Hi everyone.
I decided to sign up for an account after lurking for awhile. I've not been involved in any kind of wargaming for more than 20 years, having played some GW games in my youth. My primary gaming for the last decade has been boardgames and roleplaying, with some forays into hex and counter wargaming.
Every 6 months or so I read wargame rulebooks, peruse figure ranges and play around with force or scenario ideas, but I've never actually committed to a project. Every game I look at seems to have some sort of barrier in regards to figure count/cost/table space/storage requirements that overwhelms me and puts me off.
Well after some recent planning I've narrowed my areas of interest down and whatever I settle on will almost certainly be in 10mm scale. I've recently picked up BKC IV and CWC II, having had a copy of BKC I sitting on my shelf, much read but unplayed since it's release. I've also had copies of Warband and FWC for several years that have also been heavily studied, but remain unused.
Whilst the Commander series in all it's incarnations has always appealed to me in terms of mechanics and subject matter, my concern is that it may be best suited to a size of play space that I may have difficulty accommodating. Does anyone have any advice in regards to playing the Commander games with less than a 6 X 4 table?
Warband on the other hand is definitely more flexible in this regard and I'm considering using a 5cm base width to enable it to be played on a 3 X 2 area.
Now I just need to finally decide on a system and period!
Sorry, no advice, but welcome.
You can certainly play BKC on a smaller table - years ago I played some parts of a Op Market Garden campaign - that had multiple small games each in a quarter of a 6x4' table - so probably 2x2' sized each. Obviously these were quite small battle groups - but they were still interesting games.
Are you thinking of playing solo or against an opponent? One reason for asking is that the command mechanism definitely works better with at least a few commands per player - otherwise there is a chance that one side doesn't do much for a few turns. You can of course give each commander fairly small commands.
While for vehicles you can't really base any smaller than the recommended sizes in the rules, for infantry you can certainly cut down from the 50x25mm typical size, perhaps to 30x20mm or so? Also means less painting!
Not wanting to put further barriers - but do remember you need some terrain as well as figures. And terrain does tend to need the most storage. So if you are thinking BKC and CWC try and go for theatres that can use the same terrain.
Quote from: fred. on 27 June 2022, 07:27:15 PMYou can certainly play BKC on a smaller table - years ago I played some parts of a Op Market Garden campaign - that had multiple small games each in a quarter of a 6x4' table - so probably 2x2' sized each. Obviously these were quite small battle groups - but they were still interesting games.
Sounds cool!
Are you thinking of playing solo or against an opponent? One reason for asking is that the command mechanism definitely works better with at least a few commands per player - otherwise there is a chance that one side doesn't do much for a few turns. You can of course give each commander fairly small commands.
A bit of both I expect
While for vehicles you can't really base any smaller than the recommended sizes in the rules, for infantry you can certainly cut down from the 50x25mm typical size, perhaps to 30x20mm or so? Also means less painting!
Not wanting to put further barriers - but do remember you need some terrain as well as figures. And terrain does tend to need the most storage. So if you are thinking BKC and CWC try and go for theatres that can use the same terrain.
This is what convinced me that I wouldn't go in for anything over 15mm. There are plenty of interesting 28mm games designed for 3 X 3 or less and with low figure counts, but the effort to build and store a decent amount of 28mm terrain seems daunting.
Welcome Auphan :-h
One option I have used in the past to test new rules and periods before committing to buying and painting figures is top down paper armies. That way you can try a few games for minimal time & effort.
JuniorGeneral has a lot of useful top down 'figures' and 'terrain' here https://juniorgeneral.org/index.php/figure/figureList/topdowns (https://juniorgeneral.org/index.php/figure/figureList/topdowns)
Firstly, welcome to the forum. As you have already found, I hope, we're a friendly bunch ... if a little odd at times :)
Secondly, a while back a bunch of friends and I played a campaign set in the run up to Kursk using BKC. As an intro to the rules, for those that had never played, I ran a series of mini-games, on a card table. CO, couple of companies of infantry (6 bases) an MG base and a couple of lightish vehicles a side. Terrain was fairly dense to limit the vehicles a bit. Everyone seemed to have fun, even though a couple of flukey die rolls could win or lose the game. Despite what it might seem if you saw my collection it is not necessary to field an entire division to have a good game! :)
If your best anti-armour weapon is a bunch of guys with satchel charges even an armoured car is a challenge.
The bigger the table, the more you can put on it. The more you field the more options you have and the less dependent you become on luck but whether that always equates to more fun .... well I'll leave that to you to decide.
Welcome on board :) .
I play the vast majority of my games on a 4' x 4' table with around a Battalion per side with support and have no problems at all. As Ithoriel has said, it's good to start with relatively small forces to get a hang of the rules and then scale up from there.
Welcomon
Hello and welcome
Welcome! I find pretty much any rules can be scaled down to smaller play areas if you want them to. Given you've been into boardgaming and hex and counter games, you could easily run some test games using cut out bits of card to represent bases, or paper armies as Paul suggested above. I've done this with a few rule sets and gives you a good feel for the game and the scale, and lets you experiment a bit to see if you can play it as is in your chosen area (i.e. just reducing the force sizes) or if you need to tweak distances and ranges a bit (e.g. if your play area is 2/3 the size of the recommended you can sometimes just reduce everything down by approx. a third, even the bases).
Hi Auphan, welcome to the Forum!