"Best Battlefields?" Topic
16 Posts
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robert piepenbrink  | 28 Oct 2025 3:33 a.m. PST |
Query: what battlefields have in your minds the most replay value? Play once, and set up the troops again? Rotate 90 degrees? Play in a different period? This is for the 2mm "armies in a courier bag" project.The idea being to put in the bags painted sheets 24" deep and between 24" and 36" broad with roads and rivers painted on and possibly the locations of hills, wadis, BUAs and woods marked. These will take the place of felt, and I can change out "boards" from one vacation to the next. But what battlefields? A friend has recommended Quatre Bras. I'm thinking Blasthof Bridge and Sittangbad. But I have about a dozen shets. Periods horse & musket (temperate zone) and WW2 (temperate zone and desert.) Battlefields probably 3-5 miles on a side. Thank you all. |
| 79thPA | 28 Oct 2025 4:33 a.m. PST |
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 etotheipi  | 28 Oct 2025 4:37 a.m. PST |
Stamford Bridge Probably pretty similar to Blasthof (not familiar). While we don't have the type of detailed assessment of the battlefield as H&M and WW2 locations, the river not easily crossable, except at "the bridge" is pretty classic. It scales well from skirmish to major military operation pretty well. Beyond the split forces layout (Harold's army surprised Harald's army while they (Harald's army) were spit on both sides of the bridge), it works well for opposing forces starting on opposite sides, or opposing forces starting on the same side. And even destroy the bridge/protect the bridge. The cleared road, banks, and area near the bridge contrasted with the forest cover surrounding and rolling hills dictate some strategy, but many can be used. It is often advantageous to switch your approach in using the terrain if things are going poorly for your side. Battle of Kokkinia I'm a sucker for an urban combat set up. Key aspects are enough non-gridded and different sized streets to break up forces and inhibit (not completely nerf) combined arms doctrine. As my frequent references to the Battle of Puebla might indicate, I am also partial to a civilian resistance force working ICW the military forces. This doesn't show up in what is in your bag for terrain, but it significantly impacts how the forces interact with the terrain. |
| Korvessa | 28 Oct 2025 8:08 a.m. PST |
Unless I am much mistaked, Blastof was one of Peter Blum's imaginary battles. |
| robert piepenbrink | 28 Oct 2025 8:38 a.m. PST |
Close, Korvessa. Brigadier Peter Young. Sittangbad was another--an 18th Century version of 1942's battle at Sittang Bridge. Nothing against armed civiians or urban combat, eto--but to my way of thinking a poor match with 2mm armies on a small board. Am I missing something? |
| etotheipi | 28 Oct 2025 2:10 p.m. PST |
Civilian resistance like in Greece during WWII was small numbers (a few hundred up to a thousand in an urban area), but they control wide areas. Small bases with a few figures on them, dispersed over blocks and blocks of terrain represent degrees of area control. Don't think of them as one 2mm mini=1 person (which you're not doing with the military forces, either), but a small base with an irregular shape of a few 2mm minis to represent the irregular force. The challenge is not really in representation, but in how you handle ambiguity and hidden knowledge. A stand of tanks is a stand of tanks is a stand of tanks. A locus of resistance fighters can be a lot of things. |
| robert piepenbrink | 29 Oct 2025 3:08 a.m. PST |
Ah. No, I wasn't missing anything. I asked for geography, and you're offering me something which might work very well for a map and pins campaign or for a 1:1 skirmish, but not for 2m blocks on a 2' square board unless I'm playing Stratego. I know how much you love Puebla, eto, and I respect you for it. But it's not the solution to every wargaming problem. |
| etotheipi | 29 Oct 2025 4:20 a.m. PST |
but not for 2m blocks on a 2' square board unless I'm playing Stratego. What's the rationale for that? |
 Flashman14 | 29 Oct 2025 4:21 a.m. PST |
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| robert piepenbrink | 29 Oct 2025 5:27 a.m. PST |
Question: "What's the rationale for that?" Answer: "The challenge is not really in representation, but in how you handle ambiguity and hidden knowledge." A fair hit, Flashman. But isn't 1/1,000--besides not being a common scale for ship models--actually too big for fighting either one on a 2'x3' mat? |
 miniMo | 29 Oct 2025 6:54 a.m. PST |
Quatre Bras is a great terrain board!
Outskirts of Leipzig easily cover battles across the ages — Liebertwolkwitz, Lutzen, or Mockern provide good options to choose from. |
| etotheipi | 29 Oct 2025 2:27 p.m. PST |
Reducing all military ambiguity to Stratego is a horrible oversimplification. It's a part of all military battles and a key part of military philosophy since before it was written down. If you don't want to represent that in your battles, fine. But if you want to trivialize that others do, you might as well be the OFM or Ush Cha. I offered geography. Urban terrain. Terrain that applies to many, many, many battles in history, which was your criterion. I didn't offer up Puebla as an option because it doesn't meet your criteria. It's fairly (not completely) unique. It was just another ref to civilian battles. I could have said Sumer, Akkad, Thrasybulus, the Jewish Revolts. |
| robert piepenbrink | 30 Oct 2025 3:38 a.m. PST |
"you might as well be the OFM or Ush Cha." One or the other, please! And I did not mean to run down your way of making war--just as I'm sure you weren't doing the common TMP stunt in which someone asks how to do X, and gets comments saying "actually, you should do Y instead." Nothing against urban terrain and armed civilians, but so far as I can see, they work best in games with doors, windows, roof tiles and individual figures. In 2mm, urban terrain is a patch of gray on the table, and the civilians are a troop block, disinguished from others by a record kept off table. When I asked how to get around this, the lecture shifted to guerilla bands operating over hundreds of square kilometers and the joys of off-board bookkeeping--interesting to be sure, but I'd asked for a miniatures battlefield of no more than five miles. My smallest base frontage in 2mm is 30mm, so my 2' board is no more than 20 bases wide. Neither side can be larger than 30 units without turning the whole thing into a war of attrition or smaller than 15 without armies passing in the night. Add in unknown quality of opposing units, and ask yourself what it reminds you of. |
| etotheipi | 30 Oct 2025 7:53 a.m. PST |
When I asked how to get around this, the lecture shifted to guerilla bands operating over hundreds of square kilometers and the joys of off-board bookkeeping--interesting to be sure, but I'd asked for a miniatures battlefield of no more than five miles. I don't know who your lecture came from, but the quoted bit above is why I gave Kokkinia as an example. It wasn't people more than five miles away conducting guerilla raids, it was people inside the area where the occupying force was deployed exerting zones of control. That is historically more common than guerilla raids (though for some reason, not as sexy ..?). I do like a good guerilla raid (my granfather conducted them on both the Nazis and the Soviets – he couldn't get along with anyone), but I wouldn't play a TTG with them off-board. I would start it at initial detection. I'm sure you weren't doing the common TMP stunt in which someone asks how to do X, and gets comments saying "actually, you should do Y instead." Certainly not. Your definition of X in the OP didn't include stuff about how many of what type of units were operating under what rules. Your four questions focused on identifying terrain for replay value. so far as I can see, they work best in games with doors, windows, roof tiles and individual figures There's no more requirement in that for asmmetric warfare than there is for individual rolls for every soldier represented in your 30mm blocks in a crossing of lines scenario. You can aggregate at whatever level you want. There's also no requirement for bookkeeping and secret notes. I've written dozens of asymmetric warfare wargames, including ones for professional military organizations, that had none of that. For enjoyment and meeting customers' real-world needs, the systems end up playing and representing better if you don't have that, IMHO. And to your X vs Y comment, nothing in the last two paragraphs of your last post was in the OP criteria definition of X. Nor are the assumptions about how asymmetric warfare must be represented correct. Even the earlier one about a "patch of gray" for urban areas. The rural Appalachain town that I grew up in in the 70's would take roughly a third of your board. Kokkinnia, about two-thirds. |
| robert piepenbrink | 30 Oct 2025 3:46 p.m. PST |
Points duly noted, and I expressed myself poorly and apolgize. No insult was intended. For me, the combination of scale and theme doesn't work. Not all fighting is equally interesting at all levels. The 2mm general sits on a "captain's hill" surveying a battlefield, and can't concern himself with detail--which is why few wargamers command single platoons in a SYW musketeer battalion. But urban combat is a sergeant's battle, where open vs shuttered windows make a difference, and how well trained PFC Snuffy is. I keep 28mm figures for that sort of thing. It's also, I think, a good fit for armed civilians with huge differences in weapons, training and motivation, exactly as you point out. One SYW musketeer battalion may be better or worse than another, but not by much. One band of a dozen armed civilians may be orders of magnitude better or worse than another, but I think this games best at a level at which we can know that Pierre did a hitch in the Foreign Legion and is armed with a captured Schmeisser while Gaston dodged the draft in 1918 and never cleans his Lebel 1886. At higher levels, they're just numbers--and the higher the level, the more the individual differences average out. So, for the 2mm boards--and clearly I ought to have been more specific--I need the sort of battlefields the senior officer can command and not just manage, but also where he doesn't need to draw his sidearm--probably brigade to corps horse and musket, and regiment to maybe division in WW2--either way, maybe 3-5 miles. Have I offended anyone else? |
| FlyXwire | 01 Nov 2025 3:27 a.m. PST |
Offended – heck no, more inspired/illuminated. WW2 for 2-3mm temperate – Arracourt, or maybe 4th US Armor (CCB) vs. Panzer Lehr in the Saar (mid-to-late Nov. '44). If the link doesn't load, search for Armor vs Mud and Mines (4th Armd Div in the SAAR-MOSELLE Area) PDF link
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