Heretical Gaming is my blog about my gaming life, featuring small skirmishes and big battles from many historical periods (and some in the mythic past or the far future too). The focus is on battle reports using a wide variety of rules, with the occasional rules review, book review and odd musing about the gaming and history. Most of the battles use 6mm-sized figures and vehicles, but occasionally 15mm and 28mm figures appear too.

Wednesday 27 December 2023

Back to WW2: Poland 1939

 I have been doing a little playtesting this morning, and that has meant back to WW2 - which is always a delight! This one gets to the table some of the armies I was working on earlier in the year: Poland 1939, and a couple of more early war elements for my Germans, which at core were designed for summer 1944.
 
This isn't a proper battle report - I had too much to scribble down and keep track of for playtesting notes. But just so you know what you are looking at, it is a German infantry company advancning from the West (left) against a a very weak Polish company, partly occupying some defensive positions.  The scale the rules suggest is 1mm:2m, so even a small 2'x2' board like this represents 1.2km x 1.2km - more than enough for a battalion-sized engagment, even with armour, never mind a company. This in turn has given me some other ideas...but more about those later, perhaps.  In any case, it is early days but the rules are very promising so far. The model:reality scale is 1:1 for vehicles and 1:2-3 for infantry - i.e. a base of 3-5 represents a section/squad of 6-18 or so, a very gameable scale and perhaps more forgiving for combined arms than the 1:1 for infantry scale employed by the WRG rules I would normally use.
 
Anyway, hoping to repeat this soon and hopefully it will all flow well enough for me to do a proper write-up of the game.
 
And kudos to anyone who can identify the exact (fictitious!) scenario...😉







Figures are a real mixture here: German infantry and weapons from Baccus 6mm, vehicle from H&R; Polish are a mixture of Scotia and the odd bit from H&R, I think...bridges from Baccus or Timescase...and bunkers from Timecast too (I think!)

12 comments:

  1. Nice to see you getting back to some WWII stuff again. No idea on the scenario (bridge at Brezhina or something like that?) but the table looks good and as always, great to see games in small and manageable spaces!

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  2. The tabletop looks excellent, and its always fun doing some play testing.

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    1. Thanks for the kind comment. And yes, I quite enjoy playtesting sometimes, it is an interesting way of thinking about games.

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  3. Back in my WRG days my holy grail was a set of rules with complete sections instead of those fiddly teams, however the offerings available were even worse (Cambrai to Sinai anyone?). Good luck with your playtesting efforts. No idea what the scenario is, but as there is no armoured train, Panzer Is exploding in cities or rusty old battleship, it isn't Mokre, Warsaw or Westerplatte. Warta Line maybe?

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    1. Ha! I should do a review of Cambrai to Sinai, Firefight, and the Tank Battles in Miniature rules, before these things get lost forever...
      And thanks. I will reveal all about the scenario in a post shortly...

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  4. Battle for Clervaux, 16-17 DEC 1944?

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    1. Interesting! But no, it is a fictitious scenario...will put it up in a post shortly...

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    2. If you look at your situation, it mirrors action of the 110th at Bastogne quite closely.

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    3. Oh, interesting. Thanks Jonathan.

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  5. As per Steve's comment, good to see you back with some WW2 action. Good luck with the rules and playtesting, I like using the same scale you indicate for my own 6mm rules (1:1 vehicles, 1 infantry base = 1 section).

    p.s. I have no idea on the scenario (even if fictitious) and look forward to the reveal.

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    1. Thanks Shaun. Although I do get why one would want to model gun group and rifle group etc. in the context of a WW2 game, it does seem to work better when a rifle platoon has roughly the same number of elements as a vehicle platoon.

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