Historical Battles - Portable Wargaming Style

No prizes for guessing what this picture is from!

It occurred to me this morning, whilst browsing idly across the net and other blogs, that all of the games I have fought this year in the man cave have been based around hypothetical actions. They have all been great fun to fight for various reasons and for the most part have 'felt' like that which they are supposed to be representing. This can be attributed to a variety of factors - the quality of the rules, the fertile imagination of the chap running the game (?) - very important when using blocks - or the feedback from those that have read the after action report. One thing I have yet to do though, is to tackle a refight of an actual historical battle. I have run a couple of Battle Cry scenarios to be sure but in all three cases the donkey work of translating a battle into a game ad already been done.

Right then....

I have decided to tackle a historical battle before the end of the year using the Big Battle Portable Wargame as the rules of choice. I am undecided as to which one or even which war at this point and so will open this up to the readers of this blog to decide. The first stage will be to pick the war in question and then to find a suitable action to refight and the only restriction is the fact that I do not at present have any desert terrain to speak of.

The wars I am considering are as follows:

• The Russo Turkish War 1877
• 2nd or 3rd Afghan War
• The Zulu War
• The Balkan War 1912
• August 1914 -Western Front

I have managed (after prompting from Peter Douglas - many thanks old chap!) to set up a poll so that readers can vote for their particular favourite. The plan is to have the war decided upon over the course of the next couple of days (with the result announced on Tuesday) and then I can start the deep dive research into the battle I want to fight. I will make the battle the big finish for the year and will of course post the development process leading up to the battle itself.

I plan to get some other games in before the end of the year but this one will be the grand finale. Essentially then, you decide the war, I pick a battle and then the refight will provide my end of year entertainment!