Joy of 2 for World War Two

After our back to the future playtest of the Wargames Research Group 1925–1950 rules, Julian came to the conclusion that he was happy with the rules, but not the scale. While I might be prepared to 'suspend disbelief' regarding the depth a vehicle occupies, he could not have a great big 1/72 Tiger (for example) and assume that it only occupied a smidgen of it's size. The answer, he thought; 2 mm.

Using the natural scale of the figures (1:1 000, rounding up) means that the ground scale becomes 1 mm = 1 m, what you see is what you get and large games can be staged over a reasonable area.

He proceeded to purchase some 2 mm figures for the Second World War from Irregular Miniatures (already knowing the scale since he has plenty of 2 mm forces for other periods), applied paint, made some buildings and then, on Sunday just gone, staged a second playtest. Stephen came up from Perth to join Julian and me for the game.

Julian designed a fictitious scenario a few days after D-Day, on a roughly 1 m x 2 m table with some really good looking bocage (using strips of kitchen scourers) and some buildings that he has scratch-built from milliput. I took the defending Germans, Stephen the attacking Americans.

View along the table from the American end. Green strips are bocage, large hill at the German end of the table, village behind.

View from the German end. Troops laid out but not deployed. Julian's excellent buildings in the foreground. He has applied his master building for 1/72 to 2mm.

Americans advancing down the road and across country. My plan, if I had any, was to conduct a 'rolling defense', with each line of hidden vehicles/troops retiring to the one behind (or further). I 'unveiled' the first line of a Jagdpanzer (right foreground) and Panzer IV (left foreground), each supported by an infantry.

German tanks open up on the lead Sherman, knocking it out! We played all of the American tanks as Shermans (which these lead ones here are).

The Americans had laid down a smoke screen/barrage, which fortuitously, for me, over-shot the first line of German defenders. This did not last long as their tanks fired on the now visible Jagdpanzer and Panzer IV, taking out the former, but missing the latter.

Scratch one Jagdpanzer.

According to plan, the Panzer IV and infantry that had accompanied the Jagdpanzer now retired towards the next line: A Tiger. The other infantry remaining in place for now as observers. The Tiger opened up on the lead tank, but missed.

Not so the German artillery which had been called in to fire a little in advance of the initial American position and successfully destroyed another Sherman, second last in the column.

The lead Sherman diverted from the road to attack the retreating panzer grenadiers, but good fortune continued to be with the Germans and they escaped unharmed.

To add insult to (non) injury, the infantry fired their panzerfaust, and hit and knocked out their assailant!

Surviving the American retaliatory fire, the Tiger opened up again...

Sherman no. four of six knocked out.

At this point, Julian remembered that we'd forgotten morale tests. The result for the American company of Shermans meant a retirement to cover away from the enemy. The German infantry that had been fired on by the tank but survived did a similar thing.

We had to end it there. Originally when we'd planned the game we expected to go into the evening, but I found out later that I was working on Monday with an early start, so we were limited to the few hours. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful time with marvellous hospitality from Julian and family, an enjoyable first outing with his twos and plenty of banter and general chatting/catching up. A huge thank you to our wonderful hosts!

Julian is now 'full steam ahead' to paint more vehicles and figures and to build more of his marvellous buildings and other terrain pieces.