"Bob Wall Gridded Tournament Game " Topic

I recently came across an article in The Courier about a tournament war-game developed by Bob Wall and played at MFCA War-game Conventions in the late 1960's -early 70's.

The game is played on a 1 inch gridded map, 20 by 20, with stands of figures (Airfix in those days). the 1" stands had 2 infantry or cavalry and a gun with 2 crew. The game was played directly on the map, with no 3-D terrain.

I never met Bob Wall so wonder if he is still alive or if not, do any of this colleagues or anyone, know more about this early "portable" game or have pictures of it in action. I will put the rules on my blog after I scan them. I show a picture of the map here. I played the game once with members of the New England Warmers Association but remember little of how it went. I must have lost :)

Looks interesting. I'm sure the board could be expanded to fit larger bases but this seems a good size for portable gaming. Most of my H&M figures are on 1 inch bases.

I'll be looking for the link to your blog.

I'm looking forward to seeing the rules, too. Thanks in anticipation for making them available.

Just goes to show that much of what we think are new developments in wargaming have their origins back in the early days when the hobby expanded thanks to the works of Featherstone, Grant, Scruby, Morschauser et al.

This sounds very interesting, and I'd be interested to see the rules.

I last played it at one of the MFCA shows on Womrath
street in Philadelphia in (IIRC) 1968.

Very chess-like in the movement, tho' not in the
tactics.

I think, but do not remember clearly, that Henry
Bodenstedt adapted the idea for his 'Siege of Bodenburg'
(I think that was the title) game, at least the
gridded movement system.

Henry a long time ago ran a hobby shop in Freehold,
NJ and was an HM player.

Bob is no longer with us, having past many years back. I used to game weekly with Bob and others from MFCA. Unfortunately I never kept any of his board type games.

Stared at the map trying to figure out what the dark squares with a V in are, then realized i must be Villages, right? Or something to that effect.

Hope more info will be found and posted here.

Looks a lot like 200 years old warchess variants. Like this game by Samuel Gribble 1829 link (I played with plastic minis, but do not really know if it was supposed to be played with minis or chess pieces or just wooden blocks or something else… no mention in the rulebook).