"Reporesenting boats" Topic

I have put this here because there is no 10mm modern board but it covers a wide period issue anyway.
We are running a game at 1:1 troop scale and 1mm to 1m ground scale. It involves among other things a river crossing of a 100m river (100mm wide on the board) with 9 man boats, 1 crew and 8 troops..
Given this how would you/do you represent the boats? Clearly a full scale model would just look a bit daft, a 40mm long boat (1/144 scale boat would be about 5.8m in real life) on a 100mm wide river but what else? We just put the markers there and ignored the boat but its less than ideal. What great wheezes have you come up for this?

Could you indicate that a crossing operation was in progress by parking a lorry hauling a correct-scale boat next to the water feature? Perhaps with a few engineer figures on the far bank to "recover and return" the (notional) boats? Yes, it's no more than a marker but one which aids rather than detracts from the diorama effect.

What sort of boats are you representing? Assault boats (as at Nijmegan)? Rowing boats? At your ground scale, as you say, a 40mm boat would be big at 40 metres. A racing yacht is 35 metres on average. A solution could be to make the boats fit the ground scale rather than the figure scale. Build or buy models of suitable size (even with appropriate figures) and have them race back and forth. A simple process would be; unit moves to edge of water, meets appropriate number of boats, remove figures, sail the boats noting damage and casualties as they go and when the boats reach the far side put back on the table the survivors from the passengers.

The scale of the boats need not be spot on but as with 'smaller scale' buildings, a balance of representation and realism.

Artilleryman In the post noted real boat about 5.8m so 40mm ground scale but 5.8m model scale.

Eumelus interesting thought but a truck and a lorry, far to much real estate being used up the combination would be close to 100mm long next to a 100mm wide river.

But a small scale boat on the bank at a smaller scale as suggested by Artilleryman is a possible option, but if the model was small enough it could be on the river, a true dilemma.

What size boat would be a good compromise. Actually I may have got it wrong. The picture (sorry poor standard) of a BTR60 swimming looks not too bad and it's 50mm long.

link

So a bit under size say, 30mm boat might do but only for 80 to 100mm wide rivers. I guess it might have to be 1/300 scale to have a wider application. Do I want to design a 1/300 boat, would be hell to print not that keen for a rare use item. May be a good top down shape with a few marks on, painted so it matched, sort of a Flat? A bit like the infantry in the picture? With care it could be double sided so loaded one way up un-loaded the other, anybody done this? Anybody know of a good small (5 to 6m) top down drawing without copyright? I could use the basic image to craft the "sort of flat".

I'm still enjoying the repo-resenting idea from the title. The boat owners won't pay the boat loans and resent the repo-men sent to foreclose on the collateral. I think some interesting skirmishes could be played out with repossessing boats.

Oberlindes Sol LIC who am I to spoil life little pleasures for you.

If you're willing to use scaled down stuff to abstract the location without being perfectly scale accurate, I know of a couple of options:

GHQ has some boats with crews. There may be other 6mm options in STL form, look around.

The Pendraken WWII range has inflatable boats and rowers in the German miscellany category. They may not look like exactly what you want, but at least they're military-looking gear and roughly in scale. The little dinghys only hold a few crew figures, but they are also pretty short (20-25mm?), so should hopefully look acceptably small on a 100mm wide river; if it takes multiple turns to cross the river, there should be enough space to represent a few turns on the water between beaches.

- Ix

Alas I am struggleing with Smug mug at the minute so no pictures. With all your help I was able to decide at least a starting position, so thanks. I opted to produce an approximate scale Assult boat based on the typical Zodiac type design, but chose a smaller one (6 man) instead of what it is representing an 8/9 man craft. This means the marker is about the correct size and scale of the buildings, obviously out of scale with the ground. Its about 35mm long so significantly shorter than the BMP 60 so not too bad. Its not a real scale model and currently as it was simple to design no outboard motor or crew. Here I am in two minds. I could put an outboard on easy, but do I bother with say an insert with some crude depiction of crew indicating loaded or not, or use it as a marker about the right size to make things at least in my eyes more credible?

OK so an update, hot off the press, my boats got used last night, in beautiful grey, no time for paint.
They worked well even if I lost due to bad planning. Afterwards we discussed the battle and the boats.
We agreed that a decent "scakle boat"worked. However we both agreed that having a removable load or replacement loaded and empty boats was not wanted. Faffing about with them in the middle of a tence game would spoil the flow of the game.
I had thought of adding a motor to the transome but ther seems little point with no crew. This approach may not suit eeverybody but for us, better by far than a "paper marker" but not worth going overboard on the model. I will try tomorrow to get some pictures.