Future War Commander in 1/600: Infantry Units Comparison

Here are some a size comparisons shot to show the kinds of units I'm working with in 3mm for Future War Commander!

From the left to the right, we have a conventional infantry squad (O8 Israeli infantry), an armored infantry squad (Germy Bugger 2mm power armor sold through GZG), a power armor or walker squad (Scottia 6mm power armor) and a mecha (DP9 fleet scale gear). No, the conventional infantry unit didn't get overly excited: that's varnish that's still drying.

Same line up, this time doubled and with a GZG "Hound Dog" walker on the left (also by Germy Bugger). You'll notice that the infantry have found time to use their hankies and clean themselves up here.

Two pictures of the same crew from different angles and in different lighting conditions.

More spoogey conventional infantry.

Two power armor troopers and a mecha. In the game scale of 1/600, the power armor is about 5.5 meters tall, the mecha about 9-10.

And here are three shots of my power armor battalion's command stand. I attempted to make a mini-diorama. The commander pops the cockpit on his armor to oversee two armored infantry soldiers as they field strip the remains of a destroyed power armor suit:

Krasnynorad Tank Regiment

Here're the first shots of the Big Red tank regiment. This unit has three battalions of tanks (1 HQ and 6 T-54 ea.), one battalion of mechanized infantry (1, HQ, 4 BTR-152s, 6 Infantry and 2 Machineguns) and supporting units (an heavy assault gun battery, a recon company and an engineering company). A battalion of 122mm towed artillery has also been attached.

The light on these photos isn't the greatest and, now that I'm looking at them up close, I notice that I need to brush some excess flocking off some of the figs. Anyhow, here they are...

1st tank battalion. I really like how the bases turned out on this group!

2nd tank battalion.

3rd Tank Battalion. Each battalion is based slightly differently for easy distinction on the battlefield.

Mechanized infantry battalion.

Headquarters and assault gun battery.

Blitzkrieg Airforces

Here are some photos of my first planes for the Avalon Hill Blitzkrieg Project. All planes are 1:600 (3mm) models from Tumbling Dice, with markings from Dom's Decals.

First up, we have two flights of Blue F-100 Super Sabres. I thought the white paint scheme on these turned out rather nice.

Here's the lead F-100 flight:

Here's the better part of a Krasnynorad (Red) MiG-19 squadron, escorting a Su-7 fighter-bomber:

MiG-19s up close:

Su-7 up close:

A Neutral (Walkurian) MiG-17:

And, finally, a lone F-100 from a second Blue squadron, this one in a more "Luftwaffe 1946" style paint scheme:

Building a Battlegroup for Cold War Commander on less than 20 bucks

Over on the Specialist Publishing website (the publishers of the Commander series of rule), we’ve been having a debate as to whether or not 3mms are more cost effective than 6mm figures.


I’ve repeatedly sustained that they are, but some posters counter that if one places four vehicle castings to a base (in order to model platoons at 1:1 scale), the costs come out at more-or-less the same.

I disagree with this view.

First of all, a key consideration for these smaller scales is play area: typically, one wants to be able to play in about a quarter as much space as at 10-15mm (with a 3x2 foot table and half range and movement values being the norm). Basing four 3mm castings per base means one has to use 10mm-sized bases and, consequently, one gains no space advantage.

Secondly, a very satisfactory “mass” effect can be had using 6mm base sizes and doubling the number of figures used to 10 infantry castings or 2 vehicle castings per stand (weapons stay at 1 per stand, but use infantry-sized (half-sized) stands).

One of the great advantages of this sort of basing is that you can buy armies very cheaply and prepare them for combat very quickly. This allows you to build “marginal” projects – say the 1930s Chaco War, or my Colombia/Venezuela confrontation – without breaking the bank or taking much time away from other, more dear, projects. “Cigar box” armies of this type are fun to collect, paint and play and allow you more table time per hobby buck.

So I wanted to prove that one can build a 2000 point battlegroup for Cold War Commander on a budget of 20 dollars. This force will be a neutral “third party” army for my Blitzkrieg miniatures game project. This is what I bought:

1 pack, WSU-607: WW2 Soviet Infantry                3.50
1 pack, IS-617: IDF Infantry II                               3.50
1 pack, IS-606: M3 Half-track                                3.50
1 pack, MN-608: Strv 103                                      3.50
2/5th pack, WBR-636: 8th Army HQ                      1.40
1/3rd pack, UK-622: Ferret                                     1.20
1/5th pack, BW-622: FH-70 155mm Howitzer         0.70
1/4th pack, SA-664: MiG-17                                    0.90
                                                                 TOTAL: 18.20 USD

I picked up O8’s brand-spanking new Strv-103s because I’ve always admired this tank. Though technically, it’s a bit advanced for the time period I’m modeling (1950-1960), it’s not ridiculously so, having been projected in the 1950s. In my campaign, however, it’s main gun will be down-graded to 90mm and it won’t have stabilization in order to make it inferior to the Blue Centurions (which are supposed to be the most high tech tanks on the Continent).

To make the units, I put two vehicles on each 1’x 1’ stand. Strv-103s are Skorpions, Daimlers (or any convenient armored car) are Foxes and the MiG17s are Goshawks (1 plane per stand). I put ten infantry figures on each 1’ x ½’ infantry stand and used the heavy weapons to make the recoilless rifle units. I then used the HQ pack units and leftover Foxes, Skorpions and halftracks to build the command units. Guns are based on per infantry base. For the mortar halftrack, I simply modified on of the regular M-3s (O8 does make a mortar M3, but I didn’t want to buy a pack’s worth). Total CWC cost for the project to date:

Units                                Cost
1 CO                                90
2 HQ                                90
1 FAO                              30
1 FAC                              15
1 Fox                               30
9 Infantry w/bazookas     135
3 Support 90mm RR       150
6 Halftracks                    150
1 120mm SP Mortar        75
6 Skorpions                    600
1 Bridging Skorpion        105
1 Lt AA Tank                  40
3 155mm Artillery          180
2 MiG 17                       130
                        TOTAL: 1820

Optionally, I could keep the MiGs and 155mm Artillery off-board (which is perfectly OK in CWC, as they don’t ever maneuver on the board) and spend another 3.50 on a second pack of Strv-103s. This brings me up to about 20 USD exactly (or 21.60 if I were to buy it all) and, thinning out some command stands to form a second Fox Recon unit, I can field an additional:

1 HQ                          45
1 Fox                          30
6 Skorpions               600
1 AVRE Skorpion     125
                 TOTAL: +800

… for a total force of 2620 points. Chuck out the MiGs and FAC and add some artillery ammo and I can easily get down to 2500 points.

Now, how does this compare, cost-wise, to a similar 6mm army?

If we presume that you will buy GHQ miniatures (the only real equivalent to O8’s level of detail at the 6mm level), you’ll be spending about 2 USD per stand, given that a pack of five vehicles will run you 9.95 USD. This means you’ll pay about 74.00 USD for the 37 stands of the basic army and another 18 dollars for the optional stands.

92.00 USD for 6mm versus 21.60 USD for 3mm: that’s about a 4.25:1 price advantage for 3mm.

Painting and basing the force
In the unit pictured below, I still need to buy a second pack of Strv-103s and I need to paint up my MiG-17s. Also, I swapped out the Daimlers for some spare Italian AB-41s that I had lying around, swapped in some Italian 20mm AAA canons for the Lt. AA tanks and used some extra Russian infantry to beef up the heavy weapons stands. Other than that, everything is pretty much as described above. It took me about 4 hours of work to base and paint this battlegroup.

Because this is a fantasy unit, I can paint it up anyway I like. It’s meant to be a generic neutral unit for my Blitzkrieg set up, so the national markings are WWI American roundels, which feature both red and blue.

I decided to paint these up according to the same general scheme as my Italian WWII units, but made the base much darker in order to bring the units out. Helmets and other details on the infantry are also light green. Again, I painted red and white flashes on the tanks in order to make them jump out just that much more from the background.

This time I went for a spring effect on the bases. I flocked with Woodland Scenics Medium Green over dark brown painted bases. I then sprinkled some light green static grass over parts of the base where glue had seeped through. After drying, I lightly brushed the top of some of the thicker static grass patches with glue and dipped them in Gale Force 9’s summer flocking. The effect at this scale gives flowering bushes. Finally, I added some dark green coarse flocking here and there for regular bushes. The end effect is quite nice, if a bit festive.
 

The 16th Brigade

The brigade seen head on, infantry battalion to the left, armour battalion to the right.

A Skorpion stand.

 

Mechanized Infantry - bad shot, I know.

 

 

I realize that these photos are not the best: light quality sucked when I took the shots. I'll try to post some better pictures as soon as I can. Meanwhile, here are the CWC stats:

Azurnerreich Task Force

As anyone who follows Consimworld's Blitzkrieg board knows, I am a big fan of Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg. I don't know why - the game itself kinda sucks, actually. But for years now, I've done variants, scenarios and even entire new countersets for it.

Mostly, I think I'm attracted to Blitz because of its historical-yet-science-fiction nature. It's a fictional war in the universe next door between two fictional superpowers who have access to roughly 1950s technology. One can thus play a "historical" kind of war without historical constraints.

The reason I originally bought Cold War Commander and Oddizial Osmy 1/600 miniatures was to play Blitzkrieg. I decided I'd build three armies: Red, Blue and a Neutral Yellow. Red would have Soviet style technology and Blue would have NATO technology. Yellow would be made up of both, plus minor nation stuff. I set an arbitrary limit of 1960 for the equipment because I didn't want to deal with the wide-spread use of anti-tank missiles. Therefore, most equipment is ca. 1955.

Blue - or Azurnerreich - uses Centurions for their main battle tank and German SPW250s and 251s as infantry carriers. They also use Chaffees for recon and French AMX-13s for light tank killers. The Blue Air Force flies F-100 Super Sabres for air superiority and prop-driven Skyraiders for ground support.

Unlike my World War II games, I play CWC Blitzkrieg at the platoon level and half-scale (i.e. 10 cm in the rules are 2 inches on my table).

I've been having a lot of fun dreaming up OoBs for the principal armies and I've decided that Blue will have big, well trained battalions while Red will have smaller, less well trained battalions. This means a Blue battalion should be roughly the equivalent of a Red regiment.

My total Blue force, bought and based so far, amounts to two large battalions of tanks and mechanized infantry, two SPA battalions, a battalion of paratroops and an infantry (motorized) battalion. There are also supporting units: a company of mechanized engineers and two companies of AMX-13s. I'm also going to build a Armored Cavalry "regiment" for Blue (actually am over-sized big battalion).

The following pictures are of my first completed Azurnerreich combined arms task force. It is built around a tank battalion with one company of mech infantry swapped in. Here we have two Centurion companies and a mechanized infantry company (three SPW250-mounted infantry platoons, a mortar platoon and a self-propelled gun platoon). Also attached are a recon platoon and an armored engineer platoon (Centurions fitted with heavy support howitzers and bulldozer blades - I also presume that bridgelayers go with them). Another Centurion company needs to be painted up for this unit to be complete, but it's table-worthy as is.

Task Force Kreuzmann, in its entirety.

Mechanized Infantry company.

Tank Company. 

 

Task Force Headquarters    

   Chaffee Recon Platoon

Task Force Kreuzmann from another angle.

Following my normal doctrine for 1/600 miniatures, I painted one color and flocked another. Here, the base color of the tanks is blue-gray with tan camouflage stripes. The base is a terracota wash over tan, with flocking built up in three layers: fine yellow towards the middle, green flock towards the margins and spring green static grass in clumps to make it really stand out. I wanted the whole effect to look vaguely Brazilian or tropical and I think I've suceeded at that.

More Azurnerreich will be coming soon, as will the forces of their arch-enemies, Krasnynorad (Big Red).

Re-done Brits

I decided to flock my Brits to the Italian standard and am pleased with the results. Also changed here: the carrier unit is based, as per infantry and guns, on the 25mmx17mm "low visibility" base.

8th Hussars. Yes, I know that's a Daimler and not a Humber

That will be fixed with my next order from PicoArmor.

1st and 5th RTR, plus 7th Brigade HQ

2nd Scotts Guards and 7th Brigade HQ

The entire 7th Brigade, 7th Armored Division, ready for battle!

Mighty Eyeties: 132nd Ariete Armored Division, 1941-42

I've finally finished the Ariete for Blitzkrieg Commander. A few changes were made from my plans as detailed in an earlier post. First of all, I've not yet provided Ariete with its engineer or anti-aircraft contingent (a detachment of German 88s are with the division in the meantime). We'll also have to wait until O8 produces some Italian 100mm artillery pieces and gets them off to Picoarmor before I can finish the artillery regiment.

132nd Italian Armored Division, 1941. Each stand represents a company.

Basically, everything's worked out fine. Ariete, as modled here, has two infantry battalions, three M13/40 battalions, an artillery regiment and supporting arms. I should point out that each unit represents roughly a company of 100-200 soldiers, 10-15 tanks, or 8-12 guns. Often, however, there isn't a precise map-over between units. The artillery regiment, for example, had 6 batteries of 4 75mm canons, here represented by 3 game pieces and a Forward Artillery observer. Also, my goal isn't to create a precise copy of the Ariete at any point in time, but a general overview of its capacities - sort of a "universe right next door" version of the Ariete. The division as pictured above thus has a battalion of L3 tankettes, even though these never shared the battlefield with the M13/40s, as far as I know.

The L3s are another issue. Since beginning this project, BKCII has arrived and I've done some further thinking about basing and decided that I will use 25mm x 17mm stands for all low visibility units (basically infantry, guns and support weapons) and 25mm x 25mm stands for everything else. Strictly speaking, then, the L3s should be mounted on the smaller stands and one could argue that the 88mm AAA canons should be mounted on larger stands.

I decided to keep them as-is, however. In the first place, the Italians used - or tried to use - L3 tankettes as if they were by-God tanks. Making them low visibility, in my opinion, would encourage an anti-historic use of them as weak ambushing units. As for the 88mm cannons, big they may well be, but the history of the Desert War is full of examples of British armor getting severely pwned by 88s operating under cover.

Here are some pictures of the painting process. Again, I followed the same recipe as before: base coat of sand, sepia wash, successive dry brushes of lighter sand colors and a final fake drybrushing of Valejo Light Sand, followed by detailing. Also, color flashes are again exageratedly big to help the miniatures stand out:

Flocking the bases for this one was difficult. As readers of this blog know, I flock bases in a different color from the figure's paint job because otherwise 3mm figures blend in too handily with the base. So far, I've been using dark bases set against light paint jobs. This has caused difficulties, however, when it comes to blending into my terrain backdrop: the bases are simply too dark.

This time I tried another tactic. I glued dark flocking near the figures and then added another coat of light yellow flocking around the base's edges. Here and there I laid down some dark green patches, then glued coarse light green flock over those. I'm pretty pleased with the result: the figures still stand out, but the base blends better into the terrain sheet.

Here are some pictures of the final units:

Infantry battalion of the 8th Bersaglieri Regiment

Headquarters of 8th Bersaglieri Regiment and supporting units

Headquarters of 8th Bersaglieri Regiment

Armored Regiment

VIIIth and XIth Armored Battalions

VIIIth Armored Battalion and Armored Regiment HQ