For giggles, I broke out my 1/50 or thereabouts armor and played an inaugural game on my 5" grid cloth - a replay of Tabletop Teaser #3. It was also the first appearance in a game ever of my Churchill (lend-lease, like the jeep).
 |
| Overview of the armies arriving. |
 |
| So many Soviet infantry yet there were not able to hold off the Germans. |
 |
| Oh what's this? Another lend-lease vehicle. |
 |
| Germans hold off the final Soviet push for the town. |
The Germans held the bridge and the town quite securely at game's end.
I used the card activation method described in The Portable Wargame (PW) which made for an interesting
piecemeal arrival on the table and having to choose whether to bring on a
new unit or press home with those on the table.
Satisfied with the 5" grid (and I still have the 6" grid) and The Portable Wargame generally (although I still think shooting should be prior to movement and I may tinker a bit), I turned my thoughts to a possible mini-campaign - a fictionalized Operation Citadel.
I was inspired by Bob Cordery's most recent approach to his Great Patriotic War campaign (the Red Flags & Iron Crosses campaign). I want to use PW to play it out but it occurred to me that if the units are regiments then the ranges in The Portable Wargame are way too long.
So I tried a game where only artillery has any ranged attack. It resulted, perhaps not surprisingly, in something of a scrum. For one, there may have been too many units on the table for using full strength points (because I like the idea of tracking SP through the campaign although it can be done with the two hit variety the more I think about it) and for another, if everything has to close for combat, well, eventually it's a pileup.
I reset everything and played again but with the regular PW rules and it was much more enjoyable even if it stretched credulity. I may retry the adjacent space only rules with some slight modification, but I may not. It's toy soldiers after all, not a detailed simulation. I also may limit how many units a division can field in any given battle - to prevent too much crowding.
The pictures below show the PanGermania Division in battle against elements of the 1st Soviet Guard Rifle Division (the remainder of the Soviet division I reasoned was otherwise engaged - a test of an idea for how I'd start my imagined campaign). The grid uses 5" squares.
 |
| 1st Fusiliers regiment , 1st Panzer regiment, and 1st Assault Gun battalion, approach as members of the Soviet AT battalion reconsider their life choices. (Vehicles in a multitude of scales) |
 |
| The Germans reach Cherkasskoye as they hit their exhaustion point. The Soviets are in no condition to maintain fighting and fall back. |
Hi John, I always rationalise overlong ranges in games like Memoir'44 as force projection rather than how far the shells fly.
ReplyDeleteYour 1/50th vehicles look good with the soldiers, I never really got away with The Portable Wargame, one day I'll have to give it some proper attention.
Regards,
Paul.
Hi Paul, That's a good idea and does make it easier to justify. This is perhaps my third or fourth go with trying to get into The Portable Wargame as written - I think this time, for whatever reason, it's hitting most of the marks I want to hit. Fortunately, it's also fairly easy to house rule without breaking it.
DeleteCheers!
John
Paul says basically the same sort of thing I was thinking. These guys are standing in line, blasting away at 100 yards. So some sort of ranged fire can reflect the depth of a deployed regiment as well as the integral mortars, arty in some armies, hmg etc as well as the forward companies and platoons probing forward and engaging in firefights. Moving adjacent would then indicate a much heavier attack with reserves close at hand etc..
ReplyDeleteI do like the look of the smaller tanks with the figures. A bit like a Marx playset (nostalgia) but they also look less overwhelming on the grid..
Thanks Ross! Treating it more as an abstraction does make it easier to let go of the range thing. I'm rather taken with the look of the smaller tanks with the 54s. The hard part has been sourcing T-34's in that scale. Most of them are expensive imports in 1/43. I finally discovered Blitzkrieg Miniatures does a range of resin armor in 1/48 that cost about half as much.
DeleteThe vehicles and figures look great John! And you're right,"It's toy soldiers after all." Have fun and I think that you did!
ReplyDeleteThanks Brad! Sometimes I let my left brain get in the way of the fun. "Well the AT gun's range is only 1500m so how can it shoot 3 spaces when these are regiments?" Thankfully, the toys themselves remind me that this is a game not a simulation exercise.
DeleteHi John, excuse me for butting in but I found your game very encouraging and inspirational. I love 54mm figures and want to game both world wars in this size, but have always been stymied by my pedantic desire to keep everything in scale. Your 54mm infantry look great with smaller vehicles as Ross has said, and this has helped me decide to go big for WW1 and 2 but use either 1/50 or 1/43 scale tanks etc.
ReplyDeleteHi Anthony, Thank you for your comment! I'm glad you found my post helpful. It's pretty difficult to find examples of big figures with underscale vehicles on the web - I know because before I picked up my 1/50 and thereabouts armor, I searched like crazy. The smaller vehicles create a sort of "playset" look I that I find rather appealing and takes up far less table space than in-scale vehicles. The StuG I have in the later pictures is 1/32. It's scale and it's gigantic. I almost never use it as a result.
DeleteBlitzkrieg Miniatures does a line of resin vehicles in 1/48 - they're comparable in price to the diecast Solido models (around $40 usd). There's lot's of great 1/43 stuff out there although it is a bit delicate in my experience but I'm kind of a klutz and break stuff all the time.
Good luck with your 54mm projects! (and if you're not there already, check out https://littlewarsrevisited.boards.net/)
Hi John, thanks for your reply-I think we're kindred spirits! I did once start collecting 1/32 Forces of Valour armour but while they're beautiful models (like your Stug) they were just too big, with or without using grid-based rules. I feel like your blog has 'given me permission' to escape scale-nazism!! I have a small collection of British and German Corgi 1/50 models, but might actually go for 1/43 (I'll have to buy one first and see what I think). I have a 6' x 4' table and two mats-one has 6 inch squares (gives me a 12 x 8 grid) and the other has 4 inch squares (18 x 12 squares). Reading your recent blogs makes think 5 inch squares might be the way to go. By the way, I am a member of the Little Wars Revisited forum and post as Spirit of Ethandune. Anyway, nice getting to know you-Cheers!
ReplyDeleteI mix scale with regard to tanks etc in my games and I feel it looks fine. I have used Dinky interwar tanks with Britains toy soldiers for example as well as modern centurion tanks with them too. . It does seem to work...
DeleteFound pictures of my game on my blog -
Deletehttp://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2020/07/fast-and-furious-fifties.html
I love the look of your table with the tanks and artillery! Small spaces don't have to mean small games. Also, I don't know how I missed those rules. I may have to give them a go sometime.
DeleteI'm with John! Alan, your game looks great, and as I said to you elsewhere both you and John have convinced me that mixing smaller scale tanks with 54mm WW2 can and does look 'right'.
ReplyDeleteWhat a beauty, some serious armour in this one!
ReplyDeleteRegards, James