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Having recently purchased three of the Portable Wargame books, I thought long and hard about the playing area I would use for the game.
I considered squares vs hexes, and if I should have a plain playing area and then place scenery in the squares/hexes, or if I will buy enough bases to make modular tiles.
In the end I chose 8cm squares made from MDF, and ordered enough to have an 8 x 9 square playing area and extras to allow for different scenery types to be build on top of a number of the tiles.
I chose 8 cm squares, as this would allow for me to use 6mm, 10mm and 15mm armies, with the 6mm and 10mm being the main focus.
I intend to make a mix of fields, forests, hills, roads, rivers and towns/cities on the tiles, with some being made for WW1, and thus shell holes, trenches and other iconic WW1 scenery upon them.
Before I go full tilt at the project, I will do a bit of research on 3mm and 6mm scenery items such as bridges and buildings. I am thinking of using 3mm buildings to represent towns and cities for my 6mm Napoleonic games, and maybe 6mm Ruins for my WW1 10mm games.
Game settings I intend to play using the Portable Wargame rules are: Napoleonic Division level games, WW1 and the Boer War.
I invite interested readers of this post to follow my progress, to post positive replies and suggestions/helpful tips and thus keep me moving forward.
And if somewhere along the way someone borrows an idea of something I have done, then glad to have been helpful to the wargaming community.
Yes, I did consider a frame… but have no idea how to make it 😁 I did think makebe velcro dots on the rear to hold it in place on some material.
I think maybe buy a large picture frame and then get tiles cut that would fit.
No good after the deed though.Like this with a load of 10 x 10’s.
As for a frame – how about a simple picture frame? These can be made to any size and can be found cheap on eBay last time I looked (search bespoke picture frame). I’ve also used a dry-wipe board and a pin board BUT had these before buying the tiles! No reason you could not add a small edge to pad out the board if they do not fit exactly. Of the three, the dry wipe board was the strongest as the pin boards here seem to have cardboard backing now.
Dang, only just read this.
Sorry Andrew.
Are you raising up the general ground area to allow you to sink rivers / ponds / trenches etc down or accepting river etc sit on top of the ground?
Sunk in / down:
Raised up / sat on top:
Update: I have painted the majority of the squares and have started flocking some of them.
Here is a sneak preview of the work done so far:
I am working on hills and forests for the table, and as previously mentioned, once my 3mm scale buildings and bridges arrive, I will start making river and town tiles for the game.
The figures on the table are 6mm 3d printed Napoleonic British that I have as samples.
My French and British Division+ should be arriving on Tuesday or Wednesday.
My latest update:
I have flocked all of the basic squares, made the roads, some modular hills and a test forest square.
I am very keen to get the bridges and houses I have ordered, so that I can make river and towns squares, but that could be some weeks off now.
Here are some photos of the work completed so far:
I intend to make some more forest tiles and more hills. I have made extra road and field sections to allow for greater variation in the playing area, and I will be making some hedges to boarder some of the tiles. I will also find a different colour flock to help make some crop fields.
My 6mm Napoleonics should arrive today or tomorrow, which will give me something to do whilst waiting for the bridges and buildings to arrive.
Very nice. How did you make the forest? I’ve not seen anything like than and the closest I can think of is flocking a polystyrene ball but that would be more regular I think…
I am using some 1.5cm pompoms that I found in a random store near where I live.
They are a pain to glue together; I had to glue them in small batches and push weighted objects up against them to keep them in place whilst the glue dried.
I haven’t been glueing them directly on to the squares as I wanted to keep the mess down when painting and flocking the pompoms and the squares, but might give it a try if it will be faster and easier to manage.
I also contemplated adding trunks to the pompoms, but that seemed like a very large amount of work for somethings that is abstract.
Well, a bitter sweet update. My 6mm Napoleonics arrived today.
The sweet part: They are lovely 3d printed miniatures.
The bitter part: the order wasn’t 100% correct (missing some French Infantry and Line Lancers), and the seller has decided not to sell them anymore as his printers are busy printing out other items, thus I can no longer complete my armies, nor get the figures from the collection that were not listed on the web site yet.
Feeling absolutely gutted by this. I will be able to play smaller Brigade level games with what I have, but really wanted to have a complete French and British Infantry Division, with two Cavalry brigades to go along with them.
I will make the best out of the situation and scale down to Brigade level games as mentioned, but unless I can someone selling 3d prints of the same range, I can shelve my long term goal of adding Russians and Dutch to the collection for 1814 & 1815 campaigns.
Photos attached is of a historical strength French Brigade with a battery, two cavalry regiments and brigade command (seen on the right side) and a historical strength British Brigade with a battery, two cavalry regiments and the brigade command.
Now to order bases for the figures, and whilst waiting for those to arrive, I can begin painting at a very basic level.
I finally cracked the design problems I was having with my trenches for the portable wargame, with the initial tiles shown in the image below.
I intend to make one tile with an opening at the back for the start of a communication trench, and the tiles in front of the trenches will have a small section which will slope downward and have barbed wire in front of that section… at least that is the plan.
I spent the morning making some test pieces for the WW1 board, making some bombed out trees, some bombed out trees with a shell crater, and some shell craters:
My Brigade Models bridges and churches arrived today, and I am very happy with the bridges, as they are match the size of the roads, so making rivers will be easy.
I kept some of the squares aside to make the rivers, and now the bridges have arrived, I will commence making river sections whilst waiting for the second order of squares to arrive.
I will wait for the 3mm village buildings to arrive before using the churches on any of the tiles, but in the meantime, here is what they look like:
A book on the Boer war called “Wargaming in History: The second Boer war: that I ordered also arrived, so I hope to place an order for some 10mm Pendraken Boer War miniatures soon.
I will probably make completely new squares for the Boer War, as I will want a different colour grass for the tiles, and (if I can find or amazing myself and make) some trees like would be found in South Africa, as well as more hilly terrain to suit the setting.
A few thing arrived in the mail these last two days:
Bases for the 6mm Napoleonics, and some contrast paints to help with painting them (it will take a while to paint the 6mm figures, as my eyes don’t last long trying to paint them), 3mm buildings to make a town base for the scenery, as well as some 6mm ruins to use with the WW1 game.
A heap more 8cm squares also arrived, including some rectangles so that I can offset the squares to change the grid pattern. The additional squares will allow me to make rivers, swamps and other terrain features for that layout.
I also purchased some different coloured flocks to allow for different types of scenery, such as Veldt and Sandy areas.
I also purchased “The Second Portable Wargame Compendium”, as I wanted the skirmish rules within, and was very pleasantly surprised to see a section of making tiles for the portable wargame that is exactly like I have been making my own. Great minds think alike!
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