Sunday 19 May 2019

Blitzkrieg Commander IV in 1/72

Went back into BCK IV again this afternoon, this time with a view to having a go at the artillery rules and also trying the game out with the bigger scales (1/72 and 28mm). I had been using Pendraken's 10mm in last week's post.


German Infantry cover the entrance to an enclosure, while their
half track gets a wheel replacement (suppression!). 1/72 Plastic Soldier Company and Armorfast.
I was on a 6' x 3 1/2' table, certainly smaller than the recommended 8' x 5' for the bigger scale. The rules suggest doubling the distance, so use 2cm in place of 1cm. To try and drop mental calculations I instead just changed centimetres for inches and I think this would work on a bigger table, but after the first turn, I found myself scaling back to simply doubling distances as suggested in the rules.

A new part of the rules for me was artillery, I used a Forward Artillery Officer and used on call off table Concentration fire (rather than barrage) and it all seemed to go okay and was easy to calculate and sort out.

Again I used a low force point, home brew scenario. This time the Soviets had to try and capture an out of town iron foundry. The attacking force was late T34/76 based, with SU 152 support and off board artillery. The defenders were a mix of infantry and StuG III's.

It all ran smoothly and some of the processes are now becoming second nature.


Soviet infantry liberate the Iron Foundry. These are 28mm Warlord
figures and the building is an HO/OO plastic kit with a chimney
that seems to rise up forever - I love storing this stuff!!!

I like the 1/72, but when the 28mm are placed next to them, I like their character more! but again, table size makes the 1/72 a more practical choice, not so much from a unit footprint perspective, but rather the overall presence and bulk of the 28mm scale just makes the distance scaling of 1/72 on the smaller table look more reasonable to the eye.

The rules continue to please me.

Resource Section.
My sister webspace COMMANDERS will be getting further updates about my BKC IV dabble. LINK.

https://commanders.simdif.com


12 comments:

  1. Looks like you are enjoying your dabble into BKCIV. Fine looking iron factory. How does BKCIV compare with your own TaM rules?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I suppose the two main differences are that TaM uses hexes so measuring is not an issue and things like blast templates are redundant. BKC IV is set one level higher, with a base representing a platoon and I think it does that very well, especially with the accumulation of hits.

    One of the things that TaM does suffer from is that if you put a lot of units into a small space, say for a Stalingrad type game, the volume of firepower on the opening turns can be too much, so there becomes a limit to what can go on the table. I feel that is less true of BKC ... but the racking up of hits for a knock out, can encourage ganging up tactics.

    For my own rules, I can tend to get into a ‘list’ of modifiers. I am surprised how few modifiers BKC has, yet they are not missed.

    I have always criticised my own rules for having rather generic infantry. BKC improves on that .... slightly! But of course my ASL head is probably warping my sense of judgement in that regard.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice to see you still enjoying the rules Norm. I think 1/72nd works well for small scenarios, but for me 28mm is simply too big, being much more suited to skirmish games IMHO. But then as long as you are happy, that's all that counts!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Steve, If the table was bigger, 28mm would be fine I think, especially with say 3 infantry figures to a base. But for me, 1/72 is likely the largest I will go and in 10mm, I can pretty much have collections of buildings look a bit more village / town like.

      Delete
  4. Norm did you end up settling on inches or did you double the cm's for the whole game? this is something ive always wanted to try but never have.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Steve, I started with inches, but before the first turn was done, I went with double CM for the rest of the game.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Norm, 1/72nd scale really interests me for WW2 gaming, it seems the prefect scale. I recently painted some 1/72nd figures for a fellow blogger (Foy) and it struck me just how practical the scale is, especially where one wants to keep table size and indeed costs down. Much as I love the Warlord (Bolt Action), stuff I could do two forces in 1/72nd including infantry tanks and guns etc on a budget and produce all the terrain at a fraction of 28mm cost. Indeed Bolt Action (my choice of WW2 game) could be played on a 4 x 3 table using centimetres instead of inches. As the D-Day anniversary approaches this is something I am giving serious thought to as a side project with dedicated blog.

    I had a look at the terrain tab on your 'Commanders' blog this morning and there is a lot of excellent ideas there.

    All the best Norm,
    Lee.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks Lee, there are also a few firms now that do fast build kits. I am just putting two Armorfast Shermans together and there were two single spruce tanks in the box for £8. The scale has much to recommend it.

    You have reminded me that I need to put a bit up on the Commanders site to keep it fresh.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sounds fun,I like the ho/oo scale iron factory,it works really well with the 28mm figures!
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks Iain, at one endof the building it has very large, almost like hangar type doors and the 28mm look exactly right next to it, on the other side is a standard door, making the 28mm look oversized, but overall, the mass of the building makes it a good dual 1/72 and 28mm use.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Could you not just play down the long end of the table? I guess either way you get cramped. I was just thinking that even on a 6 foot wide table one usually has most of the action in the center 4 feet.
    The miniatures and terrain look cool though.
    I agree with Iain, that building looks very nice and distinctive. 😀

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks Stew, yep down the table was the way I went, Tank guns can pretty much reach that length when ranges are doubled for the larger scale, so terrain to break up the table helps. one artillery blast area is normally 20cm (8 inches) fr 10mm figures, so doubling for the bigger scale to 40 cm (16 inches) or worse .... 20 inches when I was doing a straight conversion to inches. the combination of small(ish) table and larger figure made for an interesting action, but the potential scope of the action would be greater with 10mm and standard measurements per the book on the 6' x 3 1/2'.

    A typical tank, say the panzer IV, can move 20cm in the 10mm scale (40cm in the larger scale) per successful movement order.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to comment