Battle of Five Armies Portable Wargame

     I have tried  in the last couple of months to get a project off the ground, without success.  A couple of weeks ago I brought out "The Battle of Five Armies" from Games Workshop from 2005. The game uses Warmaster rules with 10mm figures. I always liked the look of the Warmaster units, but couldn't get into the rules.

   Fast forward 18 years. On my job I do a lot of driving. I will play YouTube videos (no I don't  watch them) while driving. For two weeks I listened to one poster explain the rules, different armies, and battle reports. One thing about the battle reports was the fact that 4 turns could take up to over 2 hours of play. As time is limited, that would not work for me. I then went on my Kindle and brought up my copy of "The Portable  Wargame  Compendium". In it it has rules rules for " Swords, Sorcery and Squares: A fantasy variant of the Portable  Wargame " by Justin Barrett. I thought these rules could work with the BoFA game pieces. For a trial  game I ended up using Bob Cordreys' Portable Wargame Ancients  rules. 

   My wife went out with one of her nieces  for a couple of hours. I decided to use one base of figures for each unit, as the board wasn't large enough  for  multiple bases. The game at first was going well, but then I started fumbling with the dice that marked the unit's SP. Then the wife came in and started to talk about her night, distracting me from the game. The game fizzled  out, but has me thinking of using individual  figures  to represent SPs. 

The armies deployed. The goblins on the left, the humans on the right.

The goblins slowly forced the humans back.

The end. The goblins defeated the humans, destroying most of the human units. In the end I screwed up with the break points and the game should  have ended sooner.

New Portable Wargame Board

    Like many wargamers, I am constantly looking for new ways to play games. With the loss of my "library",  space to wargame is limited. Having portable wargames is a good answer to gamers with limited room to game.

   One idea that intrigued me was using  magnetic playing pieces on a board mounted on a wall. In the past I've read of naval wargames being played on such a board, and battles even being played on refrigerator doors.

   Recently, I saw travel games with magnetic playing pieces. I was going to buy a travel chess set, but then came across another game, "Orthello", which has a green board squared off with 8X8 squares. At work I came across thin magnetic strips with words printed on one side, which had been discarded. They make idea stands for smaller figures. I haven't decided which figures to mount on them, although 10mm Scruby figures are light enough that they stay on the board when tipped upside down. I am planning to work on two small armies for the board. Such a setup can be used on my laptop desk while watching TV with the wife.

10mm Scruby's on the playing board.

The field of battle. The board folds in half with storage underneath for playing pieces and dice.