A Portable Wargame mini-campaign game board: A YouTube video

One of the best wargame purchases I have ever made was to buy Hexon II hexagonal terrain boards. I bought enough to easily cover my extended wargame table. (It is actually two IKEA extending tables. When they are not extended, each is 3' x 2' (90mm x 60mm), so normally I can use an area that is 3' x 4' (90mm x 120mm), but when they are both extended, I have a tabletop that is either 3' x 8' (90mm x 240mm) or 6' x 4' (180mm x 120mm).)

When space in my toy/wargame room became tight and it was difficult to extend my tables (can a wargamer ever have enough storage space?), I looked around for some way that I could wargame on a much smaller terrain board but still use my Hexon II terrain board. In the end, I opted to buy a 3' x 2' (90mm x 60mm) magnetic white board which – after a small amount of modification – could accommodate a 6 x 8 hex grid of Hexon II terrain boards.

Since then I have used it to fight all sorts of wargames, most of which were part of mini-campaigns. As I have found this so useful, I decided to create a short YouTube video to share its usefulness with my fellow Portable Wargamers and YouTube followers.

The video can be found here on the Wargaming Miscellany YouTube channel.

Book sales

It's a very long time since I bothered to look at my total book sales, but just before I added the latest one (A GALLIMAUFRY OF COLONIAL WARGAMES) to the list published by Eglinton Books, I did so. The results are shown below:

Click on the image to enlarge it.

I must admit that I was very surprised to see just how many books had been sold since I started out on my second career as a writer and self-publisher in September 2014. So, in slightly less than ten years I have written and/or published nineteen wargaming or wargame-related books. That averages out at about one every six months, which I think isn't too bad an output for such a niche area of self-publishing.

COW2024

The annual Conference of Wargamers (COW) will be taking place over the next three days, and I should have been going to it. However, my ongoing medical problems made this impossible and for only the third time since it began in 1980 (forty-four years ago!), I will be missing the conference.

I had planned to help another member of Wargame Developments to present a session about the United States' War Plan Orange (i.e. its plan for a future war with Japan) and I produced a PowerPoint presentation to that end. As I will not be going to the conference, I have converted this presentation into a video and will be uploading it to the Wargaming Miscellany YouTube channel in due course.

Two hundred YouTube channel subscribers!

Yesterday the Wargaming Miscellany channel on YouTube reached a milestone that I never expected to achieve ... the number of subscribers passed two hundred!

I only set up the channel on 17th May, and never expected to achieve more than a dozen or so subscribers. To reach two hundred is absolutely gob smacking and a real surprise ... and it will encourage me to carry on making my videos.

Thanks to all my regular blog readers who have also subscribed to the Wargaming Miscellany YouTube channel, and to those of you who haven't yet paid it a visit or thought about subscribing, please do so.

A Gallimaufry of Colonial Wargames

Some time ago I published a collection of my older colonial wargame rules in PDF format with Wargame Vault. The collection was entitled A GALLIMAUFRY OF COLONIAL WARGAMES and it sold moderately well.

Since then I've had several requests for printed and bound copies of the rules and as a result, I have now published the book in hardback, softback, and Kindle editions, priced at £17.50, £10.00, and £5.00 respectively.

Included in the book are the following rules:

• Bundock and Bayonet Colonial Wargames Rules
• Part 1: The Basic Rules
• Part 2: The Additional and Optional Rules
• ‘Eres to you Fuzzy Wuzzy: Fighting Colonial battles in the Sudan
• Hordes of Dervishes
• Heroes of Victoria’s Empire (HoVE)
• Colonial Rules for Heroscape™ terrain
• Restless Natives
• Redcoats & Dervishes
• SCWaRes: Simple Colonial Wargame Rules
• Appendix 1: Heroic Leadership Cards for Heroes of Victoria’s Empire (HoVE)
• Appendix 2: Special Event Cards for Restless Natives
• Appendix 3: Heroic Leadership Cards for Restless Natives

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Note 1: A gallimaufry is defined as being ‘a confused jumble or medley of things’, hence the title of this book.

Note 2: Please note that some of the rule mechanisms and scenarios contained in this book have been reused in my later books, but they are included for completeness.

Note 3: I originally intended to publish this book in February 2024 ... but then I broke my leg and its publication was shelved (i.e I forgot about it!).

Increases in price

Very recently I became aware that some of the books that I publish via Lulu.com were costing more to print and distribute (and give Lulu.com a profit!) than the sale price. The books affected are:

• When Empires Clash! (Hardback and paperback editions)
• Hexblitz (Hardback and paperback editions)
• The Portable Wargame (Hardback edition)
• The Portable Colonial Wargame (Paperback edition)
• Developing the Portable Wargame (Hardback edition)
• The Portable Napoleonic Wargame (Hardback edition)
• Gridded Naval Wargames (Hardback and paperback editions)
• La Ultima Cruzada (Hardback and paperback editions)

As a result, these books seemed to be difficult to get hold of and needed to be what Lulu.com term 'revised'.

I have therefore had to increase the price of the books so that the sale price covers the cost of printing etc. I was very reluctant to do this, but I cannot see any alternative.

Another YouTube video: The essentials of the Portable Wargame

I have just uploaded a new YouTube video to the Wargaming Miscellany YouTube channel.

It is entitled THE ESSENTIALS OF THE PORTABLE WARGAME, lasts just over twenty minutes, and outlines the design philosophy I employed when I created these rules as well as the basic game mechanisms I used. Like my previous video, it is intended as an introduction to the rules.

The video can be found here on the Wargaming Miscellany YouTube channel.

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 Guns of Toblerone

On Tuesday afternoon I watched THE GUNS OF NAVARONE on the Film 4 channel ... and it reminded me that ten years ago I took part in one of the most memorable wargames I have ever participated in.

Ian Drury's THE GUNS OF TOBLERONE was a role-playing game ... and the players threw themselves into the game with great gusto. The result was more Hollywood than reality ... but it was tremendous fun!

My role was a member of a special SOE (Special Operations Executive) team that was tasked with destroying a pair of heavy guns on the German-occupied island of Toblerone. The following photographs give a flavour of the game.

Ian Drury sets out the terrain.

The intrepid SOE team prepare to 'take off' in their 'borrowed' JU-52 ... humming the tune from 'Where Eagles Dare'! Trebian (near right) seems half asleep, Martin Rapier (near left) looks apprehensive, He was right to be as he the only Greek-speaker in the team ... but he was an academic who only spoke and read Ancient Greek! Tim Gow (in the green shirt) laughs in the face of danger ... and I am sat behind Tim with my arms crossed!

Gavascone, the main town and seaport of Toblerone.

The main objective: the Guns of Toblerone.

Another part of the objective: the Eagles Nest, headquarters of the German garrison on Toblerone.

The olive groves ... where dirty deeds might (or might not) have taken place!

The centre of Aghias Nikolaos, one of the main towns on Toblerone. Stavros' Bar was the rendezvous point for the SOE team to meet the leader of the local resistance group.

The bridge, over which the survivors made their escape. I seem to remember that a motorcycle was crashed during the process ... but I may be wrong.

The airfield ... where a JU-52 might just be waiting to land in order to pick up any survivors.

Trebian making a point to Martin Rapier ... but I cannot remember what it was.

As to our success ... well, my memory is that we achieved our objective, but that the cost was high.

United States Independence Day

May I wish all of my regular US-based blog readers a happy and safe Independence Day holiday.

For once I will use an expression that I really don't like when I hear it, but which on this occasion is absolutely bang on the nail:

HAVE A NICE DAY!