Cheap and Quick
One Hour Wargames

The bottom line: Build your armies using the plentiful figures from the Risk board game, paint them up red or blue; and create some basic terrain to play over.

This article describes how to get started playing One Hour Wargames (OHW) in the Horse and Musket period quickly and rather cheaply. There is nothing new being proposed here as people have already -

• Used the figures that come in the Risk game to form armies.

• Painted the armies in a mono colour giving those traditional foes - the red army and the blue army - and thereby avoiding the "tedium" and time of painting up uniforms.

No doubt others have already done both to play OHW.

Collecting the Risk Armies

The Risk board game has been around since 1957 and many variants have been produced. Some of these come with figures - lots of figures as playing pieces -  and it is these that we want for our armies. Of particular interest are the game pieces in -

• Those sets which come with a tricorne hat. That's what I have used. Or

• Those sets which have a Napoleonic look - there seem to be several different designs for these around.

These figures are about 12mm tall and are a hard plastic.

I wouldn’t look to buy a new Risk game to get the figures as this can be expensive, however you might find a bargain. If you do buy a new game be sure of the style of figures that are included.

The alternative is to buy replacement pieces for the game which should be a lot cheaper. A few year ago I bought a complete Risk replacement army in the tricorne hat. This cost me just 34 AUD (22 USD, 17.50 GBP, 20 Euro.) What I got was -

• 240 infantry,

• 72 cavalry, and

• 72 artillery 

Quite enough for 2 OHW armies with figures to spare.

The Bad News

I have just looked on the web for the availably of replacement armies. Sad to say they aren't a widely available as they once were. I hope this situation is just a temporary hiatus. However keep an eye on the online market places where collections of risk figures often pop up.

Building the Risk Armies

Assembling the Units

If you are using the OHW random army generator you will need: 4 Infantry Units, 2 Skirmisher Units, 2 Artillery units and 2 Cavalry Units per army to cover all the bases.

If you go for 4 inch wide bases then may I suggest this numbers of figures per base -

Infantry    16 figures 

Skirmishers 8 figures 

Artillery   2 guns 

Cavalry     8 figures

I use a reduced scale for my games and you will see my smaller sized units in the images in this article.

Painting the Units

I brush painted my units red and blue but this was a bit fiddly. The alternative is to spray paint the figures with flat acrylic paint. The hard plastic should hold the paint well. You might consider a varnish for extra protection.

Terrain

The Tabletop

The simplest tabletop - which Neil Thomas suggests in his book - is to drape a green cloth over a table. Many a game has been played this way. What I have done is buy a cork pin board of appropriate size and painted it green. This is self-supporting , light to carry and store away. (Mine goes behind a cupboard).

Lakes, Marshes and Woods

Lakes, Marshes and Woods need to be demarked. To do this I bought various coloured felt squares from a craft shop. These were cut into oval shapes. These scenarios should give you an indication of size that is needed but basically some terrain pieces will be about 6 inches wide and others about 12 inches wide. Felt is a little "sticky" so shouldn't normally move on the tabletop.

Trees

The felt used to demark wood can be covered with model trees. You can built these yourself but there is some work involved - look on YouTube for tutorials on how to do this.

The alternative is to buy tree models. This can be expensive as many are manufactured to a high standard for model railway diorama. You can however get cheap trees from the online market places. Currently I see you can buy 50 model trees from China for about 18 AUD (12 USD, 9.50 GBP, 11 Euro.)

However I think the trees you see below came from a pet store, from the fish aquarium section. So it pays to keeps your eyes open to possibilities. For example, if you ever come across a cheap and nasty Christmas tree, the branches can broken down to form a great source of tree shapes.

I mount my trees on steel washers, the tree held in place with glue from a hot glue gun. That way they stand up without falling over. I've flocked the bases - the cheap way is to pick some sand from the beach or river if you live near one and use that; or you can buy flocking material. To flock - paint the base with PVA glue and run it thru a container of the flocking material so it adheres.

Hills

My hills are made from MDF which has been cut into an oval. You can get oval shaped MDF at craft stores, and you can find it on the online markets often specially intended for wargaming.

I've glued 2 together to get a bit of height. The hills can be painted. But I instead put some brown paint on a sponge and dabbed it on the hill. This was followed by dabbing with some green paint to give an overall mottled effect.

Rivers, Roads and Bridges

Again I use felt for rivers and roads. I cut these to an appropriate width and lay several in line to form a road or a river. As for bridges over rivers, mine are constructed from paddle pop sticks (popsicle sticks). You can even find these lying around in the street if you don’t want to buy some from a craft store!

Buildings for Towns

I use paper model building which needed to be cut out and assembled. Mine were free (yeah!) and come from the wonderful Pretzschendorf web site where you can get paper models of the historical German village of Pretzschendorf.

The models are N-gauge (model railway gauge) so are an appropriate height for 12mm figures. If you happen to be using larger figures you can enlarge the size of the paper models in a graphics program.

I printed the models out on light card stock before assembly. I then mounted my model builds on a base with sufficient room at the front of the model for a unit to be positioned. This counts as being in the town.

November 2023