"WWII demostration on a small table" Topic

Hi,

I'd like to set up a small WWII tabletop for a quick friendly demostration for "newbies".

No much time.

No much room.
Just a 90x90 cm (3'x 3') tabletop (max).

Chain of Command

You might consider PBI quick play which is free on the PP website. Keep it nice and simple with 2 platoons Versus 1 platoon. Infantry only. 6x6 grid of 6" squares. 15mm

Let me know if you need any info.

martin at PP

What scale of minis?
28MM…I would say Bolt Action. Fast and easy rules.

Axis and Allies board game. No, wait…that's not it.

What are you trying to portray? Overview of the war, squad tactics, intro to wargaming?

For an intro game, I would use Nuts or Chain Reaction by Two Hour Wargames. With the newbies on one side and you as GM, a few turns of "what do you want your men to do?" and then an explanation of mechanics as they play…they'll pick it up pretty quick.

There's also the two page rules by PZ8:
panzer8.weebly.com/rules.html
But I think they assume some prior experience.

Agreed, what kind of game do you want to run.

I find Blot Action to be pretty boring, and much prefer Nuts! from Two Hour Wargames. Nuts also works well with just a squad per player so limited investment needed in figures. Maybe 6-10 per player.

With such a small board it should be without vehicles and dense with terrain.

On a 3x3 table, I'd want to stick with smaller minis, 15mm or 20mm.

AB 20mm minis are exquisite, wonderful detail, and there's a great variety of 1/72 plastic models available, as well. That said, I stuck with 15mm because that's what I have terrain in.

As I understand it, Chain of Command is ideal for a platoon-per-side game, and uses a ground scale that's close to figure scale.

I'd also suggest looking at the 'Battlegroup' rules, which work very nicely at the platoon to company level. You can buy a mini rulebook that has all the general rules, and then specific campaign books have the rules and army lists unique to that campaign. I'm quite fond of the Normandy campaign, and bocage country really lends itself to smaller tables. You do need to make lots of hedgerows, though.

6mm Tigers and Stalins.
Max gun range is 40".
3x3 board is 36".
TADA!!

10mm, use a ruleset that measures in inches and use cm instead.

3 foot table =36 inches

36 inches =91cm

Because you are using cm for inches that is equivalent to 91 inches = 7 1/2 feet.

Neil Thomas " An Introduction to Wargamimg" Simple for starters and quick.

Crossfire is perfectly suited to a small table.

For newbies you would want to keep it fairly simple with a squad of 4-6 guys for each player. Nuts is very good with a small squad. You would also get in multiple games and can always scale up later.

If you are looking to demonstrate to newbies then you want something without too many clever mechanisms. I'd say Chain of Command would fail on that – it's a bit "non-obvious". Bolt Action has the action dice which is the sort of simple mechanism that's easy to show to people – pull out a dice, use it to activate a unit, rinse and repeat. If you don't like that you might look at Rate of Fire. Especially in its infantry-only version (the original book) this uses very plain obvious mechanics – nothing ground-breaking, but perhaps just right for starters.

As a demo game simplicity should be the focus. I would use Bolt Action for those reasons even though CoC is a superior game.

Agreed re not using CoC

May be write your own

Unit= section

1 rifle = 1 dice
BAR 2 dice,
Bren 3 dice
MG34 4 dice

4 to hit in open, 5 soft cover, 6 Hard cover. -1 if moved up to half.

Activate by card draw – Spades for German sections, Diamonds for Allies.

You can reserve shooting if card drawn.

Starting to look like PBI 6s to hit with a saving roll (where you get the cover) … dice rather than cards to activate and use a grid rather than measurements for movement = PBI (simples) …

Martin suggests keeping 6" squares but dropping to 6x6 grid … I can add that the other solution (stay at 8x8 and reduce the squares to 4.5") also works. The 6x6 approach has the advantage of meaning contact will be quick and the games dynamic.

Phil
P.B.Eye-Candy