"The flea circus returns - 3mm Epic WWII" Topic

My friends here at TMP,

Allow me to show a few pictures of a 3mm WWII game played today, at the DieCon convention in Collinsville, Illinois.

Now the game was 'off the charts', that is it was unscheduled at the convention, and something for a Sunday session, if an empty table was available.

The Eastern Front '44 scenario presented, involved an initial Soviet reconnaissance mission to scout out the location of the German defense front, to be followed-up with an assault by 2 Battalions of T-34-85s, and 1 SU-152 Regiment as the main effort, with air support assets, and organic artillery support.

The Germans had the equivalent of a Rifle Battalion deployed across a 5km front, so very much requiring a strongpoint defense posture. As the Red steamroller pressed into the depth of the German line, this would trigger the Panzer counterattack to begin arriving from the rear, charged will stabilizing the line, and in defeating the Soviet onslaught in total if possible.

After some of the smoke cleared (here's a few pics I snapped during the action) -

Pictured in the scenes above, would be roughly half the fighting formations involved on either side. The Hvy. SUs logically became involved against pockets of German resistance, while the Soviet medium tank battalions rushed forward. However, the end-result was a strung-out Soviet tank attack involving individual tank companies, and a loss of mass when the tank fight dashed up against the German armored counterattack.

Nicely done!

Would the usual people claiming that 6mm figures are invisible like to tell me they can't identify sides and types in these photos of 3mm?

Love the board especially with the shell holes.

Great looking game, FlyXwire! Are the buildings 6mm? Are they by Total Battle Miniatures or another manufacturer?

Robert, thank you bud!

Grattan, thanks too. The shell holes look better in these pics – I had a friend call them 'ant hills' on the first play around awhile back. :)))

Hey Pete! They are the 3mm Total Battle Miniatures' buildings. I did cut the sets apart along their roads (eliminating the sculpted-on roads), so I could butt them up against my board's roads.

Segmenting the building sets apart yielded me close to double the number of Built-Up-Areas. My friend Dave, who also games 6mm, thinks these 3mm TBM buildings would work fine for that scale too – I agree (whether they're cut up into smaller groupings or left stock as cast). I'm guessing the shortest hut seen above would be about the length of a GHQ Pz IV hull.

Here's how the TBM sets look in the raw -

For this 3mm Eastern Front project…..I just had to have them!

This is exactly the table effect I've been wanting. The roads and fields blend seamlessly

How did you do the mat?

Where did the trees come from?

Thanks

John

John, I digitally textured the mat, and had it printed out on fleece (I've got a Western Front version yet to hit the table – with a river crossing).

The trees are from K&M out of the UK (not sure they're much available oversees anymore).

You can see that many of the stands are multiple trees grouped together, and bottle brush style trees allow this, and can be Superglued together by intermeshing their stiff branches. The main trunk spine (a twisted wire) is cut flush with the bottom branches of each tree piece, and the lower branches themselves then form the flat base for setting the tree(s) onto a game board. By glue-joining two or more tree models together, a very stable set can be made (joining three individual trees together, for example, yields a platform just like the legs of a stool).

Here's some of my 1/144th scale winter trees, which were assembled using the same process – cut [snip] the wire trunks off flush to the bottom branches on each piece, and join each tree together with another at an area Superglue has been brushed into the branches.

The winter trees above can been found during the Christmas season, post-holiday at craft stores at bargain-basement prices, or online most of the time year round.

I digitally textured the mat, and had it printed out on fleece

This sounds like there are service bureaus which print digital images to fabric? I'd be quite interested in more detail on this, as I am currently printing to paper.

MH

MH,

I use Contrado out of the UK, or as via their N.American portal – Bags Of Love – (for fleece fabric printing) -

contrado.com

bagsoflove.com

There's a detailed ordering utility on their website, for inputting your selected fabric type (Polar Fleece – white), overall project dimensions, cut style, etc., and a link to upload your digital image to, that's stored/accessed for your order.