"Games in tiny spaces" Topic

So not having a game room any more, I'm working on various games I can play in tiny spaces. First up is a miniaturized version of Commands and Colors Medieval…

I made little standes with a casualty tracker, and will use a 1" hex game map for the board.

Anyone else have some small/portable/travel-worthy games?

That's pretty clever.

ordinarygaming.blogspot.com

Yes, I have returned! LoL

At my blog I have all my paper counter armies I've made for Warmaster fantasy and ancients but they can be used for any 20mm x 40mm basing. In a Plano box, for example, I have two EIR armies for civil war scenarios. Plus other armies in other small Plano boxes. Play using To the Strongest on a small table. (I played a WotR 15mm game of TTS at Recon a couple weeks ago. Very small space! Had a blast.)

BTW I love your C&C counters. Richard Borg would approve!

What a Tanker is apparently played by many on a 6' x 4' board, in anything from 1/100th – 1/48th scale.

Switching to micro armor (1/285th – 1/300th) would permit you to play that on a 2' x 1', or 2' x 2' board, and the minis can fit in a plastic box the size of a 3" x 5" card, plus about 1" thick. Tap Plastics sells these.

Aerial wargames, as well as naval can be used for traveling too, especially if you use 1/600th scale aircraft, and 1/1200th scale naval Fast Attack Craft – PT Boats, MGBs, MTBs, S-Boats, etc. They can be played on any fabric surface (like a bed spread, or a small piece of cloth terrain rolled up, or on a tabletop).

2mm castings on 30mm frontage stands usually works for me. I go up to 40mm frontage and a modified DBA for ECW, and for WWII, the stands are down to about 3/4". But all these will play on a box game board, and everything fits in a laptop carrier.

I recommend stands representing relatively big units--brigades from ECW to ACW and platoons for WWII--and "stand removal" rules, with at most a "pinned" or "disordered" marker. The large unit size keeps the ranges short enough, and the stand removal keeps you from having small stands with multiple markers.

The Portable Wargame
link

Wargaming Miscellany
link

The Portable Wargame Facebook Group
link

EC, tiny and travel are fine for what they are, but if you have room in the house for a card table set up for a 1-2 hour game, you have a lot more options open to you than most of us use for travel sets.

The next challenge is to make a command and colors set for your flea circus.

I do 6mm DBA on a board that is a foot x a foot. Works real well.

There's always Micron Scale:

link

@Robert P

I can do a set up / take down if it will be put away (the wife is pretty reasonable). It's leaving things set up for a couple days. Limited to a smaller table, maybe 3 x 5, but doable.

Still hoping to find a game room option where I can deploy my 6 x 10' table.

I have a reasonable collection of paper terrain tiles, both commercial and home made, that I keep in the folders you used in school. I can pull a couple off the shelf and go.

I play mostly skirmish games, so a few dozen minis, some dice, and paper rulers isn't usually a problem for travel. Terrain is the limiter for me.

There's always Micron Scale

Well done!

But seriously, I'm working on a "tactical card game" for Civil War battles using two decks of ordinary playing cards. Units are created by stacking cards (face down) and are maneuvered into attacking positions. The values of the cards in a stack are compared for combat and determine the outcome. Needs a card table, but nothing more. No minis, no dice, but I've worked up some terrain rules. The whole thing hinges on "expending supplies"— discarding cards from a player's deck to give orders to the various units. Since reserve forces are drawn from this same deck during the course of the battle, the available tactical capabilities are different for each player and not immediately known until a combat action happens (sort of a cross between War and Stratego). Also, expending supplies creates a built-in clock and restraint— the more orders you give, the less cards you will be able to call upon as reserves and the sooner the battle will end.

Since it's just two decks of cards, and maybe some terrain cards (or just a sketched out "map"), it should be able to go anywhere.

Right now I've written and tweaked the rules, but since I'm the lone gamer in my household, I've not been able to test it properly. I *think* it will work, but until it gets in the hands of a couple of gamers, I really won't know.

Hmph. Nothing against travel armies, obviously, but a 3x5 board offers you quite a nice space without extreme measures.

With a couple of folding tables, you can do a 5' x 6', or 5' x 8' table quite easily.

My OP was totally off. I meant small travel spaces, like airport lounges, railway compartments, LOL.

For home I made "BattleBoxes" which slide under a bed so I can have games set up over time:

link