"Flames of War 12mil: Prokhorovka!" Topic

"It was with some trepidation that I approached laying on this week's game at the Wollongong Wargamers. I was organising a WW2 Flames of War game in 1/144th or 12mil, a scale which is receiving some push back locally. I would have to make this game epic, yet allow players to get a result within an evening! I put some thought into the briefing…"

From my Friend Sparker Blog

link

Armand

Very nice to see more games in smaller scales here. This one looks like a hard fought battle with lots of action.

Happy you enjoyed it…

Armand

You know Sparker as well? We were in the navy together and I'm still not sure if he's forgiven me for introducing him to Flames of War!! :-)

No as you know him… we are budies here on TMP only…

Armand

Suggestion.

Rather than putting the tanks next to each other on line put then in an inverted Vee like they do in real life. The line will stay the same length but the depth will be deeper. It will look more realistic and give better coverage on your flanks.

Wolfhag

You never seen a FoW game before Wolfhag? :-)

(and yes, I played it a lot back in 2nd and 3rd ed, 4th went down a wrong path in my opinion.)

As with Pete, I like seeing games running at 1-to-1 unit scale at the smaller model scales. While I do 6mm, I also enjoy seeing good looking games at 10mm and 12mm.

Prokhorovka is a challenge to game on a one-to-one unit scale, if for no other reason than the sheer scale of the battle. The number of units that should be on the table for a clash covering the map area of this game … well it is a rare set of rules that can handle so many pieces.

As to Wolfhag's concern and Gunny's comment, I too tend to tsk-tsk the hub-to-hub tanks lining up like Napoleonic infantry that is somehow characteristic of FoW. But I still give my applause to the game organizer for running a Kursk game that is not full of Tigers, Panthers and Elefants. And for mixing in infantry and AT guns, which were present in LARGE numbers at Kursk, even though the tank actions are the dominant stories.

That said, I would encourage gamers putting together Kursk scenarios to consider that pretty much 1/3rd of Red Army tanks at Kursk were T-70s (and a few other light tanks). And Pz IIIs were about as common at Pz IVs in the German ranks. KV-1's were relatively rare (certainly not a major portion of the Red Army forces), were mostly the KV-1S model, and by 1943 were no longer mixed in brigades with the T-34s. And at Prokhorovka KV-1's may have been entirely absent -- the only heavy tank regiment showing in the unit histories as participating that day being equipped with LL Churchills.

Or so I have found in my readings.

-Mark
(aka: MK 1)

That said, I would encourage gamers putting together Kursk scenarios to consider that pretty much 1/3rd of Red Army tanks at Kursk were T-70s (and a few other light tanks). And Pz IIIs were about as common at Pz IVs in the German ranks.

I did this for my Kursk game at Historicon last year. A platoon of Tiger I followed by a platoon of Pz IV and a platoon of Pz III Ms in arrow formation.

Soviets were mostly dug in 45mm and 76mm AT with infantry support and some T-70s and T-34s in the rear. It played pretty well.