"A second message from the owners of GHQ" Topic

@RayMP51
So do you put on the fingernail polish after you paint? Or before?

@UshCha
I don't have clue what u r talking about. Dont understand the ratios.

To the makers of GHQ: I can sympathize with a need to promote your business. I have always liked the look of your products and they do have appeal for me. I've played in 1/285 and even bought some GHQ micro armor in the past.

However, I play 15mm and Flames of War as well as Team Yankee. I am no "beginner" and quite frankly find it hilarious that you're diminishing the works of another manufacturer in a different scale by praising "business model" and saying its close to the same scale as 28/30mm games.

I'll continue to play the scale I've chosen, and laugh at the tired old debate about "tank parking lots" and "compressed scale". I find it fun, I like the rules and so does my gaming group. I enjoy 15mm scale terrain, infantry and vehicles and my group has never had issues with clumped vehicles because we just haven't played that way I suppose.

Enjoy 1/285 or any other chosen scale, and promote your product, but you're not getting my business by talking about how long you've been around then sounding like you're trying to convert someone to a religion and diminishing anyone who likes the other scales.

I'll continue to play the scale I've chosen, and laugh at the tired old debate about "tank parking lots" and "compressed scale"
I just hope you don't mind your game being laughed at by others. I understand going where the gamers are. People don't have to play historic to have fun.

Heck, people can have fun playing any rules and at any scale. I remember hearing shouting from the table next door to our convention game. "Hey, Orcs can't use two-handed broad swords! That's unrealistic."

But, there is no denying what tank parking lots look like from the 1/285th game table next door.

I just hope you don't mind your game being laughed at by others. I understand going where the gamers are. People don't have to play historic to have fun.

Heck, people can have fun playing any rules and at any scale. I remember hearing shouting from the table next door to our convention game. "Hey, Orcs can't use two-handed broad swords! That's unrealistic."

But, there is no denying what tank parking lots look like from the 1/285th game table next door.

If you feel the need to "laugh at" another person's game – perhaps it is you who actually has the problem, and not the other gamers…

If you feel the need to "laugh at" another person's game – perhaps it is you who actually has the problem, and not the other gamers

How is that, Doctor Freud?

Laughing is impolite. I just politely decline to play nowadays.

B

I must echo fingolfen's sentiment. What is this deal of laughing about other people's hobbies anyway? Aren't we all nerds essentially playing with toy soldiers?

A wargame requires, among other things, a willing suspension of disbelief. No wargame accurately models everything about the reality of war -- nor I think it should. A successful wargame models at least some aspects of warfare, while remaining an entertaining game. FoW does this. Bolt Action does this. Amazingly Realistic Microscale Game also does this. Some will allow situations which won't naturally occur in battle, such as tank "parking lots" (but don't feel too smug: Amazing Microscale Game will be guilty of other flaws to some degree). If you strongly care about a game's flaws, simply don't play it. It's ok to say "I don't like this game because of X" or even "I refuse to play this" (I, for example, don't like games with too many stats or bookkeeping), but there is no need to mock it or deny other people's enjoyment.

Some puzzling things I learned from this thread:

- That it's somehow the wrong attitude at conventions for someone to be "determined to have fun". Wargaming is a Serious Business and can only be attempted if one knows an encyclopedia or two about the history of warfare, and then only without displaying any undue enjoyment.

- That it's ok to laugh someone off from your game if they try to do something historically inaccurate or they display any kind of misunderstanding about the tactics of the period. People who do that (the laughing off) must be very welcoming and have lots of friends…

- Your enjoyment of your Serious Game is somehow marred if someone is having fun with Warhammer at the next table.

I must echo fingolfen's sentiment. What is this deal of laughing about other people's hobbies anyway? Aren't we all nerds essentially playing with toy soldiers?

I agree as well, why must Nick laugh at GHQ? What did they ever do to him?

Why laugh at someone who brings up what he considers tired debates? Why?

"Wargaming is a Serious Business and can only be attempted if one knows an encyclopedia or two about the history of warfare"

To inject a bit of proper levity into the discussion, I once took part in a very large Malrburian convention game run by the late great Pat Condray – a man who I discovered took his Lace Wars very seriously indeed. Having been given command of the infantry of the left flank, I industriously set up my troops, taking advantage of all the terrain features and retaining the elite rated battalions as a reserve. Just as turn one was to begin, Pat stepped up to the table, glanced at my handiwork, and immediately went rather red in the face. He scolded me by remarking that my command would never have been organized on the field in that fashion and sharply commented that I obviously had no understanding of the historical order of seniority of the various battalions under my command (which was an undeniable truth). He then proceeded to dismantle my entire set up and spent about 15 minutes personally re-organizing my position to his satisfaction before permitting the game to commence.

Rest in Peace, Pat.

B

At which point I would have stood up, said a polite 'Thank you' and left.

Berating a stranger for not having your level of knowledge before embarrassing them in public to me is not the way to get people to respect the way you play your game.

Hi Ascent – Yes, I could well have done so and perhaps with legitimate justification. Anyone who knew Pat (and I do not claim that I knew him WELL) will probably agree that he could be an "acquired taste". But I must have awoken that day with an extra good vibe going. Pat and I later became friendly and I discovered that his better features far outweighed his few behavioral quirks (which IMO orbited around a very high intelligence). The moral of the story for me is to be tolerant of strangers until you get to know them better, something that has stood me in good stead in my life.

Re distasteful rules sets and games …..
I walk around at cons and have seen many games featuring rules that I would NEVER willingly choose to play, but that in other respects represented a great deal of industry, time and passion on the part of the gamemaster. I can respect that. "Different Strokes", as they say.

B

Blutarski, thanks for sharing that anecdote! I agree with your attitude about strangers and rules sets.

I'm often late to the party, so it's no surprise here. I have seen people using 6 mil with FoW for years, and a much larger number playing TY with it. What's the problem with that? The scale of the miniatures suits the rules really well. I have read through all of the posts here, and am wondering why anyone is upset. In the OP it sounds like their is a lot of actual praise for BF. If you look back over the years of wargaming there is a long history of mixing manufacturers products in a game. Before GW most of the industry was divided into "rules companies" and "miniatures companies", most companies either made one, or the other. How have we gotten to the point where when someone is singing the praises of their ideas/products/whatever, that they are in some way diminishing someone else? I'm not going to say "don't be so sensitive" to anyone, or tell them how they should feel, but I will suggest that if someone is clicking off the positives about their thing, that doesn't mean that they are saying anything negative about your thing. For many of us this hobby is a retreat from all of the hassles/cattiness/unpleasantries/etc. of life. There have been times over the years when I have been convinced that the rules/scale that I was using wasn't the best. Sometimes hearing things made me more comfortable with what I already thought. Keeping an open mind to that type of thing, and not taking it personally, has helped me out, and has sometimes improved my games.

In gaming as in many things … Do what works for you … not me …

I would love to see GHQ produce 1:100 (15mm) models with the same awesome quality they have done with 1:285 scale all these years – I bet it would be most impressive?!? I know I'd being qeueing up to buy a bunch of their models with fistfuls of dollars! LOL!!!

I believe the scale of vehicles as it relates to their ground scale have to be better proportioned to each other, than some of these games do, to avoid the bogus looking hubcap to hubcap syndrome. And, their movement vs. their firing ranges have to be congruent to this concept as well. In FoW it does effect the tactical movement and firing because of it, and can't be discounted as insignificant to gameplay. As some have mentioned it severely hampers enveloping and flanking tactics when you have a wall of tanks facing off on each side as if you were gaming Napoleonics – it's a bit ridiculous and distances the game from more plausible or realistic interaction.

In my current game design I do what some of the more seasoned posters on this thread promote, which is to incorporate a form of "punishment" for doing so. I impose a "proximity rule" which enables bunched up tanks to be fired upon with enhanced hit probabilities based on having acquired hits on an initial target, whose odds can be transferred, for higher ROF vehicles, to expend followup rounds on the initial target's neighbors, so to speak.

No scale of vehicles are better than others – it's all about what you like and enjoy building. However, it's irrefutable that some scale of models lend themselves better than others to different gaming situations and scope or size of battles. To be as historic as possible and to allow for all tactical options they should be somewhat proportional.

One poster who made the very astute comment with which I agree and is purely my own opinion, which is that I use "models to play the game, not the game to play with models"! That is not to say that I won't do the utmost in building the scenery and models to the highest level of "eye candy" which is what makes it all the more fun and realistic.

I think this is where a lot of gamers lose sight of the more plausible historic overtones at the expense of playing with their pretty toys! This is even more prevalent in Bolt Action than in FoW. The relation to a good rendition of actual tank fighting becomes so far removed from reality that it becomes ludicrous. Of course, if this doesn't matter to the player then this a moot point and this entire thread is without merit.

Being a military man for 25 years, it would seem to me that if I wanted to "teach" someone combined arms tactics with some of these games, as they are, they would serve as very bad choices, indeed. More honesty in game design would go a long way and doesn't require more complicated mechanics. In fact, given how FoW is more a set of rules of "Special Rules" it bypasses tank warfare fundamentals with an astonishing level of oversimplification at it's core. Yet, the game is hard to learn because of all these abstractions that must be corrected with special rules to achieve some level of realistic outcomes?!? Go figure?!

These game design mechanics are formulated, skewed in their representation, to simply make you buy more of their stuff. This clearly makes sense if from a marketing standpoint you are wanting to maximize your profits. So, they're smart from a business sense, but the uninformed gamer coming into the hobby is robbed of understanding the more sophisticated nature of modern warfare as an art, and, lack the authenticity and visceral feel to the warfare! That's my beef with this subject.

- Tibor

Personally I prefer 1/285 scale for tank warfare games using a scale of 1" = 25 meters because for me it gives the right "feel". By using movement turns small enough that most vehicles only move 2" per turn it interacts well with historical rates of fire and I don't need any special op fire rules. In a 2-3 hour game we do get in 30-40 turns of movement, it depends on how many vehicles are on the table and how much terrain too.

We have also done infantry with tank support in 28mm for urban combat scenarios but with a scale of 1" = 5 meters.

I'm not a miniatures guys having played board war games for decades before I got into miniatures. I'm more accustomed to systems with charts and some bookkeeping. For me it's more about how well do the rules relate to historical documents and manuals. Figures and scale is secondary.I don't care about taking close up pictures or putting together an AAR that is just photos of the game.

I agree with SpecFor12 above: My take on the miniatures gaming industry is that the large and successful companies marketing people are driving the rules and models. For the hobby it's probably a good thing because the marketing people know what people want and what they will buy (call it a Psy Op). If companies were putting out their version of Tractics I doubt if there would as many people playing.

There is really no need to have 25% to 33% of a rule book stuffed with pictures other than to stimulate the imagination of the reader to recreate to image in the book using the companies models and paints. In addition to the eye candy the books put in more pages about developing "balanced" scenarios as if any battle was ever fought with balance by both sides being ensured ahead of time.

I first really noticed these visually stimulated people (maybe I'm visually challenged) when playing a WWII Pacific Saipan scenario in 28mm at a convention using an extremely simplistic game system with the most beautiful models and terrain you'd ever want to use. When I moved a Marine amtrack on top of a bunker one of the GM's got all excited and jumping around like he had to go #1. He showed me a picture from a historical book on the battle of Saipan that looked almost exactly like my amtrack on the table. He then "proclaimed" how realistic the game was. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot????? It then dawned on me some people are very visual and see things differently than me. They even had a KIA figure to replace the model and it was complete with blood, gore and guts hanging out. Oh, for additional "realism" in the game the same guy would make mouth noises simulating machine gun fire, etc to show the result of the die roll. The GM for that game is in his mid 30's and a real estate professional in a major US city. The AAR pictures really did show the carnage with all of the dead bodies laying about.

You can't really create the eye candy with 1/285 scale and it is not as visually stimulating. I've had people say, "I don't play micro armor" and I can now understand why.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this approach, I enjoy the eye candy too. Not being a miniatures collector I'm not going to fork out $400 USD for to buy 20 models. I use the OPM principle in war gaming (Other Peoples Models).

Wolfhag

I agree … 1/285 is really the better/best scale for large scale operational and tactical 20th-21st Century warfare.

I am disappointed that GHQ never has made a 1/285th scale RATTE, for their Wehrmacht '47 line …

1/285, 1/300 or 6 mm is GOD's own scale.

And the newer 3 mm / 1/600 are nice as hell and I would go with them (PICO ARMOR) If it for my national debt invested in GHQ, C in C and Scotia (90% GHQ) since around 1976.

At one time up till around 10 years ago I had a massive Napoleonic army's of nothing but Heroics & Ros, but times were hard ($$$) and I had to let some one adopt them.

I Love GHQ's work and prefer there models over the other manufactures out there.

There almost to well detailed.

Curiously I've found that as I get older, the scale of stuff I like is getting smaller. When I first got into wargaming at about age 12 I played (28mm) 40K and Warhammer. In my mid-20s I shifted to (15mm) Flames of War. Now I like (1:1800) War at Sea and I'm considering starting on 6mm or similar WW2.

I don't know if my megalomania is increasing as I age and I want to command larger formations or if I'm learning more about history and how larger armies are organised. I don't think anything is perfect and we're lucky to have so many different scales to cater for different tastes.

You can get a TY company of T-72s for $3.00 USD in 3mm. That makes them scale worthy and very affordable.

This fetish is what keeps miniatures games stuck treating only very small actions. (Back in the day, I had friends who turned up their noses at micro-scale for "not looking right," because it hardly looks like _anything_ from a distance, so there's some irony.)

To do anything larger, you need to adjust to appropriate scaling, or else you end up with monster games that — if you have the table space in the first place — take longer to play than the actual battles took to fight!

In board games, we went the other way around; more accurately, that hobby started in the middle and then went both up to grand strategic and down to close tactical.

Some people complained about overly wide streets in Squad Leader, but such compromises — and the "design for effect" philosophy — made the game's scope (in between Sniper! and Panzerblitz) practical with the degree of elegance achieved.

There are _always_ trade-offs in design; it's a matter of choosing which aspects you want to prioritize.

In WW2 miniatures rules sets, at least in my experience, Frank Chadwick's Command Decision was a pioneering expansion of scope. That was prior to the further increase in Barbarossa/25, whence the term ‘bath-tubbing' arose (although the practice was far from new, indeed more often resorted to with models fundamentally not treating anything in other than very zoomed-in terms).

I think it's telling that people speak of "micro-armor" and "tank warfare" rather than of combined arms. It may be understandable that people who regard the infantry as non-trivial often want the figures to be large enough to look like men rather than tiny blobs.

I first started playing WWII in 1972 using Tractics. We used 1/100 tanks on huge tables and had a lot of fun.

It now seems that since I have also played FOW that I am a "beginner"

It's good to feel young again.

I am not sure you can claim any wargaming scale is God's own scale. If God has any scale it would be 1:1 :-)
I find I can get a decent company level game with 15mm figures and a platoon level skirmish with 28mm. I also don't get the whole it is much cheaper argument. If I am playing in 15mm then a company of tanks for FOW will cost me about £75.00 GBP, but if I am playing 6mm I want to play with a battalion of tanks which will cost me about £75.00 GBP Dropping down to 3mm does save money. A division's worth of tanks costs less than £30.00 GBP

I have never understood why GHQ's vehicle scale is 1/285 nor why its accompanying figure scale is 10mm. In 1/285 scale an average WW2 soldier would be exactly 6mm tall, which makes sense of sorts until you realise the associated figures are 10mm…

I am outsider here. I have spent three months doing a Belgian HA Battery for Waterloo Remodelled in 1/72.

But I keep returning back to TOTS (The One True Scale) which, for me was 28mm, and gents in Napoleonic uniforms.

I will not yet concede that plastic figures are better and that 1/72 is very forgiving, but I am getting to wonder.

All I know is everyone here says GHQ are the best figures, as are AB Mins in WWII. Hang the cost issue, consider the time spent getting them right, if your purchases are not up to that standard.

Fred Cartwright Well if you go to ripoff manufactures you will get ripped off. Go for 1/144 it is relatively inexpensive if you go to the right places and hey you even get scale models not gross caricatures.

Again here you are on the figure/Model detail vs actual gaming scale. models as art work mean little to me so smaller scales which allow a bigger more "open" battle field win out. The scale of representation then becomes what is practical. 3mm is no use to me for tactical games, you can't turn turrets on such small vehicles, but to be fair they are not designed for the games I want to play. So the perfect scale depends on some balance of priorities.
Mind you 1/144 is the one true scale of course ;-).

In 1/76 scale I do skirmish rules where 1cm – 1 metre. All distances, including vertical, are consistent and LOS is whatever it appears to be.

If I were going to go back to micro it would be for an era I don't currently do, such as 1980s NATO/WP or perhaps AIW. I'd then quite likely go for GHQ for the reasons Deadhead gives. The price of the models is immaterial compared to what you sink into rules, scenery etc.

Incicentally does anyone know of a good set of rules for divisional scale Cold War battles in 1/285?

4th cuirassier,

I've been playing Cold War Commander for years, with GHQ minis, and it's a really excellent set.

As 4eme Cuir tells us. (and thanks for acknowledging my earlier post) the initial outlay is chicken feed.

Think of the time spent in sanding off "flash" and mould (UK spelling) lines. Then painting, then basing. Save a quid or a buck here or there, you only have so many hours on this earth.

Do not economise on the cost of the model. That is just crazy.

Think of the hours that will go into each one, making them your pride and joy.

I would apply this to 1/300/285 tanks or the best 1/72 plastics for Waterloo (still not totally convinced), or 28mm Saxon Garde Du Corps by Paul Hicks for 1812.

Save money on take aways or booze, but not the figures you spend your precious lifespan painting.

Your favourites may not be mine. But do not be ruled by a slight price difference. Choose what works for you.

@ foxbat: thanks, will check out. Are they 1:1 or do models = platoons etc?

@ deadhead: Cheap wine is another false economy. Buy the decent stuff. As well as tasting better, it comes with free lead foil around the neck of the bottle. Hugely useful for straps, musket slings, sappers' aprons, lance pennons and flags. The cost of cheap wine plus lead foil is greater than that of decent wine, and the wine doesn't taste like Tom's nettle wine from Reggie Perrin.

(Cheap caviar is good value. There's stuff you can get for a fiver, and stuff you can get for a hundred quid. One comes from sturgeons and one doesn't, or something. I am delighted to be totally unable to tell the difference.)

There are some limits. I was noodling around Korean War armour to see what there is in my existing 1/76. The NKs can use 1/76 T-34/85s and IS3s, and the west can use Cromwells, Chaffees, and Centurions – all easily enough found at about a tenner a pop. If you want Pershings or M46s, you're looking at Milicast at £31.00 GBP++! Yikes! You can get 3D printed ones a bit cheaper but even so I'm not sure I'm yet ready for the £20.00 GBP to £30.00 GBP 1/76 tank.

Hello, CWC is a base = 1 platoon, 1 model is 3-5 real vehicles.

On a side note, and I'm from Bordeaux, chateaux no longer use lead foil, but some sort of aluminium alloy.Lead poisoning prevention, EU food safety regulations, that sort of things…

Spanish and Italian wine can come in a brass wire cage. Much of it is braided too. Worth its weight in gold………

Aiguillettes, drag ropes for smaller scales etc.

And there are different thicknesses of the foil on bottles (and I do mean the metal ones), but for junk of the back of a tank (eg aircraft recognition panels) unbeatable

4th Cuirassier,

Frontline do a 20mm M26 Pershing for £7.00 GBP There are also Altaya diecasts around. They will be 1/72. Frontline is usually 1/76 but sometimes bigger. If it is a concern, ask him for the dimensions. I've found him very helpful.

I have used the hammered flat wire from champagne bottles as replacement swords on 25mm Minifigs.

Deadhead,

I agree with you. Well sculpted figures are so much easier to paint. Try Hinton Hunt versus SHQ. SHQ paint so much more quickly.

I'd energetically second the guy who made the comment about "combined arms." The bigger scales work very well for past-1914 conflicts if you're interested primarily in small-scale maneuver, with the artillery appearing only as the "deus ex machina" impacts summoned by maneuver commmanders. If you want to play true combined arms operations in the twentieth century, the great advantage of 6mm/ 1/285 is the way that it "looks right" when you substitute large scale terrain and smaller scale buildings and foliage. I'm interested in simulating warfare at the division/corps level, so I want to capture the depth of formations of that size, including the deployment and integration of their artillery, so 6mm it is.

I am working now on Gallipoli/Palestine in 6mm with my son (my interest is the former, his the latter), using the old GDW "Over The Top" rules. Using rule-of-thumb math, it looks like it's just about possible to cover north Anzac and the Chunuk Bair ridge on a ping-pong table. 6mm will still be big at that size, but not nearly as outsize as 15mm would be. A single package of Bacchus Turks comes very close to filling out the infantry of a Turkish division, at two figures to a stand.

A single package of Bacchus Turks comes very close to filling out the infantry of a Turkish division, at two figures to a stand.

One of the reasons I have looked at smaller scale figures is not to do games at 2 figures a stand, but to put multiple tanks/figures on each stand. Some of the most impressive games I have seen used thousands of 6mm figures to create impressive looking battalions and squadrons giving a better appreciation of the sheer scale (no pun intended!) of horse and musket battles.
It is possible to play corps sized actions in bigger scales, but you end up with 1 tank representing an entire battalion. That gives you a dozen single vehicle stands for a Panzer division and doesn't convey the mass effect well.

In OTT, each stand is a platoon, and the sizing really only accommodates two figures. But once massed, they are an impressive site: a battalion requires 34 figures. Five or six battalions of that size, massed in waves, make an impressive visual, if you're gaming an action such as Kemal's famous attack at Chunuk Bair in August, 1915.