Playing the 3x3 Portable Wargame

 Thanks to Maudlin Jack Tar, I came across the 3x3 Portable Wargame that’s been taking the blogosphere by storm. Mark Cordone has offered invaluable suggestions and advice in the comments section here, so when I heard that it was none other than he who came up with the 3x3 battle system, I knew I had to try it. I used Bob Cordery’s rules that he posted, and adjusted them to a medieval setting for my 15mm Feudals.

The first turn.

I treated the archer units as Artillery, and then gave the Knights 3SP instead of 2 like everybody else. I designated a knight on either side to be the general, and I was off!

The goal: Capture and hold the tower in the middle of the battlefield. I didn’t set a turn limit for holding the tower, so I just arbitrarily decided when failure came. My mistake?

Artillery is really well balanced. There are very few modifiers to make artillery units hit, but when they do, they hit an entire grid square. It’s so simple. Seen above is the Longbow (bottom left) inflicting damage on all 3 Crossbows (top left).

A side view after the three crossbows had been slain and the mounted general moved up to support the lone spear who’d been holding the tower almost the entire game.

Battle and bad camera angles as the knight units reconquer the tower and a bitter stalemate of generals and high close-combat rolls ensues.

After several turns, it became clear that the close combat for the tower was not going to be won any time soon, and so I counted it as a loss for the force at the top of the field (seen here at the right). They lost most of their units, and had taken quite the beating.

I probably didn’t play the whole thing right, but this was crazy fun. I’m definitely going to do it again, definitely with my 17th century figures, and I think I’m going to buy a copy of the actual Portable Wargame for myself. I might even be able to convince Colleen to play this with me! Maybe…