New Books and New Basing Ideas

   I'm not much for Facebook; however, I do follow quite a few wargame pages, including "The Portable Wargame" page.  Looking at the games played, I finally broke down and ordered the rest of Bob Cordery's  Portable Wargames series (I had the original volume).   Unfortunately they were ordered right as the country started reopening, and UPS was swamped with packages. Based on tracking, my books sat in the local terminal for two weeks, then made it on trucks 4 times, only to be returned to the terminal 3 times! I did finally receive them, although the package looked like it had been through a war, the books were undamaged.

    One thing about each volume is that he introduces new ideas, such as making campaign maps and random terrain placement.  Right away in "The Portable Napoleonic Wargame", for an example of his Brigade Rules, his scenario uses the American War of 1812 for the example of play. As the War of 1812 s one of my favorites, and recently having bought two packs of 2nd generation Minifigs US infantry in felt shakos and coatees, I am now thinking of basing a Brigade of Americans and British.

   In my last post, I mentioned the based Airfix Romans. They were mounted on thin plastic bases, using white glue. When debasing them, it was easy to bend the base, instead of the figure, making separation easy, without damaging the paint job of the figure. This made me think of basing my metal figures with white glue, instead of super glue. Then rebasing figures would be easier; separating metal figures from plastic bases that used super glue is extremely difficult. I did a quick base of Peter Laing ECW in plastic. I am happy with the result and will try basing single figures the same way and see if they would work, too.

The new 2nd generation Minifigs War of 1812 Americans. I got a total of 48 figures.

The newest addition to the wargame library.

The sample base of Peter Laing ECW mounted on a plastic base. No, the hex is not what they are glued to. I put them onto the hex to see how much ground the base covered. If I proceed with basing the ECW figures, perhaps the units will be on larger bases with more figures.

More Semi Flats Games

   In the last couple of weeks I tried different rules with my semi flats. I used Stuart Asquith's CHARGE! rules, Bob Cordery's "Portable Wargames", and using a One Hour Wargame scenario with "Horse & Musket 2.0"rules.  I will continue to try to find proper "Old School" rules for these figures.

Two Wargames

       This week I had time for two wargames. The goal was to try out new rules. One was to try my Chessboard Campaign; the other Bob Cordery's "Portable Wargames", with a change to one of the rules.

    The "Chessboard Campaign" didn't work out as planned. Usually using the Horse & Musket 2.0 rules, most of the action takes place in the center of the board. I used my house rules to fight an ancients battle between Turks and Arabs. The Arabs succeeded in pushing the Turks to their back line before the Turks lost 50% of their army. Using my proposed campaign rules, the Turks would have no room to maneuver in the next game. Any army in such a situation would probably retreat to fight another day.  So it's back to the drawing board for the Chessboard Campaign, although I do have another idea for my chessboard.

    I decided to try to take another look at Bob Cordery's Portable Wargames. In his rules, one rolls to see if their unit hits the opponents unit. If they score a hit, they then roll for the results.  I just roll two dice; one for hits, the other for results if they score a hit. I also changed the rule where if certain pips comes up, the unit can choose to either loss one strength point, or retreat one square. For my game, the unit retreats, unless it can't retreat. At that point they lose the SP. A nice simple fix to having built in automatic retreats.   I then made a mistake that affected the trail run. I chose the armies and scenarios based on Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargame. The armies were fine, however, the scenario chosen was #3, which was a river crossing where the goal is to seize two bridges. This led to a game where the armies were bottlenecked into two areas, and the game bogged down. That, along with me referring to the rulebook constantly, slowed the game to a crawl. I should have just used an open terrain field to learn the basics of the rules.

The Turks are on the left, the Arabs on the right.

The figures on the white horses on the baselines were the "Headquarters" that the other side must capture.

The Turks have dropped below 50%, ending the battle. 

In my proposed campaign rules, the Turks would deploy on the squares behind the blue  chalk line.  As can be seen , there is no room for the Turks to really do any maneuvering.  Back to the drawing board! 

Portable Wargame. British army on the top; Boers on the bottom. This game gave me a chance to use my newly acquired Peter Laing Victorian Parade figures.

Both armies advances.

Artillery fire pushes one Boer unit back. At first I rolled for initiative, then realized that I forgot that artillery fire is supposed to take place before movement. Also, this was a solo game. However, I didn't use the solo rules that are mentioned in Portable Wargames.  I really wanted to get a feel for the rules. Both sides got to move all units each turn.

As can be seen from the above photos, the games was a back and forth game. For me the game bogged down.  I think the game would have been more enjoyable with an open field to allow more maneuver, at least until I get the rules down pat. Of course, I only read the rules once (I try to read them three times before playing) proving that even simple rules aren't so simple!