REDONE BECAUSE OF A BUNCH OF SPELLING ERRORS
Uscha,
"Hate to rain on your parade."
It's quite alright, though I still think you are incorrect. 3mm is no more subject to, or limited by, ground scale than any other scale. That's like saying "28mm, that's too big! You can only play chess with pieces that big!"
"Its not about pretty, its about realistic."
First, we're wargamers, so it's probably at least a little bit about pretty, at least insofar as we want our tables to look like a piece of ground that was actually fought over. If you threw out a red mat for a game I'd say that might work for Mars, but probably not Normandy. But I posted those pics because they look like scenes out of actual WWII photographs, or something you might see out your car window while driving. So realistic was what I was going for there.
Second, it doesn't look at all like a board game to me, nor does it look like I'd be abstracting anything if I were so fortunate as to be able to play on that table.
"The lovely picture of the village is just wrong for most European villages."
Perhaps he wasn't showing most villages, perhaps he was showing *that* village? I don't understand why you speak in such absolutes. And why does it seem so implausible to you that he couldn't just add more buildings to make a larger village?
"The roads are typically 2 tanks wide."
Again with the absolutes. I bet if we were in Europe circa 1944 we could find a rural road or two that was less than two tanks wide. Matter of fact, I bet we could find some areas marked as roads on maps that were nothing more than cart tracks, or animal paths. Believe it or not, such things still exist in many places. I was on one just t'other day, right here in the United States!
And do you honestly believe he couldn't just make the road a bit wider if he wanted to?
"Putting tanks on bases makes it much worse. When we played at 6mm no tanks were on bases. Even then getting you tanks to move inside the village is difficult. spacing the houses out does not work as then the sight lines are then stupidly too wide and infantry then suffer when they should not."
Hmmm, lot of issues here, the easiest being, don't base your vehicles. Or put them on smaller bases. I'd have to adjust the basing and the houses to see if LOS is actually an issue, or if the spacing between houses was something I couldn't live with.
I suppose before we go too much further we should discuss the echelon the game is being fought at; if we're running a company or larger per side I would argue that we're getting too far in the weeds. That's just my opinion, but Company Commanders generally aren't worried about the ten foot gap between individual houses, in my experience.
Another option is, don't move tanks off roads in urban areas, which is what is done in real life. The tankers I served with didn't like being trapped in a town on a four lane road, much less trying to squeeze between individual houses. Most tankers don't like the idea of someone they can't see, on the roof or an upper story, dropping something down on them. And don't talk to me about infantry support, I was the infantry support; to properly clear a block of houses takes a platoon all day, and I'm assuming since we have tank support we've got something more pressing on our minds, meaning were moving up the street (providing 360 degree security) without clearing everything. Whether the tank or the grunts lead depends on what's happening, but that tank wants as much empty space around it as possible.
"Nothing wrong with the scenery artistically but you are applying board game levels of abstraction as its pretty, but not realistic in any way."
To me that statement is beyond insane. Are you playing a squad-sized skirmish game? I mean, it sounds like you're interested in the individual placement of trees and bushes. I will admit that I wouldn't play skirmish games in 3mm, but I'm sure some do, and I've done it in 10mm and had some folks tell me it was a dumb idea while some said it was a great idea.
"We find with the ground out by a factor of 5 with the ground scale you can get the right number of roads and hedges/ditches woods etc."
Okay.
"You can get most of the roads in a urban area but the gardens have to go as the houses are too big."
What??!! Are you saying it's possible to procure realistically scaled houses and buildings in other scales, but not 3mm? That is demonstrably false.
"Google maps is your friend on these things."
??? If you're talking about determining realistic distances between houses, or widths of roads, so is looking at photos from the relevant era, or even going outside and taking a look around.
"With 3mm you would need tweezers to move through houses spaced at the correct distance at model scale."
So? Are you saying it can't be done? Or shouldn't be done? I don't get it. If you're saying it's too much a pain in the ass for you to do okay, but you're not everyone. It can be done, and I'm sure someone, somewhere is doing it. Wargamers do weird/difficult/crazy stuff all the time.
But that's my point: you constantly speak in absolutes about what is proper, and you're wrong.
"Again neither one of us is wrong its about what you actually want to represent and fight over."
Well, if you're saying you can't play a tabletop wargame with realistic (1:1) groundscale in 3mm, you are wrong. I would argue the smaller the scale, the easier it becomes to have realistic ground scale.
I regularly play games in 10mm, and I was curious about 1:1 ground scale, so I measured my 8 foot table to work out how far it was in 'real life.' I don't recall off the top of my head, but it was ridiculous, something like 350 or 450 yards.
Well, there goes the idea of having company-sized tank action, we're already at point blank range! Throw out armor and penetration, this is a melee! And throw out arty, air support, phased attacks, defense in depth, reserves, hell, even mortars and machine guns!
V/R,
Jack
struggles to complete his SISI truck force.
