Fold and Fight! Wargaming with Origami Soldiers

Todd Harland-White

Fall In! 2003

I found the instructions for folding these Napoleonic soldiers on the Web one day, located at http://home.istar.ca/~wko/. Done by Wayne Ko, the pictures of the troops looked terrific, and Wayne allows folks to download his original set of directions. I asked Wayne if I could use his patterns as the basis of a convention game – he said yes and the rest is history. The game has been play tested prior to this competition at Coldwars and Historicon 2003, where I included the chance to fold a soldier or horse of your own to take home after the game.

Wayne’s figures are for 15mm gaming. I can’t handle making them that small, though they do look great at that scale. So I have rescaled the figures to about 50mm, using 120mm squares of paper for the horses, 90mm squares for the cannon bases, 60mm squares for the figure bodies and legs, and 40mm squares for the heads/hats. Other than that, I pretty much use the patterns as presented at Wayne’s website.

To have an excuse to play with the figures, here’s a Napoleonic scenario:

Napoleon invaded Portugal in 1807 to close down the last ports in Europe friendly to England. Unfortunately, the Royal family escaped Lisbon only 1 day ahead of his troops, and begged England for help. England answered the call with both troops and ships.

Now, by 1810, the French have been driven out of the country twice. But the English leader, the Duke of Wellington, knows the French are coming back with an even larger army for the third try. Secretly he starts preparations for a wall of fortifications near Lisbon – “The Lines of Torres Vedras” – to protect the Portuguese and the British troops. Think of part of the “Great Wall of China” – built over a single summer. Wellington’s strategy proved successful, with the French army coming to a stunned stop at the base of this unexpected country-wide wall, and then dying by the thousands of starvation and disease while the Royal Navy kept the Portuguese and British well supplied. Finally the French retreated, beginning a hard-fought multi-year withdrawal from Portugal and Spain that finally ended across the Pyrenees in France with Napoleon’s defeat.

To keep the French from discovering about the wall and reaching it before it was ready, Wellington sent his elite Light Division under Robert “Black Bob” Craufurd to harass the on-coming French and keep their scouts from getting any hint of what awaited their army. But, patrolling near the River Coa by the Portugal-Spain border one day, Craufurd runs into trouble on 24 July 1810 when a French scouting party he attacks turns out to actually be a much larger portion of the full French army under General Ney.

Stuck on the wrong side of the River Coa, can Craufurd’s troops escape across the only bridge for miles in either direction before being decimated by the French? (Historically, Craufurd’s troops did escape, but with such high losses that Wellington was irate with Craufurd and didn’t forgive him or trust him again for many months.)

So, to go with that scenario, we need some troops. I’m afraid I have to admit that the colors of the uniforms aren’t necessarily quite what the troops in this battle were actually wearing – but they are a) faithful to the forces that were in Portugal at this time, and b) use standard origami paper colors.

British, divided up between either 2 or 3 players:

Three units of British infantry (white pants and scarlet coats, tan and scarlet, and green and scarlet)

One unit of Portuguese infantry (white and brown)

One squad of British cavalry (white and medium blue)

One squad of field artillery (grey and medium blue)

French, divided up between either 3 or 5 players:

Three units of French infantry (dark blue pants and dark blue coats, tan and dark blue, white and dark blue)

Two units of Hessian infantry (white and green, tan and green)

One unit of Austrian infantry (white and white)

Three squads of French and Allied cavalry (tan and medium blue, tan and dark blue, scarlet and green) – don’t use one of these units if there are 3 French players

One squad of field artillery (black and dark blue)

The battlefield includes the River Coa along the Portugal-Spain border with a small bridge across it, a road along the Spanish side of the river that includes a cross road across the bridge, and some hills and trees that will be minor obstacles to movement and lines of sight. The British are near the bridge in their typical line formations, and rapidly approaching along the road are all the columns of French and allies, with some skirmishers also coming from between the hills. (The setup is shown on the next page.)

I use the “Milk and Cookies” rules found in the book “Big Battles for Little Hands” by Rob Dean and Buck Surdu (which also contains “Blood and Swash” rules and much else of interest on tactics and scenarios and game building for the beginner). “Milk and Cookies” uses troops in groups of four, and I give each player 2 groups of four, so there are 3 British players and 5 French players, and 64 total soldiers to make (plus 16 horses and 2 cannon). Alternately, give each player 3 groups of four troops, with 2 British players and 3 French players.

Total chargeable costs for the game as you see it are 23 hours and $58.99. Details are in the table on Pg 4. Preparing the figures worked out to a bit over 12 minutes each: that is just a tad under the time it takes for me to paint store-bought figures so I guess I saved money but not time. I was certainly making figures faster at the end and maybe I had the time reduced to under 10 minutes apiece – adding the guns and uniform belts and basing starts to take as long as folding eventually.

Have fun, and happy folding and fighting to you!

Costs in Time and Money