"Building Blocks": micro-blocks for One Hour Wargames

Neil Thomas clearly stated his design goals for “One Hour Wargames” right in the book’s subtitle: “Practical Tabletop Battles for Those with Limited Time and Space”. I think the basic idea was to start from the simplest and most intuitive miniature wargaming mechanisms, then keep chiseling stuff away until a quintessential core was left. The result is a set of scenarios, rules and army lists which still yields tactically rich, interesting gameplay but is much less taxing than usual in terms of time, space, budget, and mnemonic demands.

But there’s one aspect of Thomas’ book I really can’t understand: the recurring insistence on the fact that you need a 3’x3’ board, terrain and miniature armies to play the game at all. That still sounds a rather high entry fee for a complete novice just to try the rules. Moreover, OHW’s suggested board and unit size is a lot larger than what literally thousands of DBA players across the globe use with 15mm miniatures since decades (with twice the number of units, by the way). A much more versatile and beginner-friendly approach would have been to simply generalize board size and unit frontage to 36x36 and 4-6 “length units” respectively, then let players choose the real-world unit of measure most fitting the physical representation they might choose. For example, my very first (disastrous) OHW playtest featured 5cm x 1cm wooden blocks for units, and a 36cm x 36cm featureless board. Same gameplay as the original - in a considerably more practical package!

Through successive iterations, I’ve discovered that playing on even smaller spaces is perfectly feasible. But since free movement and measuring can become a bit fiddly past a certain point, I’ve switched to hexes to regulate ranges and movement – otherwise still playing the rules-as-written in every respect. In that way, I can fit the scenario map, a unit roster and a turn track into a single A4 page! For units, I’m using my trusty ‘microblock’ approach. For a variety of reasons, I like to use thin (5mm x 5mm) square section rods cut to various size for depicting units in kriegsspiel-style games in most eras (instead of the most common thicker blocks), but that’s a story for another day. For the A4-sized OHW experiment, I’ve just painted several 30mm-long blocks in suitably stately red and blue hues, then used a glue stick to apply 28mm x 3mm labels with generic military symbols and a numerical unit ID. I’ve considered covering everything in mod-podge to increase block/label durability, but that proved to be unnecessary so far.

...Aren’t they’re cute?

With this approach, I just need to print one A4 pdf file instead of building/assembling/laying terrain on a 3’x’3 board; and building a grand total of 20 small wooden blocks instead of collecting, painting, and basing two armies worth of troops. The only risk is that ‘one-hour’ wargaming might turn into something more like ’20 minutes’ wargaming. I’m willing to take the risk.

I’ve only assembled Horse & Musket-themed microblocks so far – I have different plans for other eras with respect to block/label aesthetics. After all, I only need ten blocks per side to cover all combinations of troops in OHW, so I can afford to put at least some work into them!

The first A4-OHW prototype. Now take that, “limited time and space”!!!

 

Next time, I’ll start explaining how I organized my (ongoing) OHW playtest games.