The Third Portable Wargame Compendium: An update

Work has been continuing on the next Portable Wargame Compendium. I am awaiting two more articles (another about the Napoleonic Wars and one about re-fighting the Battle of Gettysburg), and once those have arrived, been added to the existing draft, and proofread, I will be beginning the publication process.

The Third Compendium currently includes the following articles:

• Modifications to the Ancients rules in Developing the Portable Wargame for fighting medieval battles
• Constantinople Beleaguered ... a PW3x3RW campaign idea
• A simple English Civil War campaign system for Portable Pike and Shot
• Simple English Civil War 8 x 8 Campaign Rules
• Some suggested improvements to the Brigade-level Portable Napoleonic Wargame Rules
• Ideas for developing the Portable Napoleonic Big Battle or FP3x3PW Rules
• Wargaming the Flagstaff War – New Zealand 1845 – 1846
• Sham-Battle and the Portable Wargame: Melding two concepts to produce a set of mini-campaign rules
• Some well-known scenarios revisited
• Big Battles, Small Armies
• A simple framework for narrative campaigns
• 6 x 6 Portable Wargames

This looks as if it is going to be the biggest compendium to date ... and I hope to publish it by the end of August.

The Third Portable Wargame Compendium: Another progress report

The current draft has been proofread by the incomparable Arthur Harman, and it is already ninety-three pages long. It is worth noting that the First Compendium had 108 pages and the Second Compendium had 132 pages.

At present, the Contents looks like this:

I know that there are at least two more contributions in the pipeline, and I hope that the Compendium will be ready for publication somewhat earlier than I expected.

The Third Portable Wargame Compendium: A further progress report

Since last Friday I have been working on the next issue of the PORTABLE WARGAME COMPENDIUM, and its draft is already ninety pages long ... and I know of at least two more articles that are being written for inclusion in this issue.

To date, Mark Cordone has contributed articles about:

• Adapting the PORTABLE ANCIENT WARGAME rules from DEVELOPING THE PORTABLE WARGAME for use in the Medieval period.
• His BIG BATTLES, SMALL ARMIES rules.
• A framework for narrative campaigns.
• Developing the 6 x 6 PORTABLE WARGAME.

Archduke Piccolo's contribution relates the story of his BYZANTIAD campaign and includes an excellent campaign map and campaign system as well as two well-illustrated campaign reports.

I will write further progress reports as and when I can.

The Third Portable Wargame Compendium: A progress report

I spent quite a lot of Saturday working on the Third Portable Wargame Compendium, and to date it now has three articles.

One of these was written by me and re-examines six wargame scenarios that were included in three of the first wargame books that bought ... H G Wells’s LITTLE WARS, Brigadier Peter Young and Lieutenant Colonel James P Lawford’s CHARGE! OR HOW TO PLAY WAR GAMES, and Donald Featherstone’s WAR GAMES. I have drawn suitable square and hex gridded maps for each scenario and included both the original Orders of Battle and suitable PORTABLE WARGAME Orders of Battle.

The other two articles were written by Arthur Harman and are entitled:

• Ideas for developing the Portable Napoleonic Big Battle or Fast Play 3 x 3 Portable Wargame Rules
• A simple English Civil War campaign system for Portable Pike and Shot

I have several other articles in the pipeline and hope to publish the latest Compendium by September.

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!

The Second Portable Wargame Compendium: A further short progress report

Thanks to one or two matters over which I have very little control, progress on the second edition of the Compendium is not going as quickly as I had hoped. My self-imposed deadline was Easter, but some of the articles have yet to be finished and proofread, and now that I have a fortnight of jury service to look forward to, I'm unsure just how much time I will have to devote to working on the book.

Despite this delay, progress is being made to complete the next Compendium, and from what I have seen, it is going to be a very interesting issue, with lots of ideas for how to use the rules (in all their different iterations) for fighting campaigns.

In the interim – and to whet the appetites of potential readers – here is a copy of one of the campaign maps that I hope to include in the Compendium:

It is based on the map from RISK: EDITION NAPOLEON, which was published exclusively in France by Tilsit – under license from Hasbro – in the 1990s as a numbered edition of 10,000 copies.

The Second Portable Wargame Compendium: Another short progress report

Thanks to some excellent work done by Arthur Harman, who has been proofreading and correcting articles for the COMPENDIUM after I have done the initial layout, its contents page currently looks like this:

There are still quite a few articles that are going to be added, and it look as if the finished book is going to be well over one hundred and twenty pages long. (The first one was one hundred and twelve pages long including end and title pages.)