Q&A with Bob Cordery about The Portable Wargame

Dear Robert Cordery,

I'm interested in "The Portable Wargame" and have a few questions about it.

I would like to play the game using hexagons.
How many hexagons do I need to play the game?

Karl,

The rules are written for square and hex grids, and I suggest a minimum of 8 x 8 squares or 9 x 8 hexes. You can use a larger grid, and I’ve fought games with a 6 x 9 hexed grid, but 8 x 8/9 x 8 are what the rules were originally written for.

>> And how many figures do you need on each side?

Sides are made up of units (aka bases), and most players mount their figures on multi figure bases ... so there is no pre-set number of figures. I recommend each player has 10 to 12 unit/bases. (Some players use blocks of wood for units.)

>> To play ancient battles do I need the book "Developing The Portable Wargame" or are the main rules sufficient?

To play Ancient battles, then I’d recommend the rules in DTPW. You don’t need the first book in the series to fight wargames, but you might find it useful to read TPW at some point.

>> It would probably be easy to transfer DBA army lists to your game, wouldn't it?

The DBA armies should work with the PW Ancient rules.

>> What is the difference between "The Portable Colonial Wargame" and "When Empires Clash!"?

WHEN EMPIRES CLASH! is a forerunner of TPCW, but is a different set of rules with different mechanisms. That said, the Army Lists in WEC! are useable with the PW rules.

>> Is your book "The Portable Colonial Wargame" also a standalone game?

All my books are stand alone, although quite a few people have bought all of them and ‘mix and match’ from them to meet their particular requirements. For example, I know someone who uses the basic 19th century rules for PW with the naval rules from Gridded Naval Wargames and the campaign rules from PCW.

>> I thought "The Portable Wargame" was your core rulebook and the other books were supplements.

Does "The Portable Wargame" have a historical theme as well or is it a generic wargame?

The PW book was originally intended to be a ‘one off’, and contained a brief history of gridded wargames and several explanatory chapters about the different types of grids available, lines of sight, basing models, solo play etc. There were also two sets of basis rules, one for the 19th century and one for the early/mid 20th century.

The PW rules are generic BUT are designed so that the mechanisms can be adapted for specific historical periods or to meet individual players’ requirements. The DPW shows this as it contains Ancient rules, more detailed mid 20th century, and Air Combat rules. It also has chapters about different ways the rules can be adapted, an example of a mini-campaign, and some examples of Army Lists (including balanced and unbalanced forces).

PCW has two sets of rules for those who want quick games with a few figures and longer games with more figures, a more developed campaign system, and a terrain generator.

PNW has four sets of rules, one that is really very basic and three for different levels of command (brigade, divisional, and corps-level battles). It also looks a different types of card-driven move mechanisms, as well as unit and commander grading.

>> Is it possible to play ancient naval battles with "Gridded Naval Wargames“?

The GNW rules are designed to be used with steam-powered, iron & steel warships BUT I know that several players have adapted them for earlier periods, including ancient naval warfare where ramming was the main method of combat.

I hope that this has been helpful.

All the best,

Bob

>> Thanks a lot. This has been very helpful.
All the best,
Karl

PS
I got your books The Portable Wargame, Developing the Portable Wargame and The Portable Colonial Wargame on Lulu.

I'm looking forward to reading them and trying out your game.

Foam Board Hexagons

I'm currently working on something quite boring. I have two boxes, filled with 150 hexagons cut out of foam board.

They are large enough to put several 28 mm miniatures on them. I want to use the hexagons to play Commands & Colors and to make my own strategy game.

Therefore I'm glueing colored paper onto them. This is a complicated technique which takes a lot of time.

The other day I told Krüger: "Krüger, I started to work on the hexagons again." He said: "After a couple of years, some projects come to a point where you just need to give up."

Here in Berlin, where I live, late autumn is cold and dark and many of my friends become gloomy and loose their energy.

The Waltrop Campaign / Day 3 / HotT Battle Report

The Greeks under the command of general Heracleides and officer Fibos left their camp to explore the beach in hexagon 23. There they encountered a small group of Goblins. Krüger and I played out the battle that ensued using the ruleset Hordes of the Things. I was the defender, Krüger the attacker. I placed four pieces of rough terrain with bushes and some stones to depict the beach.

My army consisted of these elements:

Spear General, 5 Spears, 4 Shooters, 2 Riders

Krüger played this army:

Warband General, 4 Warbands, 1 Hero, 3 Riders, 2 Beasts

I deployed my phalanx in the center, 3 shooters on the right side and 2 riders on the left side. Krüger placed his warbands and hero opposite to my phalanx, his beasts opposite to my shooters and his riders opposite to my riders.

My strategy, if you can call this a strategy, was to send my riders and a shooter forward on my left flank and wait with the rest of my army.

Thus I lost 2 riders and a shooter.

On the other flank I was able to shoot down Krüger's beasts, combining the attacks of my 3 shooters. And one of Krüger's riders was pushed back over the board edge. In the center the battle wavered back and forth - I lost 2 spears, Krüger lost a warband - until 2 of my spears killed Krüger's hero.

The Greeks won the game and were able to occupy hexagon 23.

This is how our campaign map looks like now. Next turn Krüger's orks will start moving from one of their villages in the jungle.

Campaign Rules

Here are some ideas for a narrative map-based campaign I will start with Krüger and Sven this week. It's a first draft. Comments are welcome.

We will use different rulesets like HotT and Warhammer to play out battles, maybe even GURPS for special scenarios.

I play ancient Greeks who just landed on the island of Waltrop. They start on hexagon 32. Sven plays Greeks who start on hexagon 61. Krüger plays Orcs. He will choose 5 hexagons in secret to place his villages. Until the Greeks find the Orc villages hidden in the jungle, they fight random encounters which could look like this:

random encounters beach

1 orcs

2-3 goblins

4-6 nothing

random encounters jungle

1 green creatures

2 orcs

3 goblins

4 cannibals wearing scary masks

5 field of magical green crystals or old temple

6 nothing

If the Greeks win a random encounter, they occupy the hexagon they fought in, otherwise they retreat.

After the first orc village has been discovered in the jungle, the Orcs will start to move on the campaign map the same way as the Greeks. Random encounters for Orcs could include other tribes of savage Orcs and Greek warbands. If Orcs and Greeks meet in a hexagon, they fight for it. The looser has to retreat.

How an army fights and which hexagons it occupies should have a relation to the composition of the army.

In the 4th edition of 40K there were good rules for upgrading units or characters that fought especially well.

In our case, switching between different rulesets might present some difficulties. HotT is much more abstract than Warhammer, and GURPS would be best to play out special missions for characters.

At the beginning, armies could have some restrictions. Orcs might need to own hills to field trolls and giants, for example, and Greeks might need a temple to field priests. We could allow players to build havens, temples, even cities, but then we need some kind of monetary system. Will players receive gold if they sack a village or camp? I need talk to Sven and Krüger about this.

What I'm Working on

A green creature.

A hill.

Hexagons.

Campaign Map

Here is a map I made for a campaign. It shows the northeastern coast of Waltrop. As you can see, I like old school hex maps.

Hexagons

As a child, my cousin used to play a lot of computer games. Once he played a WW2 tank game which used a hexagon map to depict terrain. After a couple of weeks, playing night and day, on his way to school he started to think of his own movement in terms of how many hexagons he could move forward each turn. At that point he stopped playing the game for a while. Maybe this got me interested in hexagons.

I'm currently working on a simple game which will have board game and tabletop elements. I want to use single based 28 mm miniatures and large hexagons. I have a basic idea how I want the rules to work, but instead of writing down the rules first and testing them, which would be the reasonable thing to do, I started to prepare game materials.

The first 49 hexagons. They are made from 10 mm thick Kapa board and have a side length of 80 mm.

20 arrows which I made out of Fimo, a polymer clay.

174 hexagons.