On Wednesday I carefully rested for most of the day in order to conserve my energy so that I could set up and take part in a battle using the Portable Ancient Wargame rules from DEVELOPING THE PORTABLE WARGAME. My strategy worked, and I had a very enjoyable evening introducing my opponent (Richard) and an interested bystander (Ian) to the joys of THE PORTABLE WARGAME system.

I provided the terrain and Richard provided the figures … and it turned out that although he had been assembling his collection for some years, he had not had the opportunity to fight a wargame with them. The terrain looked like this:

I chose to field a Spartan army …

The right of the Spartan army. It comprised a unit of slingers and two units of Helot spearmen.

The center of the Spartan army. It comprised eight units of Hoplites.

The left of the Spartan army. It comprised a unit of slingers and two units of Helot spearmen.

… and my opponent chose the Athenians. (He even provided a suitably ruined temple for Athena to occupy and oversee her city-state’s army.)

The Athenian army.

Two units of Athenian Hoplites.

Two more units of Athenian Hoplites.

The Athenians took the offensive …

… and after both sides used their light troops to try to disrupt their opponent’s Hoplites …

… the battle soon became a trial of strength between the rival bodies of Hoplites.

It was a hard fought battle … but the Athenians eventually prevailed and the Spartans withdrew after losing their slingers and Helot spearmen in order to preserve their elite Hoplites.

The battle took just under an hour to fight, and once it was over we reset the forces and re-fought the battle twice more, firstly using the ‚two hits = unit destroyed‘ rule and ‚two hits plus hit effect‘ rule. The Athenians won both battles, and they even managed to kill the Spartan commander during the last battle.

By the end of the evening Richard and Ian were both enthusiastic converts to the whole PORTABLE WARGAME concept … and I hope to be able to give them a chance to try the PORTABLE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME rules soon.