What’s in a tabletop wargame?

So I’ve been bitten by the tabletop gaming bug, and due to not wanting to spend much (if any) money while testing the waters, I scrounged up some free and/or cheap resources to get going.

After reading many great blog articles and some study after feedback from article authors I came up with a list of what I need.

Table - Check: use dining room table.

“Grass mat” - Check: use green felt from a home Craps game, turned upside down of course.

Rules - Check: Got the “One-Hour Wargames” book. Thanks to Norm (https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/ ) for recommending it to this beginner. While not free, the Kindle version is cheap and proved to be an eye-opener for me on several points.

Dice - Check: see Craps game above.

Great looking miniatures - [screeching halt noise]…wait…I gotta acquire and paint figures? Let’s see what else we can do here…

How about grab some index cards from the old file cabinet and add some folds to indicate distinct unit types, then add some writing on them?

With respect to the OHW rules (specifically ACW in this case), unit frontages for Infantry, Zouaves, and Cavalry should be 4-6 inches - 3x5 Index cards work nicely there. Artillery units should have a frontage of 2-3 inches - we’ll just turn those sideways then.

I picked two colors out of the stacks of index cards on hand and ended up with green and yellow. These colors might not differentiate very well in the photos, but to my red-green deficient eyes the difference is clear. An unexpected benefit is that while trying out the rules with solo play there is no way for me to develop a bias for one side or the other, which with ACW or WW2 might be a risk.

The next task was to figure out how to fold the cards to both provide a handle and a pseudo profile to indicate the “kind” of unit. Infantry and Elites get a fold down the length to give a low profile. Cavalry are two cards combined with a fold down the width that gives a taller profile but the same frontage. Artillery are turned sideways with a low fold towards the front where the cannon would be. All shapes kept in place with some applied glue stick from the desk drawer.

Add some markings for identification and direction and what you’ve got are some free “miniature” units with which to game.

The available armies for Yellow and Green.

A closer look with Yellow Cav-1 closest.

Face off…

Towards the end of a Scenario #1 game - not
 looking good for Green.

So far the experience has been enjoyable and I've learned a fair bit just from playing several games of Scenario #1 "Pitched Battle (1)" from the book. I expect I'll keep these units to try out the other time period rules in the book, since I should have the possible compositions covered (maybe with some extra markings on the cards). 

I am hoping to get my father to give it a go while he visits for Thanksgiving; though I'm afraid I might have to make more "units" in different colors for him to be able to distinguish them. And even though my wife does enjoy playing Memoir '44, she just rolls her eyes at this "cheapskate" setup.

Since my interest lies in the ACW time period (which is odd in that my main interest is in WW2 for board wargames), I've decided to do an "ACW Project". My next steps will involve Paper ACW armies from Peter Dennis with an eye towards being able to slowly integrate the WarLord EPIC Battles ACW stuff somewhere down the line. I am not looking forward to doing any painting any time soon but there may come a time when I must lose the "cheapskate" moniker...

Cheers.