, and it has been sent off to the contributors for their final approval. If I get their feedback by next weekend, I hope to move on to publication soon afterwards.

I’ve been very encouraged by the speed at which Amazon’s KDP processed the manuscript of RESTLESS  NATIVES from PDF format to published hardback and Kindle editions, and I will be using them for any future books I wish to publish unless Lulu.com manage to sort out their current problems.

Work on the Portable Pike & Shot Wargame book continues

I managed to finish the text of the book and sent if off to be proof read by the contributors ... and they have already begun to give me their feedback. They have spotted a few changes that have to be made, and one has suggested reordering the chapters into a more chronological order. This makes perfect sense, and I will be looking at doing that later today.

The book was a bit bare (other than for some maps and a few line drawings) but I am now in a position to include some photographs, courtesy of the contributors and David Crook. He has kindly taken some of his newly-arrived 28mm-scale WoFun printed plexiglass figures ... and as the following photograph shows, mighty fine they look.

Now that the UK has moved into its second national lockdown of the year, I hope to accelerate work on this latest book so that it can be published before Christmas.

A change of name

Over the past few days, I have been working quite solidly on the next book in the PORTABLE WARGAME series, and after giving it some serious thought, I have decided to change the name from THE PORTABLE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WARGAME to THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME. I think that this better describes the sort of wargames users will want to use the rules to fight ... and probably makes it slightly more appealing to the average wargamer.

To give regular blog readers some idea of what the book covers, here is an image of the current Contents page:

I hope to write the chapter about the Battle of Sedgemoor today so that I can send it off for proof reading by Wednesday.

The Portable Seventeenth Century Wargame book: A short progress report

I have almost finished writing the first draft of the book's text, and I am now beginning to add some of the images. At present, I have just finished the first of several maps that Arthur Harman has provided to accompany one of the chapters he has written, and it looks like this:

Arthur supplied me with scans of his hand drawn maps, and I have been digitising them ... a process that takes time and quite a bit of concentration!

I am now about to start work on the second of Arthur's maps, which shows the initial positions of the various units as well as the course of the battle.

Other people's Portable Wargame battle reports

It is quite some time since I did a review of the battle reports that have been featured on the PORTABLE WARGAME Facebook page, and doing so reminded me just how inventive so many of the players are.

Paul Wisken has been using the TRAVEL BATTLE boards made by the Perry brothers with 3mm figures from his collection ...

... and the result is very impressive!

Gary Sheffield took the 'Seize and Hold!' scenario we fought online some weeks ago, and re-fought it with another wargamer ... but this time the location was changed from central Europe to the American Civil War.

He named the river crossing points ('Griffithville Bridge' and 'Paddy's Ford') in honour of the late Dr Paddy Griffith, a military historian and wargamer we both knew well.

Jon Freeman has produced a wonderful setup using Billy Bones paper figures and terrain ...

... which give the whole battle the look of a contemporary woodcut! In this case, the Parliamentarian forces were fighting the Royalists in the Battle of Bucklebroadwood near the hamlet of Luckett.

Finally, Barry Cater continues to use the rules to fight all sorts of unusual tabletop battles. In this instance, Croatian Ustaša units of the Black Legion were fighting Chetnik partisans in part of the former Yugoslavia.

I am sure that my regular blog readers (and especially the other users of the PORTABLE WARGAME series of wargame rules) will agree that these players had produced a very varied set of battle reports, all of which have interesting and innovative features.

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Please note that the photographs featured above are © Paul Wisken, Gary Sheffield, Jon Freeman, and Barry Carter.

The Portable Seventeenth Century Wargame book: Another update

Work on the P17CW (THE PORTABLE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WARGAME) book continues apace, and to date it includes:

• A list of the major European wars (and some Japanese ones) that took place between 1600 and 1700
• A chapter about the military innovations that took place during the century
• A set of Portable Thirty Years War/English Civil War Wargame rules written by Antoine Bourguilleau
• A set of Portable English Civil War Wargame rules written by Alan Saunders
• A set of Portable English Civil War Wargame siege rules by Arthur Harman
• An English Civil War pre-battle system by Arthur Harman
• An English Civil War card-driven activation system by Arthur Harman
• A means of showing a unit's current Strength Point Value using flags devised by Arthur Harman
• A set of Portable Wargame rules for fighting battles of the Japanese Sengoku era by by Antoine Bourguilleau

It has been pointed out that all the rules so far included in the book come from the first part of the seventeenth century, and that the book ought to be renamed THE PORTABLE PIKE AND SHOT WARGAME (PP&SW) book, but I am hoping to include rules (and possibly a campaign) that will cover the second half of the century, if only to justify my original title choice!

I am not sure how big an audience the book will attract, but it does illustrate that the basic system is extremely adaptable.

The Portable Seventeenth Century Wargame book: Update

I’ve been making slow progress compiling and editing the next book I hope to publish.

The PORTABLE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WARGAME book (P17CW for short) is currently over thirty pages long, and I still have a lot more to add. I am including rules written by several other players/game designers, and besides editing their content so that they reflect the PW ‘house style’, I have been writing chapters about the European wars that took place during the seventeenth century and the military innovations that occurred.

I am not rushing to complete this book as Lulu.com still do not seem to have sorted out the problems that arose when they migrated over to a new website and introduced new publishing software. I hope to get the text ready for checking by the middle of August (and earlier, if possible), and once that is done, publication will follow in due course.