10mm Pendraken U.S. 1944 forces - a starter army.

My recent foray into the new Blitzkrieg Commander IV rules from Pendraken, got me thinking about new 10mm armies. The two gaps that I want to start filling next are British and U.S. Western Europe 1943 - 45.

At the Phalanx wargame show in June this year, Pendraken had just put together a number of starter army packs for BKC based around 1500 point armies, so I picked the U.S. 1944 - 45 set.

These are nice sized army bundles as the contents are enough to give you a game with BKC (or other rule set), but being starter armies, they are not overwhelming to tackle as a painting project.

The rest of this post just looks at moving this starter pack from raw lead to completed game pieces.

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Blitzkrieg Commander IV - In Defence of Buron

Some months ago I did a hexed version of a scenario centred on the German counter-attack at Buron, against Canadian forces. I quite like taking the same situation and applying it to different rule sets, as it helps in defining the difference between systems and helps fine tune the scenario.

So here is a presentation of that scenario, applied to the new Blitzkrieg Commander IV rules from Pendraken, together with a brief overview as to how the game went. It has the advantage of being a small action, so is being played on a 4’ x 3’ table with Pendraken 10mm figures.

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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

Taking Blitzkrieg Commander IV for a spin

I come to version IV (published by Pendraken Miniatures) without any prior experience of the system, so I thought it was worthwhile just plonking some kit down on the table and playing through some of the procedures, just to get a feel of things and to help embed the rules in my mind.

Book front

Initial impressions of simply opening the book are good. It is well laid out and nicely illustrated and the one volume has the rules, scenarios and army lists, no other purchases are necessary, so Bravo! for that.

I am just doing a small slice of action, from what we can presume is from a bigger battle, so this example is being played out on a pin board, with Pendraken 10mm figures. As a first outing for a taster, it is unlikely to capture all of the nuances, but this post is intended for those who perhaps are likewise exploring for the first time or who are thinking of buying and need to jump off the fence.

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