minefields

[petercooman]

So i started some minefields this afternoon, and just finished them.


Pretty straightforward, 24 cm long and 5 cm wide,6 bases in total. Enough to shut of an entire sector of the play area.




I am doing some defensive pieces to go with my ironclad trenchline, and will be doing some barbed wire section in the future too. However i want to be able to show where the combat engineers clear the way for the men to move forward (or something like a sherman crab cleared a path). At first i thought about doing some extra sections with cleared parts, but that would be more work and would need more storage space. I pondered about this while i was applying the static grass to th fields, and suddenly i thought about that classic game, minesweeper.




And then it hit me: Flags!


So i made 5 sets of 4 flags to mark cleared paths.




These will allow me to easily represent the safe zones:






Not the prettiest of solutions, but the most simple and effective! And when not in use as clear markers, they can be used for a variety of things, like marking objectives or entry points for reinforcements!

All in all, a good day of hobby stuff!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Genius!

Or you could have little 'Achtung Minen' signs

[petercooman]

Genius!

Or you could have little 'Achtung Minen' signs

I thought about making some and sticking them to the fields, but i didn't bother. This way i can just stack them for easy storage. And the flags are more generic for other uses. I think i will make some for my wire sections though, so i can have Barbed wire setions with mines in between 

My engineers are in for some bad times 

[FierceKitty]

My engineers are in for some bad times 

They should be grateful. Most gamers don't bother to use them.

[Steve J]

Excellent

[Techno]

Great stuff, Peter.

Cheers - Phil.

[petercooman]

They should be grateful. Most gamers don't bother to use them.

I always had a soft spot for battlefield engineering. But they so often get used as bunker busters, and that just doesn't seem right to me.

[Leon]

Those look great, nicely done.

[petercooman]

Thanks!

Will the engineering rules stay the same in the new BKC edtion? 

[Leon]

Will the engineering rules stay the same in the new BKC edtion? 

There's been some debate about that, as the first draft had simplified them a little so that a successful engineer action would remove the whole minefield.  Some of the playtesters preferred the previous method though, having to clear the minefield in sections using several actions.

[petercooman]

There's been some debate about that, as the first draft had simplified them a little so that a successful engineer action would remove the whole minefield.  Some of the playtesters preferred the previous method though, having to clear the minefield in sections using several actions.

Seeing as i just made the flag tokens, i think the old option is best 

Good to hear they are still in though! Guess the opinion will also differ depending on the size of the minefields in use.  The BKC book suggests minefield of
20 X 10 cm. (mine are 24 X 5, but after adding wire to the front and back, or making it 2 bases deep,they will be 24 x 10)
The frontage of a base of pioneers is 5 cm. So if you have a 20 cm minefield, that means they clear 4 times their frontage in one action (in the simplified rule proposed) This seems like a lot. Now if you have a player using different base sizes or smaller minefields the opinion could differ.

One of the fun parts of these sort of things is that you get faced with desicions.

Do i let my pioneers clear one path and then continue to the next obstacle? Do i clear a wider section and risk getting them shot up or pinned and not reaching the next obstacle? Or for russians, do i push my penal troops through one section or two? 

[petercooman]

By the way, speaking of minefields and wire, the wire sections have been constructed. Now on to painting, and static grass, and then adding the wire itself. I am adding that after painting, as i want to keep it in the colour it came in!






Going for roughly this kind of wire sections: