"Flames of War - Desperate Measures! - 20mm?" Topic

Dear All,

Today I experimented with FOW using 20mm minis and increasing the groundscale by 50%. Batrep and thoughts here:
link

There's a chap on the Wargames Directory who has been building up forces uses plastic figures and kits in 20mm. He's on a tight budget and his results are impressive.

On a budget go 6mm…

That looks great, and the size of a board to fit a 20mm armor battle too!!!

Also on a budget – go 10mm (as infantry units look visually appealing enough in "N" scale).

Looks good. As long as you have the room, you can use whatever size figures you want. I contemplated using 25s for awhile…

20mm is my scale of preference for ww2.
I've only played fow once, some time ago.
The jerries look like they had more than enough kit just with panthers an jagdpanthers.

I think you should give coc a go.

And my ww2 adaptation of sg2.

With attack defence games we map deploy the defenders. Miniatures are only placed once spotted. The attacker wouldn't even know what the defender had, let alone where the infantry was.

Great stuff- entertaining batrep and nice painting. Thought about doing this myself but I found the rules a bit complex.

Playing FOW since 2004 using 20mm miniatures collection. Thought about increasing the ground scale back then but in the end just left the same. Made the rules easy… no changes. Run the FOW scenarios all the time using the 20mm models.. even at conventions. Beach landings, Normandy battles, Russian front. Always draw the crowd at the conventions… you can see the miniatures from across the table unlike the smaller 15mm (will say excellent miniatures still). Just couldn't change scale 20mm to 15mm due to the collection size.

The only major change I did was base the infantry teams on larger bases due to their larger size. Standard teams on 2.5" x 1.75" bases. The smaller teams on 1.75" x 1.5" and all HMG on the smaller base size.

Does play a different game… less under the artillery template for one thing. And the miniatures are more spread out on the tabletop since my vehicles have tile bases to protect the fine track parts and keep some separation of the models… harder for the tank lineup look.

Scenario examples, photos, and AAR writeups on the Wargamerabbit blog: link

Valmontone scenario Italy 1944:

Omaha Beach scenario:

M aka WR

Nice looking game NFWS, great AAR.

WargameRabbit, great looking tables. Especially the Omaha beach board.

NFWS, that was an amazing looking game, and a very well written AAR. Glad I got to see the pictures and read teh action!

I play Flames of War in 1/72 and do pretty much the same thing: I increase all distances by 50% and increased the base sizes by a bit. It works very well, and since 1/72 is actually less than 50% bigger than 15mm models, it actually gives more "ground space" between models than 15mm when using a 6ft by 9ft table instead of 4ft by 6ft due to the fact the distances are increased more than the miniature size increased, proportionally.

Of course, my games aren't anywhere near as cool looking as the one you posted! Glad you shared!

I play FOW 15mm but a buddy plays 1:72 without changing ranges (for the same reason stated above: it just makes it easier with the rules). However, for him we cut platoon sizes in half (rounding up) so that the 6x4 board doesn't get too congested.

"There's a chap on the Wargames Directory who has been building up forces uses plastic figures and kits in 20mm. He's on a tight budget and his results are impressive."

That might be me. Still in the stage of building three early war armies, Polish, Soviet and German.

I like it.

Here's the link to my adventures:

link

Thanks for looking and all the kind comments guys! Good to see I'm not the only crazy on the farm!

Perhaps someone should start up a tournament circet for 20mm FOW. I'm not a big fan but would play in 20mm to support the "scale."

TomT

Always amusing when I run a FOW 20mm game at the local convention and the same convention has a FOW tourney running concurrently. Interesting comments. Generally supportive of my efforts. Some "scale comments" but overall positive with few "odd apples" in the gaming FOW community. Generally run big multi player scenarios, not points affairs, team type games so a different atmosphere to the one on one FOW world in many cases.

Wonderful Batrep Sparker, very nice look! Actually the best scale for FOW is 10mm on a 6x4 foot table. Air, Arty and Morotised Infantry really come into their own with this scale. The look suffers somewhat though as the smaller the scale the less individual feel each model or base has. I do like what you have done with the 20mm though, especially since I am moving away from 15's now into larger scales :)

A glimpse of the ESCI Hummel there! That brings back some memories. What make is your Stuka? I have a diecast one, Corgi I think.

Thanks again gents for the supportive comments. The Hummels are actually Dragon diecasts, which I assume are derived from the Dragon kits? As for the Stuka, absolutely no idea and can't remember – weighs a ton thought so might well be Corgi!

Looks like CLS with tanks – sorry

I have all my WW2 armies organised for FoW in 20mm, but tend to play in 15mm still – cos that is what my pal owns, and he has a bigger table! Both of us have heard that 10mm makes more sense for reasons given above, and I can see an excursion in that direction – probably early war to avoid duplication/boredom.

As I have basically been 'into 1/72' for all my life, playing FoW in that scale was a no brainer. I wanted to stay as close tot the 1:1 miniature count as possible, so I used FoW bases one size larger than the size used in 15 mm. My half squads of 4-5 figures are on largest Fow bases. Command, MG's, mortars, 2-3 man teams etc. on medium bases. 1-2 man spotters and lmg, bazooka etc. on the smallest bases. This method saved me from having to build/buy upscaled bases and gives a very easy, consistent basing through my armies. Small vehicles are also easily based.
Scaleswise in battle: both No Change distance (especially for smaller battles, less crowded) and +50% ranges in larger battles work for me.

That's a cool trick Oghar, going 1 up on the bases!

Navy,

Your presentation looks awesome!

A common critique of FoW is that it results in the proverbial parking lot syndrome.

20mm figures really don't take up that much more space than 15mm. You can even use some buildings with both 20mm and "large" 15mm troops.

Your increasing ranges by 50% massively improves the dispersion of the troop stands and vehicles. It looks so much better than the official measurements using 15mm troops!!! Well done!

Thanks so much mate!