Tonight we try out: bolt action in 10 mm!!

[petercooman]

So i set up a quick game using the easy army builder for the forces (and stats), coloured cubes instead of the order dice, a rough version of the rules (after watching a few battle reports, i tink i can recall enough to try it out) , and my 10 mm skirmish forces with a few of my bkc based vehicles. This should give me a rough idea if i like the game!

And yes i am using my daughters' bonnet to hold the cubes, it was the first thing i could get my hands on  

The forces are all mounted in trucks, because i am playing this on the regular dining table wich is a little bit less wide than my usual gaming table. This way i can make them enter the table on turn 1 instead of deploying as usual. that should be more than enough the compensate the loss in table depth.

[Fenton]

Be interested to see how it goes

Have you based the infantry individually or used bkc bases?

[petercooman]

Be interested to see how it goes

Have you based the infantry individually or used bkc bases?

Individually. So far i have found out that units in a transport can get on very far even on turn 1, so my smaller table speeds up the game quite a bit.

end of turn 1:

[petercooman]

And the first draw goes to the germans, and they roll exceptionally well...   

[petercooman]

End of turn 2, and the plan to panzerfaust an mmg carrier in the flank went horribly wrong 




Both sides down 1 unit. rifle section for the british, but more importantly, the germans have lost their panzershrek.

[petercooman]

But with the germans getting first move, they fire their last panzerfaust and do massive daage to the carrier, while the lmg finishes off the piat.

[petercooman]

Hmmmmmm Flamethrower teams feel pretty overpowered...

[petercooman]

End of turn 3, british barely holding on



And the two armoured vehicles have been missing each other since turn 1....





edit:

They get the jump with the first order though, and annihilate a squad of grenadiers



Edit 2:

And they knock out the flamethrower team!

[petercooman]

After that the british mortar Destroyed the german MMG (wich was on the left of the photo), but the germans acted next, and the 251/10 moved up and blew up the halftrack, while the 251/1 mowed down the sniper. I had decided i would play on untill one force lost half of their units (both sides had 12 units), and so the germans won the game.



The british lost: a sniper team, piat team, halftrack, 2 rifle sections and an MMG carrier.
The germans lost: a panzershrek team, grenadier squad, MMG team and a flamethrower team and their schwimmwagen transport

So pretty close game, germans were equally beat up, but managed to clear the centre of everything except the mortar spotter, so i think they are in the better position anyway.

Was a pretty fun game, some things worked very good, some a bit strange. Will have to try some more before i pass judgement though! But first impressions are good, i had fun so that's what matters the most!

[Norm]

That looks good Peter, better than I thought for the 'little fellows'. I had always thought 15mm for single basing was as low as I might want to go, but I think for the cost of a few bags of figures to make up singles (I have the vehicles and multi based infantry), this would be an interesting project. I also have the rule set and some dice from Warlords 28mm starter set, so it would be a really small step for me to explore this.

Looking forward to your considered opinion after a couple of more plays. thanks.

[Steve J]

Glad you enjoyed the game, which is what counts really . I think 10mm works well for small skirmishes, as long as the table is not too big. On a 6' x 4' one with lots of terrain, it might be easy to 'lose' them in the heat of battle. A few years ago when playing CWC in 6mm, my opponent simply did not spot an infantry unit in a wood armed with a LAW (or something similar) and got a bit of a suprise when he advanced his armour towards said wood !

[petercooman]

That looks good Peter, better than I thought for the 'little fellows'. I had always thought 15mm for single basing was as low as I might want to go, but I think for the cost of a few bags of figures to make up singles (I have the vehicles and multi based infantry), this would be an interesting project. I also have the rule set and some dice from Warlords 28mm starter set, so it would be a really small step for me to explore this.

Looking forward to your considered opinion after a couple of more plays. thanks.

Thanks, i think the 10mm looks good for skirmish, but it might pay off to find some way of 'marking' the models. Being able to tell everything apart from a distance is a bit tricky. Thinking about painting the edge of the base a different colour for rifle, lmg, smg etc...
I can manage, but sometimes it's tricky. I think i will wait a bit for a second playtrough, and adapt the ist i used to have a force without transports. I have enough extra models to put in more infantry, and maybe try some bigger tanks.

Glad you enjoyed the game, which is what counts really . I think 10mm works well for small skirmishes, as long as the table is not too big. On a 6' x 4' one with lots of terrain, it might be easy to 'lose' them in the heat of battle. A few years ago when playing CWC in 6mm, my opponent simply did not spot an infantry unit in a wood armed with a LAW (or something similar) and got a bit of a suprise when he advanced his armour towards said wood !

Thanks! to be honest, not being spotted before it's too late is actually pretty realistic, so i have no problem with mising something like that!

[Fenton]

Years ago playing Battletech on the old hex maps a player didn't see a mech painted in a green and yellow camouflage scheme and got killed. So it's not just the smaller scales this happens in

[fred.]

We played a fair bit of Chain of Command with 10mm figures on a 6'x4' table - works well - looks realistic, really giving the empty battlefield look of modern warfare.

For basing I went with 2 normal infantry on a 30x15mm base, heavy weapon teams on 25mm square and NCOs and officers on 12mm washers. This helped with indentification and with moving lots of stuff around.

A couple of comments on your game Peter - it looks very flat and open. I tended to put in lots of little hills (not even really hills) just rises in the ground to break things up. Also I found lots of random bits of terrain where useful for this too. This may be less of a problem with BA where the weapon ranges are very short. Even if you are gaming Holland then there will be lots of ditches Though these are harder to model on the table. I found I was doing very different terrain for skirmish games than mass battle ones.

Also why are all your troops in big bunches in the open? Spread out and get in cover!

[petercooman]

Normally I put some towels underneath the fleece throw, but I decided to have it completely flat. After al I was learning the game so I kept it simple.

Regarding the cover, I misjudged that one. I figured it would have been enough but by turn 2 I realised that the single bases took more space than in my other skirmish  games. In USE ME, you use single models instead of squads, so youget much more use out of your cover. Now I had big units with nowhere to go. Will fix this next game.