THE PORTABLE WARGAME WEBSITE

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Introduction
This website has been created to provide support for the PORTABLE WARGAMES rules. These were developed by Bob Cordery using ideas first proposed by Joseph Morschauser and are designed to be used with a playing surface that has been divided into a grid of squares or hexes.
The prototype PORTABLE WARGAME was made from an old wooden chessboard. The board was also the lid of a wooden box that had been used to store the chessmen when the game was not in use. This space proved ideal for storing the figures, dice, and dice cups required to play the first draft of the rules.

Although no longer used, this prototype has pride of place in Bob Cordery's wargames room.
The prototype proved the viability of the PORTABLE WARGAME concept, and the next stage in its development used a larger vinyl chessboard.

This had the advantage of having larger grid squares - which allowed more and/or larger figures to be placed in each square - as well as having the capability of being rolled up when not in use.

It was also possible to temporarily 'fix' terrain items to the chessboard using Copydex rubber glue.
The terrain used was made from thin cardboard (the river and the roads), pieces of cork floor tile that was cut to size and gently shaped (the hills), commercially available trees (ready0made trees from Essex Miniatures), and houses from a 'Village in a bag' set sold in various toy shops and online.

The figures used were very old Peter Laing 15mm-scale Austrians and Prussians from the range of nineteenth century figures that were on sale in the 1980s.
Having proved that the rules worked and produced a satisfactory wargame, the next stage in the development of the PORTABLE WARGAME saw a change of historical period (from Horse & Musket to Modern) ... and the introduction of an even larger grid.

The grid used was originally constructed for another game, but the size of the grid squares (4" x 4"/10cm x 10cm) allowed the use of 20mm-scale figures and vehicles.

The changes required to make the rules suitable for the later historical period were based upon ideas put forward by Joseph Morschauser ... and worked very well indeed.
Although the original rules had been written for a square grid, many wargamers own hexagonal wargames terrain, and the next development saw experiments using hexed terrain.

As Bob Cordery had a large quantity of reasonably portable Heroscape™ terrain available, the first battles using the hexed grid version of the rules utilised painted Heroscape™ terrain and the old Peter Laing 15mm-scale Austrians and Prussians.

These play-test battles proved that the rules would work - with minor modifications - with both squared and hexed grids.
Having reached the stage where the Portable Wargame seemed to be about as developed as it was likely to become, Bob Cordery moved on to other things ... for a while.

During this break in development a small group of enthusiasts were enjoying using the rules and eventually they prevailed upon Bob Cordery to resume the development of the Portable Wargame concept.

The first new versions of the rules included some much-needed changes that made it possible for Units to become degraded by combat rather than being totally destroyed as a result of a one-off fight with another Unit.

Players had also requested changes to the rules that allowed grid were large than 8 x 8 to be used, and from this was born the Big Board Portable Wargame.
The layout used for the Big Board Portable Wargame rules proved very popular, and in late 2012 Bob Cordery reformatted his existing MEMOIR OF BATTLE AT SEA rules so that they were compatible with them. He also renamed the rules and they became the PORTABLE NAVAL WARGAME rules.

Last updated on 22nd December 2012 © Robert (Bob) Cordery 2011