Playing with 12mm WW2 Victrix minis (or 10mm) & if so what rules?

[lloydKeymaster 17731xp 2]

Hi all,

I was wondering if any peeps are playing with the 12mm WW2 miniatures from Victrix or perhaps a 10mm range and what rules are you using?

Are you just playing Flames of War or are you playing other systems like:

Chain of Command
Rapid fire
Crossfire (Lindybeige Lloyd seems to love this)
etc.

I’m considering perhaps just playing Bolt Action with smaller minis as I was thinking 2 miniatures per base represent 1 miniature but maybe I should be looking else where.

I’m not overly interested in having huge battles as I don’t want to inflate the miniature count.

Cheers all,
Lloyd

[nogbadthebad 5771xp 4]

Hey Lloyd, WW2 isn’t my bag but for 10mm I would always push peeps at Pendraken. Their historical stuff is excellent and they are really helpful- they’ve let me buy single minis when required rather than full packs and Leon hasn’t told me to piss off yet! I think they also do decals…

if they don’t do tanks then the zvendra stuff might be worth a look but they may be 15mm I can’t remember.

[warcoloursParticipant 438xp 3]

Chain of Command for platoon sized engagements and O Group for something with a little more meat to it. Best WWII games around in my opinion. You have to use actual WWII tactics and procedures if you want to achieve something, gives you the feel of the period, rather than being simply an exercise in list building like some other system.

[khusrauParticipant 1169xp 3]

Hi. Playing Chain of Command in 28mm for platoon plus supports. In 10mm, using Iron Cross and O Group for larger engagements.

[phaidknott 7023xp 2]

Although (rules aside) if you want to make your games NOT look like a tank parking lot (in 10mm/12mm/15mm), when buying your tanks look to buying no more than one for every foot of frontage. That way your tanks are a scarce resource and you’ll be looking to use infantry and AT guns to hold your line, while exploiting any gaps with the tanks about 1/2 way through the game.

 

The army you buy and it’s composition will probably have more effect on your games than the particular ruleset you buy (eg Flames of War is perfectly fine “if” you show some restraint in building up your army list and go infantry heavy with just a few tanks/apcs etc).

[guillotine 16038xp 1]

My go-to would be Battlegroup for anything 20mm or below. Great set of rules, already scale and basing agnostic so no need to worry of adjusting anything.

That said, I would be totally happy playing Bolt Action or Chain of Command in smaller scale too. In fact I would play all three for different types of games!

[lloydKeymaster 17731xp 0]

Thanks for the feedback peeps, seen a lot of people mention O Group around the internet recently saying good things about the rules but perhaps it’s a bit to large scale for me at the mo.

[phaidknott 7023xp 1]

The “scale” of the rules doesn’t automatically mean LOADS of figures. Too often we play all of our games (no matter what period) with way too many troops on a given frontage. How often do we see Napoleonic games with two lines of troops ranked up side by side with no gaps (effectively meaning you would equally be as well off just throwing dice at each other).

 

By far the best games are to be had with not enough troops to cover your frontage (as was quite often the case in WW2), so that you have gaps in your lines that each player can look to exploit (or defend against) by using manover. So for a game with 12mm miniatures on a 6’X4′ table (played with each player having a 6′ frontage), typically starting with just a couple of infantry platoons along with one or more “small” ATG guns, and then having no more than 6 AFVs (tanks/APCs/ACs) with some more infantry platoons coming on as re-enforcements should give you a good “armour heavy” encounter style battle.

 

Perhaps I’d look at the Battlegroup books for scenarios (these offer a mix of anything from a squad vs squad to some major encounters with lots of armour with “fixed” formation lists for each side). You might prefer a different set of rules, but the scenarios in the Battlegroup theatre books are “golden”.

 

You could easily use Bolt Action rules (I know a fair few people who play using 15mm figures and leave the ranges as they are). Do you really need to use multiple figures to represent a single 28mm BA soldier? I dunno, perhaps a 12mm figure on a circular MDF base (3mm think for easy handling) would suffice. Alternatively you could just base them up on Flames of War sized bases to use them for both BA and FoW (just with 12mm figures and leaving the ranges as written). But as I said probably the army list you build (and the overall amount of figures/tanks) you end up buying will probably dictate the gameplay you end up with more than perhaps the rules themselves  🙂

[tokyoghoulParticipant 68xp 0]

Two other sets worth considering are I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum by Too Fat Lardies and Fireball Forward by Mark Fastoso, both of which are aimed at company-sized engagements, thus fitting between Chain of Command / Bolt Action and O Group.  The third edition of Fireball Forward is now available from Amazon. There is a recent, very thorough review on the Little Wars TV TouTube channel.

[piersParticipant 25488xp 1]

Easy… Battlegroup.

Gives you points based pick up games (in realistic scenario design) or historical refights, where real world tactics are key, you never know how badly off the enemy is, your forces will look like real world combat groups, no game will ever replay the same way and its bags of fun.

I’m biased though. ?

 

Though at present, we are looking at designing Battlegroup Commander, a WW2 version of Battlegroup NorthAG, for a 10mm range that PSC may release in the future…

[khusrauParticipant 1169xp 0]

Remind me again, how many supplements is it that Battlegroup is up to now?

[piersParticipant 25488xp 1]

A better way of thinking is to remind oneself again how many you need to buy…

You just buy the ones for the period of the war you are playing… you don’t need them all.

So if playing Normandy, after the landings, you’d need the core rules and the Beyond the Beaches supplement… you could even just play with the core rules and the two free lists for Germans and Canadians.

So two books really.

We happen to think the war changed over its course and different theatres, so the books contain list relevant to those specific campaigns plus historical scenarios. Its about giving players the option to play the parts of the war they want in a supplement that brings out the specific  nature of that particular campaign and the troops involved, rather than a more vanilla approach to the war. It aims to bring out the nuances of a conflict that changed considerably depending on the date and location.

It’s a similar manner to how Chain of Command (with its theatre specific add ons), Flames of War, and Bolt Action all work to cover the conflict. Most WW2 rules offer supplements to further increase the scope of the rules, offer players new things to do and keep existing players interested and excited with the game.

[torros 23808xp 1]

Have a look at Blitzkrieg Commander if your looking for something a bit abstract

[admiralandy 1647xp 0]

Specificly Blitzkrieg Commander IV, which is also produced by Pendreken and who have an active forum for rules discussion etc.

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