"20mm WWII Popularity" Topic

What is the popularity of 20mm WWII in the gaming arena? Are there still a lot of people gaming the scale?

Yes, we have lots of 20mm figures and play Rapid Fire.

Thanks Wrgmr1 Is there more players in Europe or is there a good sized bunch of gamers in the US?

Mixing well with 1/72d scale vehicle and aircraft models is one attraction. Lots of resin wargame vehicles available too. The figures are bigger than 15s to show more details. Also big enough to use individually based for 1:1 figure to man ratio. With all of that, they don't require as much table space as 28s.

To me they are the ideal size for 20th-21st Century 1:1 ratio games.

I'm in the U.S. and see lots of games at conventions in this size. But the popularity of Bolt Action has 28s gaining in popularity, particularly with the increased availability of 1/56 scale vehicles.

Tom

Sure, there are plenty of 20mm gamers in the U.S. Ffor Command Decision it's still considered (jokingly) as the "one true scale". Personally, while I started with micro armor in college due to financial limitations, I Haven't done anything except 20mm for WWII in the last 25 years.

Here's some of my Commonwealth forces.
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I started with 20mm years ago and still enjoy it. Here's a terrain table for a 20mm game I'm hosting this weekend. The town and church are by Total Battle, and the Chateau was made by David Marshall of TM Terrain in the UK.

I started with airfix 30 years ago and I am still adding to my collection, 30 members in our club and only 5 play 15mm ww2 and moderns, the rest of us are 20mm

As long as there is Airfix…

I think 20mm (and 1/72) is popular with people who have been gaming WWII for a while, when 15mm and 28mm+ aren't readily available because they haven't established themselves yet. Now more people are playing 15mm and 28mm because of the wide availability of figures in those scales. But 20mm (1/72) will always have representation because it's been around for much longer, and it may even be making a comeback with the popularity of Battlegroup.

However, in my neck of the woods FOW rules with 15mm, followed by 28mm Bolt Action at a distant second.

Lots of 20mm gaming locally. Collection numbers in the thousands of vehicles and miniatures using a modified FOW basing (old Ver1.0). Several WWII AAR's using FOW rules and 20mm scale miniatures on my blog Wargamerabbit. If living in the local Los Angeles (CA) area welcome to join in.

Examples:

Roncey Pocket 1944 Normandy: link

String of Pearls Normandy 1944: link

Re-Assault on Hill 105 near Brest: link

Main "Wargamerabbit" blog link with list pulldown under AAR reports: link

I have literally thousands of 20mm/1/76/1/72 scale models in my collection. Been collecting since the late 60's soooooo yeah I have some. The club I used to belong to had about 50 odd floating members and all had some 20mm.

Me and my immediate gaming pals have large 20mm collections accumulated over many decades. However it is rare we actually play with them. Club night WW2 tends to be 6mm or 15mm, we just get the 20s out for the odd mega game every year or two.

mega games are fun

Arnhem
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Nijmegen
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guildwargamers.com

20mm allows the use of the OO gauge model railway buildings etc.

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And you get to use those great 20mm figures from Tony Barton (AB).

Yep! AB was what convinced me to sell all my 28mm stuff and re-buy everything (and so, SO much more) with the money I received. Selling 250 28s got me about $1,100 USD and that bought at least double that number of metal 20mm troops, plus many platoons of tanks, PLUS almost half a town's worth of buildings. I am so happy I made the switch!!!

Love 15mm or 10mm gaming for a scale and visual distances but I cannot see the miniatures across the typical sized gaming table compared to a nice 20mm layout. Walking the convention floors…. 20mm scale games wins the crowds every time. You can hear the camera shutters all day long at some table setups.

Ditto Tango 2 3,

Yep, its all VBCW.

Top pic;BUF Vickers 6 Ton Export B tanks advancing up the road, including 2 "field workshop" conversions, an ARV and a 4.5" Howitzer SPG.Top right is a knocked out LFS T26B.On the left is a Carden-Loyd Light Tank 1936 and nestled into the houses is the Vickers GS Tractor and trailer that are the tow and limber for a Pak36 which is part of the support paltoon for the Wirral Cohort of the XXth (Chester) BUF Legion.

Middle pic: Coming down the street on the right, Government Crossley armoured cars leading an Austin a/c (all of the Derbyshire Yeomanry) followed by a couple of BUF Rolls-Royce a/cs. Lower right are a couple of LFS Police Auxiliary APCs (WW1 French Renaults with half a bikeshed as overhead protection).

On the left, on a street corner is a Carden-Loyd tankette MkVI export model with overhead hatches.

In the middle and centre are various softkins, trucks, buses and steam wagons.

Bottom picture: on the right of the LFS Russian supplied R2 are more BUF Vickers 6 Tonners and Carden-Loyd Light Tanks assaulting a street barricade.

Is there more players in Europe or is there a good sized bunch of gamers in the US?

Well most of my local group are around 6ft or taller….maybe that's scale creep as we all started out a lot smaller – and thinner!

There is a certain nostalgic element in that most everyone started out using Airfix models and figures way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and some of us have parts of our collection that are older than the internet by decades!

There is also the convenience factor in that a lot of 1/72 is available cheaply which is a big factor for older guys getting back into the hobby after the wilderness years taken up by wives and small children….another good thing related to that is you can buy scenic and terrain items at yard sales & flea markets locally for pennies on the dollar and not have to spend a boat load of money on specialist stuff from hobby suppliers.

And for me at any rate, I barely see 15mm figures these days, let alone paint them!

Even Early War has gotten into the 1/72 WW2 act:

Those are repainted diecasts I scored off of EBay. Here's some FT-17s from HaT Industrie painted for the 1940 Campaign:

ArmourFast STug IIIs:

If you don't mind white metal kits, then Reviresco makes all sorts of rare and wonderful interwar and early WW2 weirdness:

Someone else's Reviresco Italian Autoprotetto APC:

And the Reviresco Lancia Torpedo Militaire:

Someone else's Reviresco Laffly S20 TLs:

I'll have to get some pix of mine up as soon as possible, as I went with a two color finish with marticules and other markings…

Pegasus makes some fantastic and affordable figure sets including 1940 French with extra FM 24/29 automatic rifles for dragons porte squads. They also make a growing range of fast build AFVs and softskins for the Early War and Barbarossa periods such as these fetching T-26 Model 1933s (2 kits per box):

Here's a banged up Stug I rescued off of EBay last year and refurbished and repainted:

ArmourFast, HaT, Pegasus, PSC, S-Model, various diecasts, Early War Miniatures, and the list goes on. You can find just about everything from The Great War to the Chinese Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, to the end of WW2 in 1/72 scale.

So don't just sit there staring at us! Get yer game on, pilgrim!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Thanks for all of the replies. I already do 15mm, but have a fair amount of 20mm that I am trying to get my friends to work on and get some on the table. They are not too keen on 20mm, but I have a lot of AB WWII, which they cannot believe is so detailed. What is the best rules to use?

Depends on the level of action you're wanting. I personally have played Panzer Korps (so the tactical maneuver units are abstractly battalions), and Rapid Fire! which is my preferred system to date for WW2, as it plays relatively fast and smoothly and gives a good feel for the period.

Hope this helps!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Best rules is very subjective…

So I will just plug ours – Battlegroup.

I designed Combat Command (available on WarGames Vault) specifically for 20mm.

We do games in Atlanta very first Saturday of the month.

Lots and lots of 20mm.

TomT

Another, "Yes, we have lots of 20mm figures and play Rapid Fire".

But the scale is loosing out to 15mm and 28mm in terms of products that serve the wargamer. Warlord, Battlefront and 4Ground are heavily promoting those scales and our "Cottage industry" is getting shouted down.

After quite a few years of playing WWII skirmish in 28mm, I have made the switch to 20mm (using Chain of Command). Like others above, the wonderful AB figures were certainly a consideration as well as the great variety of AFVs that can be used. Also, in the context of a skirmish game the 20mm figures and 1/72 (or 1/76) scale vehicles just look better to me given the range of the weapons when compared to 28mm figures and 1/48 (or 1/56) scale vehicles.

I am happy that I switched.

Battlegroup is da bomb, quite literally. Love 'em!! 8)=

Leland,
Love the KV's :)
L

Wargamer10 I agree with the shouting match but I also think that depends on the board or forum you visit.

But I don't understand your comment "loosing out to 15mm and 28mm in terms of products that serve the wargamer." How can 20mm or any other scale not serve the wargamer? If anything this is reversed, you can find anything in 20mm even Danish figures.

Duane

Switched from 28mm to 20mm WWII due to space and cost constraints. I can use the same size table and field double the amount of forces with all sorts of heavy artillery, planes, etc. that I may not have been able to use in 28mm in the same space. With the plastic toy soldier company releasing and S-models making reasonably priced plastic quick-build kits you can't go wrong an can field 3 20mm vehicles for the price of one 28mm vehicle. I'm still holding onto my 28mm WWII stuff though so I can do more squad based games in the future – which is why I may pick up the Bolt-Action rules in the future. I've always thought about doing FOW in 15mm just because so many people play it – but with the Battlegroup rules picking up interest here in the US I've decided to stick with 20mm.

Leon,

those are Pegasus KV-1S from Pegasus and a lone PITA-to-build PST kit of the KV-2 "Dreadnougt." I have a number of other PST KV-1 variants including the KV-8 flamethrower variant. The Pegasus kits are a real pleasure to built, yet have a very good degree of detail. The newer models such as the T-26 light tank are even better, as they have separate turret roof hatches so you can add your favorite crew figures for the period you're building them for, from the SCW to the war in China to Operation Barbarossa or the Continuation War as part of the Finnish Army.

I'm currently working up at long last my very first PSC kits, a trio of T-70 light tanks I am painting to reinforce my Russian winter campaign collection. The PSC kits are as user friendly as the Pegasus tanks, and the two blend perfectly together.

My next acquisition is the new S-Model Hotchkiss H-35 char de cavalerie, as I have plenty of the later up-engined H-38/39s, but no H-35s which are as I suspect you're aware THE light tanks for 1e and 2e DLMs during the 1940 Campaign in France and the Low Countries.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

I play Command Decision with 20mm exclusively and have used this size figures and models since 1965. The CD game scale is one stand or vehicle = one platoon, so players usually command a battalion equivalent in a game. This set of rules is good for operational-level battles. These days it's amazing how much variety of troops and vehicles you can get in this scale some of it (thinking of die-cast Corgi tanks and Matchbox US halftracks for example) really inexpensively.

Chain of Command in 20mm for me. There is just so much available in that scale and it is the best of both worlds regarding size.

Because it's what a lot of us grew up with, initially Airfix, then Matchbox and Esci joined in in the 70's and it went from there I guess.

In my case I had access to the complete War Illustrated that my granny purchased and had bound for dad while he was on active service, as a kid it was great

Having played WW2 in 15mm, 10mm and 6mm, I'm wanting to head back to 20mm and in plastic for lower level games.

I've been very tempted by 28mm but with retirement not too many years away with the inevitable constraining of funds involved, cost is a big issue

Example tank costs:
20mm Armourfast PzIV – 2 for £7.00 GBP = £3.50 GBP each (approx. $5.43 USD)
28mm Bolt Action PzIV – 1 for £23.00 GBP (approx. $36.65 USD)

So, that extra 8mm in size currently costs 6.75 times as much!

I've been wrestling with the decision of doing 28mm (for another historical time-period), or in 18mm-20mm-1/72 scale, which I and friends already have significant terrain for.

When Bolt Action came out, I resurrected my dusty 20mm WW2 collection, which luckily I had enough figures to do each combatant side for in platoon+ size engagements.

However, with collecting into new scales or periods, the dilemma is whether to co-op a project with others (making the bigger and generally costlier 28mm troops, vehicles, and terrain more manageable, or tackling the complete collection project oneself – but then by doing so in the smaller [more affordable] scales like 20mm here).

I'm gravitating towards deciding not to go larger than a 20mm figure size with any new project decision, but then that means I'll be bucking the "biggin'" trend that many gamers in my area are going for. It's almost a support vs. solo choice, and that's not always the most comfortable decision to make.

Anyone else dealing with this dilemma currently?

1/72 all the way. The "ooh shiny" appeal of 28mm gives it a buzz, and th manufacturers are pushing it. But it is a bit like 54mm. Just too big to work on any normal size table in my mind.

And a co-op programme is good, but solo ends up being the best

My unbiased view is as follows.

20mm is still far the best and most popular scale for WW2 wargaming.

There are 2 downsides to this. You have the 1/76 v 1/72nd issue .
The other downside is there isn't a manufacturer( PSC being nearest)that constantly markets its own figure and rules together and wraps a red bow around them .

To broaden this last view of mine out a little. If say I wanted a complete set of troops and rules books , I could walk down to my local store and buy a 15mm set and rulesbook ( FOW ) or a 28mm starter set and Rulebook by Bolt Action. For 20mm its more of a DIY job and some people don't like doing DIY . This is just my view of course .

Because of the above 15mm ( FOW) and latterly 28mm( Bolt Action) have eroded perhaps some of the market that 20mm used to enjoy.

But if starting out again 20mm would still be my choice.

A link to my blog, the post shows a table setup for CD3, most of my stuff is 1/72 or 1/76 plastic. not into FOW, not into skirmish stuff

link

I used to play years ago in the 8th grade with 1/72 scale. 2 years ago I got back in and refuse to use any other scale. I am going through the whole war start to finish with a friend.

What is a good width for roads in this scale? All roads. Dirt, paved and city?

Depends on your rules sometimes, but 2-3 including verge is about right

Take one of your army trucks – it will sit on a single lane road. Put two side by side with a small gap between and that is how wide you need to make your two lane roads.

Personally I find the roads and cobbled streets made by Early War Miniatures just perfect!