From time to time I have wanted to play 'entire' battles while still representing the majority of the units involved with miniatures. This isn't easy to do in my chosen scale of 25mm! The scale of the figures and the limitations of space have thwarted any thoughts of doing large actions.
I have had an ongoing fascination with Operation Market Garden (Holland 1944) and Operations Goodwood/Cobra (Normandy 1944) since I read books about these actions many, many, years ago. The thought of large armored units sweeping across the map of Europe has always held a special spot in my imagination. I have tried collecting GHQ Micro Armor but, for various reasons, that really wasn't going to work. You know something is wrong when 1 inch long tanks are "too big" for my idea!
A few weeks ago I saw a news posting on The Miniatures Page about the release of a Royal Tiger model so I clicked on it and found the likely solution to all of my plans... a link to Picoarmor http://www.picoarmor.com/pages/home.php
These 1/600th scale miniatures, yes 1/600(!), would allow me to build Armored Divisions for @$80 each and allow me to portray huge WW2 battles on our club's gaming table. I have traded some emails with John at Picoarmor and he has made some suggestions for rules. I have ordered a rules set so I can decide how to organize some units for gaming.
Yet another project...!
7 comments:
Looks nice! I've heard lots of good talk about Pico Armor.
Are you looking at rules like MegaBlitz?
My question also, which rules?
The folks at Pico Armor have suggested Blitzkrieg Commander http://www.blitzkrieg-commander.com/default.aspx?Area=BKC as it (it is promised to...)gives a nice combination of Command Rules coupled with a simplified combat system. I do not want to cross reference 5 tables to see if a High Velocity 75mm round can penetrate a Sherman MK.III at over 500 yards from more than a 33 degree angle...
I am hopeful that this with combine some of the simplicity of abstracted combat in board games with the visual appeal of miniatures.
Andy
Megablitz looks very interesting. I will look into it a bit further. Megablitz looks a bit too high in scale but, as with all gaming rules, it can be adapted!
I am trying to have company sized stands but still show divisions or corps on the battlefield. In the end, I may have to move away from the company level stand but I fear the game will "lose its flavor" for me at that point.
I would swear there were some comments... including one I posted?!
What rules?
Scott
I think Blogspot had a crash and they reloaded an image prior to our comments - so those are lost in the ether...
I am reviewing different rule sets although John at Pico armor suggests Blitzkrieg Commander for the sort of game that I am looking to do. Andy commented on here that Megablitz would be well worth a look - and I plan to look them over. I am trying to strike a balance between fighting division/corps sized battles but representing units down to company(?) level.
I have seen "simple" rules devised for playing Operation Goodwood and Operation Market Garden that treated wargame pieces as boardgame counters with attack and defense values. This allowed for very simple combat systems and that then allowed a greater rule emphasis on command qualities. That is the sort of thing that I hope to achieve as I am not really interested in the penetration values of certain shells at certain ranges... I want to play "The Big Picture" for a change.
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