Last Wednesday I was asked if I could stage a Portable Ancients Wargame at the Dice of the Hill club on the following Wednesday (i.e. today). The request was from the member of staff who is usually on duty on Wednesday evenings and who is – it turns out – both a railway modeller and a wargamer. He has an extensive collection of mainly 28mm Napoleonics and Ancients and as he has read DEVELOPING THE PORTABLE WARGAME, he would like to tryout the Ancients rules from the book.

After I had agreed, I suddenly realised on Sunday that all my terrain was in storage in Dartford and that I would have to visit the storage unit to collect everything that I need. Unfortunately, the virus I have been suffering from made that rather difficult, and rather than disappoint my opponent, I had to come up with an alternative fairly quickly.

My first thought was to get hold of a felt cloth that I could make up with the necessary grid of 10cm x 10cm squares, but none of the suppliers I looked at could fulfill an order in less than a week. Instead, I ordered a pack of 30cm x 30cm 6mm-thick cork tiles from Amazon …

… and they were delivered on Monday. I have now marked the corners of the grid squares with a small crosses drawn using a red Sharpey pen, and have enough cork tiles to set up a 9 x 9 grid of 10cm x 10cm squares … and still have a spare cork tile!

I also needed some hills, and I made these by trimming some IKEA cork pot stands to shape.

I now have a set of portable terrain that I can take to the club this evening, and assuming that I am well enough to go, I hope to be able to take some photographs and share them on my blog later this week.