"State of Microscale WWII Wargaming?" Topic

In your area, how is WWII miniature gaming in microscale? Microscale being defined to include 6mm, 1/285 and 1/300.

Judging by a few forums it is alive and very well.

Non-existent, though I did dust off my WRG WWII rules (the 1973 edition) a while ago. Then I put them back on the shelf and bought some Front Rank Jacobites…

Doing very well with BKC.

"how is WWII miniature gaming in microscale?"

People play WWII wargames with 6mm models. 1/300 is the same as 6mm. You can't really get 1/285 in the UK.

You can't really get 1/285 in the UK.

You can

link

Not exactly cheap though

No one really plays this scale in my area anymore. Was very popular at one time.

mjc

CWC alive and well at Portbury Knights, lots of GHQ!

We switch back and forth between micro and 15 depending on what we're doing.

One guy at hurricon had four tables of 1/285 microarmor from mainly GHQ but i saw several otehr companies. I traded him about 80 packs of GHQ from my store for the 15mm he had under the table.

Dead. The popularity of 15mm due to FoW and the explosion of 1/72 plastics means almost no one plays 6mm WW2. But we're just one backwater and who knows what people are playing in their basements. The very nice 10mm stuff that came out did in 6mm WW2 for me.

Just started rebasing all my microarmor for Look Sarge No Charts. Perfect scale for battalion level battles. Looks fantastic and at scales nearer to real ground scale. Now a platoon looks like a platoon. Not a lot of microarmor for sale at the flea markets at this past ColdWars, Historicon or last years FallIn so must be OK if people arent dumping it. I have had a couple deals over the past two years with folks dumping large amounts of desert painted soviet equipment as their interest in gaming Iraq has waned but that is it.

Two of the 12 games that I've played this year have been WWII micro scale games.

Don't know of anybody who plays it here in Porland Oregon much anymore. And the local shop here carries a very,very limited amount of GHQ minis. I have sold off my 6mm-1/285-300 minis and totally converted to 3mm-1/600 for my air,land and naval gaming. Robert

I'm still building forces in 6mm for Flames of War half-scale. and it's in stock but not on clearance in at least one local game store…

Still seems to be doing well here, unsuprisingly.

Around here it's about the same. We lost one major gamer and the attendant huge collection, but people still play on occasion. I'm not playing much 6mm ATM, but others are.

Don.

15mm for company level games and micro for larger level, so both scales alive and well here.
William

You can't really get 1/285 in the UK.

You can

I meant that they're not that common.

6mm is pretty much all I use for WWII. Most of the other WWII gamers in my area use 15mm though.

We play 6mm WW2 a lot (when we aren't doing it with 15mm or 20mm or on maps).

Generally brigade to corps sized actions, although we did the whole of Market Garden (again) a few months ago, so that was something like a dozen divisions. Various rules, depending what we are doing.

I use proper 1/300th scale stuff whereas my wealthier chums use 1/285th. Unlike Mike, we don't seem to have any problems finding vast racks of GHQ stuff in our excellent local wargames shop.

Last game played was the Russian counterattack on 56th Panzer Corps bridgehead over the Dvina, next one will be an outing to Byelorussia in 1944. The operation of Forward Detachments.

We also do moderns in 1/300th or 1/285th (as well as 15mm)

I have recently fallen in love with 6mm all over again, and have been expanding my already quite large collection of nineteenth and twentieth century 6mm stuff.

Pictures of some of my stuff even grace the covers of John Currys wargame book reprints.

Here Erich von Manstein holds off the Russians at Zoltsy:

link

And here my WW1 Brits in East Africa trudge forward to another difficult day in teh bush.

link

"Unlike Mike, we don't seem to have any problems finding vast racks of GHQ stuff in our excellent local wargames shop."

Sadly, I don't have a local wargames shop, excellent or otherwise.

AFAIK, GHQ is the only manufacturer that produces WW2 stuff in 1/285, so it has to be imported from the US.

Very much alive and kicking with me in UK

Adler 6mm and GHQ 1/285th with IABSM

There were a couple of microarmor games at the Heat of Battle III convention in New Orleans back in August.

My group games WWI, WWII and moderns in 6mm.
I think it's the only scale we've used for WWII land combat in at least 10 years.

Small cons in the SE US always feature some 6mm games.

There isn't any.

"AFAIK, GHQ is the only manufacturer that produces WW2 stuff in 1/285, so it has to be imported from the US."

Mike. CinC aka Pfc makes WWII aircraft and ground minis also in the US and has for years.They are cheaper then GHQ. Robert

link

Stil running WWII games down here outside of Atlanta. Recently got someone to convert his 15s to 6mm-1/285. Mainly because of selection and the ability to create decent looking tables cheaply. No shops carry any microarmor around here anymore, so we weborder everything anyways. Only thing they have is FoW or plastic. 1/300-285 airgaming is still going strong.

Mark

Rudy, correct me if I am wrong, but didnt see any WWII micro armor games for the first time in a long time at Hurricon this last weekend.

"AFAIK, GHQ is the only manufacturer that produces WW2 stuff in 1/285, so it has to be imported from the US."

CinC as well, as mentioned above.

Wargames Emporium in Sheffield stocks GHQ in the UK, but yes, it isn't cheap compared to Navwar or Scotia. I go with the cheap stuff and just look on in wonder at the beautiful kit GHQ do, very nice infantry too.

Our group plays it. It seems that it has been modern lately, however we play WWII as well.

Marc you are right. it makes me wonder who Sarge sells all that Micro-armor to?

I've thought about this topic since it posted, and wondered about it since. Microarmor is my favorite scale, mainly because the groundscale more closely corresponds to the figurescale.

Judging from what I see at the big US midatlantic HMGS conventions, I think WWII microscale is alive and well. I'd estimate just as many folks are playing microscale WWII and cold war as were twenty years ago.

One could get the impression that it had gone out of fashion because of the incredible rise in larger-scale WWII. 15mm and 25mm WWII figure selections have exploded in the last 10 years, and that scale has seen much more GROWTH than has microscale. I think the larger scales overshadow the very stable microarmor niche.

Jim

Just branching into WWII stuff in 1/285. In Oz everything has to come from o/s so I have ordered GHQ from poland, CnC from the US (they were doing 20% discount and free postage). I also have a lot of modern GHQ & CnC gear ordered from eBay at massive discounts – I only use the cheaper UK 1/300 if it's not available from CnC or GHQ.

It's in my plans for the future.

It's alive and well here. We play mostly 1/285 from GHQ and CinC, with a few 1/300 odds'n'sods thrown in. WW2 has us playing one off games as well as two ongoing campaigns (Russia and Western Desert). There is also an aerial campaign in progress. A large proportion of 1/300 from the UK in that one. I am currently ironing out the details on an AK47esque campaign for modern africa as well.

The gaming group I was part of in Michigan has been playing 1/285th scale WW2 once a month for 25 years. We used WRG for 1 to 1 scale and Spearhead for larger scale actions. I have been gaming with microarmor for 35 years. Our local cons in Michigan always has at least one game. It isn't a con without a microarmor game!

Never seen it played outside the rare table at a convention.