Everyone has heard of TV Dinners, where a meal is eaten in a comfy chair in front of the television. Well TV Wargames are the same, wargames playing in a comfortable chair in front of the TV. By their nature they are also portable, and can be taken on holiday and played whilst away from home! For obvious reasons this is one area of wargaming where soloists only need apply!
I have been searching for a portable wargaming format ever since I started caravanning some six years ago. I have tried many rule sets, after I had found that the widest "tabletop" I could cope with on my knee was 600 mm (24 inches) wide, but preferably 480 mm or so, if the board was to be square or rectangular.
If a "standard" wargaming table exists, I suppose that it must be the 4 feet by 6 feet area used in many competition games. I observed that 4 feet is 48 inches. If 480 mm or 48 cm is the widest board I could have then I could use any rule set that measured things in imperial measurements (inches) and convert all scales and distances to centimetres. I would then need a board 48 cm by 72 cm.
This was easily within the possibilities for TV Wargaming. This scale reduction was by 2.5 times (1 inch is 2.54 cm approx.) therefore the figure scale would also need reducing by 2.5 times. 25 mm figures would be replaced by 10 mm figures and 15 mm figures by 6 mm. 1/300th gamers using 6 mm scales would need to go down to 2 mm, even though at 3 times, this was more than the 2.5 reduction in scale, it would achieve almost the same effect. However, a board balanced on ones' knees is not the most stable of platforms on which to deploy your troops.
My first solution was to have a sheet steel plate made up at my local ferrous metal suppliers (find your nearest in the business section of the telephone book), cut to the required 48 cm by 72 cm. When asked what thickness of steel I required I left the choice to the supplier, saying only that it must be rigid enough to support its own weight when cut to size. I painted one side with green enamel paint and the other with blue (for sea & air battles).
The troops were then mounted according to the chosen rule set on thick card bases, and self-adhesive magnetic strip added to the underside of the base. This material is available in the UK from a firm called Magnetic Displays in Shrewsbury, see their adverts in the glossy magazines. The bases were painted with the same green enamel paint as the baseboard, enabling the bases to "disappear" into the surface. Note that flocking the bases, or any terrain items, is NOT an option, not if you want to play in the living room it isn't! The magnetic strips allowed the troops to adhere to the steel baseboard whilst the knees jiggled about, but could be easily moved when the troops came to undertake movement. The magnetic bases had a useful side effect in that the troops could be safely stored in tin pencil cases, where the magnets would adhere to the case, and prevent damage to the figures in transit. Vertical terrain such as trees, houses, bridges etc. were similarly mounted on adhesive magnetic tape, and adhered to the steel baseboard during use. Horizontal terrain, such as roads, rivers, marsh, lake etc. could not be mounted this way as the magnetic strip on the terrain repelled the magnetic strip on any troop who passed over the terrain.
This type of terrain was made from tin sheet collected from the large tins of coffee, and cut up (after the tin opener had removed the ends) with a cheap pair of tin snips. The edges were filed to avoid cut fingers, and the terrain item painted accordingly, remembering to make the edges the same green enamel colour as the baseboard. The tin sheet was sufficiently magnetic for the troops to stick to, but still could not be mounted to the baseboard with its own magnetic strip. The answer was to use Blutack, a reusable adhesive gum, this held the road etc. in place, whilst the troops moved above it. The remaining terrain item required was hills. These were made from self-adhesive cork tiles. Steel paper (obtained from the same source as the magnetic strips) was affixed to the adhesive side, the hill cut to shape, and magnetic strips fixed to the original facing side. The whole was painted in the same green enamel paint. This consistent use of exactly the same colour for base board, terrain edges, hills and troop bases gave the whole thing a very unified, coherent feel, very much like the old Brittain's lead toy soldiers, and was very pleasing to the eye, and to the wife, who didn't have any "mess" to clear up after a game.
This proved a useful means of TV wargaming until the whole kit and caboodle was lost in a house fire! Even so, it did not double as a portable wargaming design as the terrain and troops in their tin cases were somewhat bulky to take away on holiday. The whole system also fell down when used as a TV wargame, because I was using "normal" rules, most notably the WRG 1685 to 1865 set. These rules were too complex for a TV wargame where you were constantly interrupted by the happenings on the TV or by the conversation of anyone else in the room. (Am I antisocial here or what!). I needed a simpler set of rules, and De Bellis Antiquatis (DBA) came to my rescue. These rules are about as simple as you can get without ceasing to play a wargame. They could withstand being used in competition with a TV, radio or other distractions. They also had the added attraction of needing only a 2 foot square area to play on for 15 mm or smaller figures. Finally they are quick to play to a finish, meaning that a game is only occasionally left uncompleted between playing sessions.
If you use, or are considering using the DBA rules and have a computer attached to the Internet, then I can not recommend the DBA Resource Web Page (http://www.fanaticus.jiffynet.net/DBA) highly enough. As you will see from the remainder of this article this has been of tremendous use to me in finding my ideal TV Wargame. This web site is run by a DBA enthusiast for other enthusiasts. It contains discussion pieces, rules clarifications, rule variants, tactical advice on using each troop type available in DBA, scenario ideas, recreations of famous ancient and medieval battles, campaign ideas, figure, basing and painting tips and much, much more. (A bit like Lone Warrior really except it is dedicated to DBA, not solo wargaming, although it does contain a solo wargaming engine for automating your DBA opponent that really works!!!)
Baseboard
The 24 inches wide baseboard I had already found to be a bit unwieldy if used in a square or rectangular baseboard. However Nic BIrt came to my assistance here with his article in Lone Warrior 129. Where he discussed his ideas for hexagon terrain boards. This solved my problem of the baseboard being too big to fit comfortably on the lap, and being too un-rigid and bending in use. I experimented with this idea using artists mounting board (available in artists, craft and good stationery shops).
I found that a hexagon with a 350 mm hex side dimension just fitted onto one sheet of mounting board, leaving some off-cuts that I used up later. The board was nearly rigid enough to use on its own, but if you have two boards, one green and one blue (for sea and air games remember?) the two boards can be fixed to each other with the plastic slides sold in stationery shops for clipping A4 paper together along their long sides. The mounting board should be covered with self-adhesive transparent plastic, usually sold for protecting book covers and the like. This increased the life expectancy of the board and to my mind increases the aesthetic quality of the board to match the terrain and troops, as I will explain shortly.
Terrain
This should be flat cardboard, covered in the sticky backed plastic and fixed to the baseboard during the game with Blutack. It can be as simple as plain coloured card, two shades of brown for hills (shallow and steep), two shades of green for woods (bad-going and impassable), blue for lakes and rivers, grey/brown for roads etc. Marsh is green with blue patches, built up areas are beige with black squares of houses and bad going is beige with green marks on it. If you are more artistic you can achieve a better visual appeal with painted terrain.
However, if like me you have difficulty painting a wall, then a computer with a scanner attached can come to your assistance here. Scan in to your computer any realistic looking terrain from any board games you might have access to, skirmish games are the best type for this purpose. Then cover up the gridlines with cut & pasted sections of the terrain. Shape the final article to suit your idea of how the item should look with the eraser tool of any graphics program (I used Windows Paint) and print the result onto to 6 inch by 4 inch index cards. The resulting print out must be covered with plastic especially if you use an ink jet printer, as the results are not very colour fast otherwise.
The DBA Resource Web Site mentioned above included a random terrain generator, which is useful for solo gaming and/or campaign games. This uses a pack of cards to determine the non-linear terrain placement. I have adapted this to fit the hexagonal baseboard by using one playing card per hex side and one for the middle of the board. If you don't have access to the Internet, I am sure you could devise your own random terrain placement rules. If you use the random terrain generator, only the black suits generate terrain, so you need twice as many items of terrain as those mentioned under each card, that is 2 lakes, 4 built-up areas, 6 open woods, 2 dense woods, 4 shallow hills, 2 steep hills, 4 marsh and 4 rough ground pieces. You will also need enough road and river pieces to make two rivers and three roads. I use two dice to give me the entry and exit hex sides for each road or river.
Troops
This is the clever bit. Also on the DBA Resource Web site is a page of Universal DBA Elements (http://www.fanaticus.jiffynet.net/DBA/Universal). These are counters pre-drawn of all the various DBA troop types (except camp followers) to 15mm scale. Copy these to your computer and print out two copies of each of the four sheets onto coloured paper. I used red and blue typists copy paper, available from good stationery shops. This gives you the graphical representation of any two DBA armies from the 180 different armies listed in the rules, and all their variants. The playing counters are made by cutting out rectangles of the off cuts of mounting board left over from making the baseboard, in the DBA 15mm base sizes, and sticking a blue counter to one side and a red counter to the other. Finally cover the counters with the ubiquitous sticky backed plastic. The idea of having counters on both sides is so that when looking for a counter you do not have to turn over every counter to discover what is on the other side, as you will be putting identical troop types on each side of the counter.
Thus, if you see a red cavalry unit you know that it will be a blue cavalry unit on the other side. Similarly, a blue spear unit will be a red spear unit on the other side. Whilst doing this pairing up be careful to ensure that the respective blue and red general elements are not mounted on the opposite sides of the SAME counter, leaving you with no general for one side, if both armies have generals of the same troop type. You now have the armies to play on your TV wargaming board. They can, like the terrain, be attached to the board with Blutack, so that if the game needs to be suspended half way through it can be stored vertically in any convenient position. I keep my troops in the tin pencil cases I used to use for 6mm troops, they fit into just three tins. The troops, three dice, a pack of playing cards, the terrain pieces, a pack of Blutack and the DBA rules all fit into a satchel, with room to spare for my campaign rules and notes.
Playing Aids
I recommend that you make an additional element style counter with plain red and blue paper on each side. Then if the game needs to be suspended in mid-flow, you can simply fix the marker on the table as if it were a troop counter with the colour uppermost of the side whose turn it is! You should then never forget whose turn it is in-between stopping and restarting a game. I also recommend the construction of a card ruler, measured off in 100 metre distances and covered with plastic. This can be stuck to the board with Blutack when not in use, and is easier to use than a normal ruler and conversion chart or scale.
Summary
With baseboard, terrain, troops and rules you too can now play TV Wargames. You will notice that no glue, paint or flock comes anywhere near the living room carpet and furnishings, making life with your partner or parents much easier. The whole system is encased in plastic, which makes cleaning it possible with a damp cloth or sponge. With this system of gaming available to me I no longer have to find a spare three or four hours to play a game, nor do I have to miss a favourite TV program, nor do I get moans from my wife on the lines of "I never see you....".
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