Ok, so it's Sunday night and my daughter and I spent an hour in our garage (oft referred to by my bemused wife as..."daddy's game storage room"...) and turned up some interesting finds. It seems several years ago I had contemplated a "Really Tiny Wargame" using an old portable chessboard....I had painted over the chessboard using "green chalkboard spraypaint" and then for lack of figures and rules...had stashed the board away for a future inspiration. Fast forward to this afternoon and we opened an old box and what was sitting on top but the little green 7" by 7" chessboard! Now immediately my synapses started firing and thoughts of how cool it would be to have a Really Portable Wargame using Bob's rules. So this evening I marked off a 7/8" grid, 8 squares by 8 squares, and dug out some of my 6mm Adlers and picked out 2 armies of 12 elements and set up the ultimate tiny wargame!
The battle is Quatre Bras, I think referred to in history as the "Battle on a Postage Stamp"...I thought it appropriate that this super small sized game would model one of the great but really small Napoleonic battles of the war.
The "table is a 7 x 7...inches that is...! The Adler 6mm figures are just the ticket to pull it off, and the "Portable Wargame Rules" will be the rules of choice for this one. It may be a stretch...but it will hopefully be a fun experiment.
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| View from the French side towards Gemioncourt Farm...Quatre Bras off in the distance. |
I have a few resin cast 6mm houses, but houses from a Monopoly game would work as well. I'm thinking of making wooded square bases to place on the grid instead of bits of clump foliage.
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| A 7" by 7" wargame |
I'm contemplating how to make hills...and streams at such a small scale...
The squares are only 7/8" so not much room for terrain, but still, it looks like a wargame.
8 comments:
I want one, too! That looks fantastic.
i want to see a report on how your game went.
Good heavens - is that really and truly a 7"x7" board. As I looked at the pics (before reading the text) I was thinking 2"x2" square and 15mm - maybe 25mm - figures. I must say the reality is very impressive!
At home I have a old chessboard that tends to see service as a workbench or photo studio, the reverse side being green felt or similar. The Chessboard squares are 58mm on a side - just 2mm too small to field 2x8 or 3x6-per rank infantry, and 1x3- per rank horse. Something for me to thimk about...
Cheers,
Ion
Very ingenious indeed!
A wonderful and inspirational find!
I had to look at the images several times to convince myself that these were not 15mm (or even25/28mm) figures!
You have taken the PORTABLE WARGAME concept to an even more portable level than I thought was possible. I love the green chalkboard surface, especially as it will allow you to draw rivers and roads on ... if you want to.
A marvellous and serendipitous find that shows that you should NEVER throw things away!
All the best,
Bob
Inspiring pictures! A simple, stylised yet very appealing display that makes me want to construct one myself - though I find 6mm too much of a strain these days, so will probably opt for a slightly larger board and 10mm figures.
Great stuff, most inventive and creative!
I have a dream of one day doing a wargame on one of those trays on an aeroplane, using 2 mm figures.
Rules????
Fantastic!!!👍
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