[Enquiring_Mind]

Here’s a suggestion, there are companies out there that cast 28mm scale Viet Minh for the French Indo China war of the late 40s and early 50s. I think some of those will be suitable?

[Enquiring_Mind]

Hi Steeljacket, thinking about the various wargames that I’ve played there are very few that have the same miniature and ground scale.

The only examples I can think of are Roman gladiatorial games or skirmish games with maybe a dozen miniatures a side. Examples here are the cowbiy skirmish game systems you occasionally see.

Everything else has a ground scale that is smaller than the miniature scale.

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Enquiring_Mind.

[Enquiring_Mind]

Hi guys, thanks for the information.

I think I might wait for the American Sector Normandy book to come out before I make any such decisions.

After doing some more research, I’ve found more facts. There’s a fairly well known Char B1 that was captured by the FFI in Paris. It got the Cross of Lorraine and the letters FFI painted very prominently on it – it looks cool. Unfortunately they only had MG ammo for it, so no 47mm or 75mm gun.

I think reality and my initial plans for force composition are starting to look very far apart….

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Enquiring_Mind.

[Enquiring_Mind]

Sorry, I think this has gone into the wrong part of the forum – my bad!

I’ve repeated it in the Bolt Action sub forum.

[Enquiring_Mind]

I think it depends on the terrain you’re fighting in.

In rural terrain, I’d personally use the weapon scale as the yarstick to measure it by. The 24″ maximum range of a rifle will probably be 400 yards/metres. So a 6 foot x 4 foot board would be 1200 yards/metres by 800 yards/metres. Maybe 1.2km by 0.8km? (3/4 of mile by 1/2 a mile). This isn’t too far off what you’ve gone with.

In urban terrain, you could treat minature scale and ground scale the same. So the 6 foot by 4 foot board would be 100metres x 70 metres. You can never fire as far in built up areas anyway. If this seems a bit too small (as it does to me) go to 600 metres x 400 metres, half the rural distances?

[Enquiring_Mind]

I’ve a suggestion around this, select a generic reinforced platoon but with only the infantry and artillery from the Operation Blue Theatre Selector. When picking the tanks and other AFVs, include vehicles such as the Stug IIIg with the long 75mm and the others that you feel are missing from the list.

Remember that there are other new units such as Goliath Demolition Teams and Sturmpionere squads in the Ostfront book that can be used. My copy of Stalingrad collector’s set (including the theatre book) is on the way. Maybe that will have extra stuff in it too?

[Enquiring_Mind]

Thanks everybody for the help. I think that the issue came about because we imported into Bolt Action that over-competitive attitude from our games of WH40K. From what everyoe has been saying is that approach just doesn’t really work for Bolt Action.

[Enquiring_Mind]

Hi guys thanks for the responses, there’s lots of good ideas.

The historical forces sound good.

I’ll have a think about the inclusion of some of the poorer quality stuff to increase the points available.

I think the idea of a core group with a few different changes might work.

🙂

[Enquiring_Mind]

Hi Nathan,
if you look in the Operation Sea Lion and Campaign Gigant you will see the few profiles of these vehicles that have been written.

Operation Sealion:
Pg 46 Medium Mark C Hornet (plus the Vickers Medium – the Vickers is strictly speaking an inter-war tank)

Campaign Gigant:
Pg 31 Mk IV Heavy, this can be either the Male or the Female. For the Hermaphrodite conversions with mixed sponsons, I’m sure that you can figure out both rules and points.

Please note I use the term Hermaphrodite because historically, that was what the mixed sponson tanks were called. I mean no disrespect to anyone who is Inter-Sex and I hope no offense is taken.

[Enquiring_Mind]

Hi Paul,
thanks for the reply, those were the same points values I’ve found. The trouble is that according to the ‘Road to Berlin’ book a log bunker is poorer than a concrete one.
-3 penalty to hit soldiers inside it vs a -4 for the concrete one.
It also collapses after taking 10 hits from a single HE weapon as opposed to 12. I was hoping that there might be some sort of points for this reduced quality fortification somewhere.

Just out of interest here’s some really interesting websites that I’ve recently found, they’ve all got details of various fortifications that could act as inspiration.

Mapa strony

http://www.regelbau.dk/regelbau_allemodeller.asp
http://allworldwars.com/German%20Field%20Fortifications%20on%20the%20Eastern%20Front.html
http://www.lignemaginot.com/accueil/indexen.htm

Unless your Danish, German, Polish and French is up to scratch I recomend putting most of these through Google Translate 🙂 Each site has got a variety of interesting plans and photos of WW2 fortifications.
Enjoy!

[Enquiring_Mind]

Another game play issue that the German players can have is buying the really expensive Tiger and Panther tanks. These can suck up far too many points and will receive a lot of attention from your opponent.

I played a game at the weekend where I fielded my recently completed Tiger II. I managed to squeeze in a handful of other, cheaper tanks and a few infantry.

The Tiger received the brunt of the Soviet attack, but it did effectively fight back. I lost the game but did manage to destroy or damage all of the Soviet tanks and kill the majority of his tank riders.

I probably would have done better with a more co-ordinated platoon of Stug IIIGs plus maybe a Jagdpanzer IV (L70) in support.

[Enquiring_Mind]

Hi everyone, I played a very close run game over the weekend, a German armoured platoon vs a Russian armoured platoon, late war.
Each side had a number of tanks plus supporting infantry all in the same reinforced platoon.

It was Scenario 6: Counter-attack at Pestszentimre from the Fortress Budapest book.

A question came up around the whether an infantry officer can use their “You Men! Snap to it!” rule on tanks and other armoured vehicles.
A command tank doesn’t have the ability, so my opponent was arguing that an infantry officer can’t apply this rule to armoured vehicles.
The trouble is that the rules don’t expplicitly state which types of units an officer can command.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Enquiring_Mind]

If you are wanting to use a Soviet vehicle in this role, the nearest they had were their Assault Guns such as the SU-122, ISU-122 or ISU-152.
They would fire huge HE shells at German strongpoints, these were almost as damaging as the AVRE’s Petard and had considerably longer range.

[Enquiring_Mind]

As someone who plays late war Germans I am always reluctant to field a force full of elites. For the very reason mentioned above – you will get pinned too often and not get the order dice out of the bag when you really need them!

My usual opponent is Soviet so maybe I’m in a different position, I think the situation is slightly different with the armour. I’m facing Panthers Vs T-34/85s. The difference is not that great. Panzer IVj vs T34/85 are identical!

I try to vary the forces I field so as to get an interesting mix.

If I was faced with your challenge my response would be to use Churchill tanks rather than Shermans or Cromwells, add an M10c Achilles with the 17pdr. This armour combination is historical, the Tank Brigades with the Churchills didn’t have their own 17pdr tanks, so would get Royal Artillery Self-Propelled Anti-Tank Batteries attached, specifically with the Achilles.

In regards to the Infantry, try to bulk up on Regular infantry plus enough smaller teams to keep the number of order dice high.

This might help.

[Enquiring_Mind]

Thanks Stuart and Master Chief, that clears things up.

So to use a sniper in a built up area you would need to keep him/her in rubble, down at ground level, hiding on ambush.

This means to hit the sniper you have a huge negative modifier to be hit (guaranteed a 6 followed by a 6)

Once the sniper’s fired, to hit them it’ll be a -3 to hit?
-2 for the fire order (gone from being an ambush) plus a -1 for a small team.

So, if I’ve got that right you can’t do the overwatch thing from modern FIBUA but it does encourage the ‘Enemy at the Gates’ style sniper duels. Because all snipers ignore -ve hit roll modifiers.

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