Hotel Wars

Portable gaming in 6mm

The concept was started when a couple of us, trapped away from home for long periods, discovered we were both gamers. Even worse, we were bored gamers - something to do with living in hotel rooms far from our loved ones for far too long.

Our plan was to run regular, aesthetically pleasing, figure games while using a minimum of storage and playing space.

After a lot of discussion and planning we decided to give DBA 2 a try for our first games as both of us had played games in the DBx family previously. A major attraction was that the game table required (2' square) should fit nicely on the traditional 2' diameter hotel table.

We were lucky to acquire some of the last of the Essex Jigwar pieces. Four of the 'Type A' corner pieces link together perfectly to create a solid 2' square playing area. These linked pieces are especially useful if you don't have a solid or flat surface to play on, such as if you're using a hotel bed. Unlike most terrain squares the Jigwar pieces are both light and thin which permits many of them, and thus a variety of terrain, to be stored in a small space. They also take texturing well which makes it easy to prepare boards for games. Unfortunately these most innovative pieces are currently out of production due to technical problems outside of Essex's control. Currently our boards are painted with Coat d'Arms textured paint and then dry-brushed.

The decision to go with 6mm was a fairly easy one. Space was our primary constraint as hotel rooms are generally pretty small and we also didn't want to be carrying too much kit around with us. Although the 6mm and 15mm figures share the same base sizes in DBA 2 the height of the 6mm figures would massively reduce the amount of space needed for storage while giving a highly visual game with more of a 'battle' feel to it due to the numbers of figures. For our first armies we went with Western Europe and the Western Mediterranean area from around the time of the birth of the Roman Empire - Punic wars, conquests of Spain, Gaul and Britain - all that good classical stuff.

We are using Baccus figures as they have a nice balance of detail and flexibility. The relatively limited range of ancients figures may require us to use figures from other manufacturers if we expand our collections, and our game options, to other periods.