"Larger games and 3mm minis" Topic

Hello

All my gaming has been company sized games and while I enjoy 15mm and that scale of a game I find myself wanting some larger battles.

I have 2 concerns about games that are larger than a company per side.

Abstraction and combined arms.

All war games are abstracted to some degree, but does this get more prevalent in larger scale battles? (I honestly have no idea as I've never even read a set of rules for company+ sized games).

I've found that most of the company sized or less (Chain of Command!) have excellent infantry rules and they are very effective. Does that effectiveness decrease as you grow the scale of the game?

I've seen several larger scale rules being thrown around, but have never looked at them (mainly Blitzkrieg Commander and Kampfgruppe Commander III).

I've watched a couple videos of O Group, but I didn't' care for it.

Appreciate any suggestion for a battalion/brigade level WW2 game that has some crunch to it and handles combined arms well enough.

Thanks

Rapid Fire is another possibility for you. Each player
controlling a battalion or more. Fast play. Second edition
usually stocked at On Military Matters and there is a shorter
fast play version out now as well. I think the second edition
would better fit what you are looking for since it is more detailed.. There are posts
here on TMP regarding the rules and they also have a website.
Worth taking a look at.

Rapid Fire is another possibility for you.

With 3mm figures?

Command Decision is pretty good for battalion /brigade level. Infantry and artillery are an essential part of the combat team.

A bit more abstract but pitched at larger games is Spearhead, which is also very good. A battalion would be a bit small, works best a Regiment (or three).

Played both and while we really like Rapid Fire for 3mm I think Spearhead would work better

For very large engagements you can also look at the following:

Panzer Korps: Stands are companies. You can read a summary of them here:

link

Fistful of TOWs: Stands are platoons. Summary here:

link

Rommel: Grid based. Fairly abstract. Detyails:

sammustafa.com/rommel

Agree on Spearhead. Reading the OP, I saw the mention of 15mm
and went from there. 3mm would be doubtful for Rapid Fire.
Thanks Major B for catching my goof,completely ignored the 3mm in the title.

It depends how much detail you required, this is a list of higher scale rules. Some are free rules which can be downloaded.
Below are videos which provides an overview of rules. Scale is what an element represents. I suspect you may need to focus on platoon scale, which allows you to command a Regiment/Brigade.
Platoon Scale: youtu.be/7Rz2klk5_HE
Company Scale: youtu.be/XsqxziRMG2M
Battalion Scale: youtu.be/U-b-ZrdRRAs
Regimental Scale: youtu.be/9GFw6Obzgr0

I have used the following rule systems and have found that combined arms and infantry are effective in them.
Panzer Korps = company per element
Fistful of Tows – platoon per element, but also used for 1L1 and company per element
Lightning War – Red Storm -company per element

Fistful of Tows and LWRS include both WW2 and Modern warfare in the rules. Panzer Korps requires the addition of the OPFOR supplement for modern warfare.

Of these Lightning War – Red Storm is free from the groups.io/g/LWRS

Rommel is very good, but warfare at operational level is very different to tactical games; combat tends to be attritional and all tanks are much alike (although the rules have a nice ‘armour advantage' system to reward better tanks). The different tactics available to different armies at various stage of the war gives the game very good flavour and also makes for interesting decision making

I have been noticing an increased interest with 3mm and Panzer Korps, I expect because of the basing system. link
I have been talking with a layer going down the 3mm with PanzerKorps path, but I can't find his posts any more. While looking for them I found this interesting post on reddit which used standard 3cm bases.
link
I have thought about using 3mm with my figure game version of boardgame rules, but it generally does not make much sense compared with 6mm. But big base game systems, such as PanzerKorps or LWRS, can get a real benefit from 3mm. Saying that i have been thinking about 3mm even if non-bigbase rules, but using 2cm sq bases instead of 3cm sq bases. Another project to consider in the future.