Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Uwanda & Mugabia: Growing Scope & Shrinking Scale

As I prepared to run the next couple of ground battles in the war between Uwanda and Mugabia, I realized that the battles have become larger than what I originally envisioned for the campaign, and potentially unmanageable in 15mm on my table. 

Originally planned as primarily infantry battles with platoons of vehicles here and there, I'm now facing two battles that could feature a half dozen or more company sized units with other supporting elements.  I don’t think that my 6’ x 9’ table can handle upwards of a hundred vehicles and associated infantry roaming about on it, and still have room for maneuver.  So, I'm going to try switching over to 1/285 scale or 6mm figures for some of these larger battles.  I've already ordered infantry, and a few vehicles and aircraft to paint up, and with any hope, will be able to move this process along quickly.

Terrain-wise, I’m not too bad off.  I need to make a few buildings, but have some Arab style buildings that gives me a start, and have both the basic terrain tiles (many are already used with the 15mm games), and trees that will work. There are a few items that I’d have to add otherwise, but at 6mm, none of it should take too much time.

My only real concern is that the games might lose some of their personality.  I'll still be using the same character/leader mechanisms, but I'm worried that since the infantry will be based as sections on multi-figure stands, that the game could become sort of impersonal. We'll see how it goes, if the flavor seems to leak out of the games, I'll have to find another solution.

In the mean time, I still have a couple of air battles to play out, and can spruce up some of my old NATO/WarPac Micro-Armor.

I'll post updates of my progress.

7 comments:

  1. Here is an idea. Maybe play multiple company actions to represent different times and location' s of the engagement?

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    1. Yeah, that is the backup plan right now. I looked at that first, but was caught between potential of sort of “corrupting” the mechanics of the battle , or the spirit of the game, between the two methods.

      I’ll try micro on the first one, and if I don’t like the feel, go the other way with 15mm on the second.

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  2. I'd be tempted to go for 10mm as a happy medium, especially now the Pendraken Korean War range is out - the British commandos and summer / tropical uniform figures are ideal.

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    1. If I was starting from scratch, I probably would, but I already have maybe 5000 pieces of micro-armor sitting around, plus most of the terrain. I only had to buy 15 vehicles, and some of the infantry, and already have my rules adapted for the scale.

      As long as the old eyes hang in there, I should be okay.

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  3. Maybe I'm biased, but I think things will work out for your campaign at microarmor scale. I've had battles in 1/300 scale using AK-47 Republic rules and things work out fine.

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  4. That’s interesting, glad to know. I think there is a shared flavor to the games, so that makes me s little more hopefull.

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  5. To me, whatever you can do with one scale, you can do with another. I look forward to your continued AARs at whatever scale you end up using.

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