A listing of 3mm miniatures blogs and pages

2-3mm is a bit of the bastard child of the wargames hobby. Mention that you play in 1/600 scale and somw wag's sure to quip "Hell, mate, why don't you just play counter boardgames then?"

This bit of gratuitous "hardy-har-har" is really quite slanderous, because the new WWII and Modern stuff that's being sold by companies like O8 is just beautiful. Small it may be, yes. But I can easily distinguish between, say, Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs at arm's length and my 42-year-old eyes are definitely not what they once were.

2-3mm has several advantages to me, the first of which is simply extra storage and playing space. I have the entire Grande Armeé socked away in two cigar boxes, for example, and a few years back I did Leipzig 1813 for my students at UERJ on two medium-sized tables. Using Volley and Bayonet rules at centimeter scale (i.e. a brigade is 3cm x 3cm) a normal-sized 6 foot x 4 foot gaming table gives one 216 square kilometers of battle space, meaning that operational-level battles (such as the entire Waterloo campaign) are quite feasible.

What many people see as 3mm's main drawback - relative lack of manufacturer support - is for me also one of its main selling points. Back when I was a kid, learning to play miniatures with 20mm plastic Airfix figures, we didn't have the miniatures industry that's available today. Back then, odds were that if you wanted something special, you either had to adapt it from something else (say HO railroad kit) or build it yourself and, to me, that was half the fun of the game. 3mm miniatures gaming allows me to recapture that spirit. (But not too much of it, if you catch my drift. A brief look at Pico Armor's website, for example, will show that one can get pretty much everything one needs to play a full-blown game in one-stop shopping through John's excellent mail service.)

The one thing that does annoy me a bit with this scale, however, is the lack of hobby support. By that, I mean the relative lack of other players with whom one can compare notes and from whom one can swipe ideas.

So here're some links to 2-3mm miniatures gaming blogs and pages which have inspired me. Hopefully, they'll do the same for you:

First off, we have the three Yahoo sites. You'll have to subscribe to see these but it's well worth the effort!

2mm · A group for discussing 2mm miniatures is the grand-daddy of them all, concentrating mostly on Irregular Miniatures 2mm stuff. This is the site that got me started on this scale.

Then there's 1-600thMiniatureAircraftWargaming · 1/600th miniature aircraft and rules, a site which focuses principally on Tumbling Dice's aircraft, but which takes side-turns into O8 and TD's ground forces.

Finally, we have my favorite group, 3mm_miniatures · 1/600_miniatures, whose members primarily use O8 stuff.

For blogs and webpages, we have Tony Hugh's Atomic Ancients and Miniature Medievals, which is probably the article/site which has launched more 2mm wargamers than anything else. And there's also Tony's Gildas Facit, another of the great-granddaddy 2mm sites.

Here's an interesting 2mm Sci-Fi post from The Miniatures Page, and another from Lloydian Modeling Tips.

Bloggers who post decent 2-3mm material include Nik Harwood, Ozzie David's The War Depot, The Fighting Fantasist, and Steel on Sand. This last blog has a 2mm Web Resources list much more detailed than anything posted here, so go take a gander, now!

3mm sci-fi. A light dragoon regiment moves through the outskirts of Picoburg.

3mm FWC photos

I play Future War Commander in 3mm (':600) scale and thought I`d share with you all how I do it.

DP9 has what they call "fleet scale" gear models. These are roughly 6mm scale (normal Heavy Gear being 12mm, IIRC). I use their gears as 1/600 scale meka and their landships as massive, grav-powered transports-cum-firebases.

I then buy Oddzial Osmy (08) 1/600 scale ultra-modern tanks and infantry to support them. After all, most of the 6mm sci-fi stuff out there pretty much looks like ultra-modern, anyhow, right? I also use some of Germy Bugger's 2mm stuff, sold through Ground Zero Games.

The only models "missing" are power armor infantry and hover tanks. The second problem I've solved by building some of my own out of plasticard (they can be seen on the 2mm yahoo group site, along with a tutorial and plans to build your own - this is a PDF and you'll have to be a member of the 3mm Yahoo Group to access it). They are a bit fiddly, but quite do-able.

For power armor, I've decided to use Scotia miniatures 6mm power armor troops. They're a bit bigger than I'd like: about 4 meters tall in-scale. Still, for "gear" style power infantry they work fine.

I'm building mixed regiments of meka and power armor for two factions, with about 20 meka and 20 power armor stands per regiment. These are backed up by conventional armor, infantry and IFVs. For air support, I use Aerotech fleet scale models provided by Iron Wind. I also have a mercenary regiment being built up with Iron Wind power armor infantry serving as mechas. Looks very nice!

So you see, 3mm sci-fi is very doable, at least of the Japanese animé-style variety.

I also play Steve Jackson's Ogre in this scale which is simplicity itself. American modern MRLs become missile tanks, my home-made hover tanks are GEVs, Abrams become heavy tanks and for infantry and howitzers, I use Germy's stuff.

My Ogres are kitbashes made out of 1/300 scale WWII German Mausses (Meeses? Only if they're American, I guess...):

(Going left to right, that's a MkIIIb, a MKV and a MKIII. In front and to the right of the MKIII, you can see one of my homemade hovertanks).

Half the fun playing at this scale is scrounging for useable figs from all the 1/300 sci-fi lines out there. There`s actually a bunch of stuff you can use if you look for it.

And did I mention the one main benefit of this scale? It is CHEAP. 15 O8 Abrams tanks will cost you USD 3.50. That`s cheap enough for me to order them here in Brazil, shipping and all. For around thirty dollars, you can field a very nice army.

The new 3mm stuff out there these days is quite recognizable and easily on a par with most 6mm manufactures in terms of detail. O8 isn`t as detailed as GHQ, but it beats Brigade hands down, IMHO.

There`re two ways of basing 3mm, each with its benefits. One can either keep larger bases and put 2-3 models on each, giving one a more convincing mass game (a platoon stand based to this standard really gives the impression of being a platoon), or one can cut base sizes by half and effectively quadruple one`s playing space.

I use the first method for WWII games, but the second for FWC. It allows me to play convention-sized games on the 3x2 foot coffee table in my living room. This is a definite boon for those of you out there who are urban apartment dwellers like myself.

I`d be interested in hearing comments from anyone else who`s attempting to play FWC in 3mm.

An ASS/HLS battlegroup containing tanks, infantry, mecha and a massive walker poses in front of a city block module made out of wood blocks and Monopoly buildings.

Hellzapoppin' Valley: A Future War Commander Battle

This was my first time playing Future War Commander and, unfortunately, the battle report is only partial as I lost some of my archives in our recent move. Basically, this was the first battle in an on-going campaign between the forces of the Red Baron Sacha Möder-Fokker and the Arcadian Socialist Syndicates  / Human Liberation Soviet (otherwise known as the ASS/HLS)

In any case, it shows about half of the game which was played out with 3mm (1:600) scale sci-fi figures from various manufacturers.

Enjoy!

Turn One


The Arcadians win both the initiative and the air superiority roll. They also achieve notably good luck on their deployment rolls. The mech regiment’s light squadron manages four successful command rolls and moves onto the board from the south edge in double time. Half of the light mechs occupy the agricultural station in the center of the board and take up covering positions around the crossroads, while the other half of the squadron, including the regiment’s recon element, occupies the ridgeline to the southwest. With the light squadron covering their advance, the heavy squadron follows up. Meanwhile, the Arcadians' massive walker moves to the highest point of the southeast ridge and takes refuge in the woods there, overlooking the battlefield. Finally, the Arcadian armored battalion pours in down the valley road from the east, led by their light dragoon squadron. The heavy dragoon squadron, backed by two tank troops peels off north and heads for the village in the NE quadrant of the board.

The Baron’s forces, by contrast, get off to a slow start. None of the armored regiment’s vehicles make it onto the map while the mech regiment only gets one successful command roll. They deploy from the west end of the valley, line companies leading and support company following. The light company scouts to the north of the road. Their massive walker manages to deploy onto the plateau overlooking the valley, but blows its subsequent command roll.

No firing occurs on turn one.
 
 

Turn Two

The Arcadians’ lucky streak soon comes to an end, however. Turn two begins ominously, with the recon units missing a communications roll to call in air and artillery support on the massed mechs in the valley below. A command bonus allows the heavy dragoon squadron to occupy the northeastern village and dismount its troops, however, while the unit’s attached armored support takes up a camouflaged covering position along the wooded ridgeline to the south. This effectively blocks the road to the eastern exit area, as well as securing the village, gaining two quick victory points for the ASS/HLS. Meanwhile, the light dragoon squadron enters the experimental station’s grounds and unloads its infantry while the rest of the battalion’s armor continues on up the road towards the complex. Unfortunately, in the south both the mech regiment’s HQ and the Arcadian CO blow their command rolls, leaving everyone high and dry. This is particularly devastating for the massive walker, which was counting on getting in the first strike against its counterpart on the other side of the valley.

By contrast, the Baron’s luck is as good as the Arcadians is bad. The Mech regiment wins TWO back-to-back command bonuses. They charge up the southwest ridge and unload a storm of poorly aimed autocannon fire into the Arcadian light mechs along the ridgeline. Quantity makes up for quality, however, and both the Arcadian recon troop and a light mech troop disintegrate in the hail of shells. The massive walker fires at its Arcadian counterpart and manages to knock its shields down by 50%¨. Meanwhile, the Baron’s tardy armored regiment finally puts in an appearance and comes barreling down through the northern pass in full combat order.
 

 

The Baron’s Guards storm the ridge while the Arcadian

 heavy squadron is paralyzed by command indecision.

The Baron’s militia armor regiment finally make it onto the board

 and deploy down the northern valley. Meanwhile, the mech

regiment’s light company scouts out the crossroads.

 
Turn Three


The Arcadian armor battalion moves into position to ambush the stike coming through the pass. Meanwhile, the light squadron mechs in the agricultural station open up on the Baron’s lead tanks. Disaster strikes once again, however, as the mech regiment commander misses his second consecutive command roll, leaving the light squadron without orders. The CO steps in and calls down a heavy artillery strike on the north pass. This destroys three tank platoons and disrupts another, together with the armored battalion’s commander.

The CO then orders the heavy squadron over the ridge in a charge on the Baron’s Guards. They are met by massed autcannon fire and half of them are disrupted. Luckily (!) however, the Arcadian CO bumbles his last roll and the command blunder table orders a retreat towards the board edge, which puts the heavy squadron behind the ridgeline once again. Unfortunately, the blunder also pulls the light squadron’s surviving mechs out of the woodsline, but still, I’d have to say the blunder worked in the Arcadians’ favor!

Luck does not smile on the Baronial forces, either. In the north valley, the only operative HQ manages to make one command roll, moving the recon company and part of the tank battalion into the treeline across from the ag station. The mech regiment commander misses his command roll and the CO directs an artillery strike onto the Arcadian’s massive walker, followed by two volleys from the support company and the Baronial massive walker. All this massive concentration of fire (40 smart missiles) manages to do is knock down the enemy walker’s shields and disrupt it, however.

Needless to say, there is very little movement this turn.
 
That's it for now! I promise the next report will be better.

1.0 Introductory Rant: The Ethics of Wargaming and Swearing

I had the great good fortune to learn wargaming at the hands of a bunch of Vietnam and Vietnam-era veterans. Several of these gentlemen had spent a year of their lives in the field on front-line combat duty. All of them had seen friends die. All of them resented the fact that they’d been sent to fight an unwinnable war in the name of a corrupt and incompetent puppet regime on the other side of the planet. They weren’t “demoralized”: they were pissed off. And they deeply resented an America which had bought its government’s “light at the end of the tunnel” rhetoric, allowing their friends and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to be ground into hamburger for no good purpose, for years on end.

None of these men thought that Vietnam had been “winnable”, no matter how much the U.S. would have bombed it. Unlike the macho nerds for Reagan of my generation (who seem to take Rambo II seriously and believe that the all-powerful hippies lead by that renowned and highly influential stateswoman Jane Fonda lost the war for the U.S.) they’d actually been there and seen what they were up against. They realized that they were understood by the Vietnamese – the “Irish of Asia” – to be an occupying army and knew that as long as they stayed there, they were going to be fought to the limit of that people’s considerable will to fight.

And, being that these guys were combat vets and not my male relatives (for the most part), they swore. They swore alot. They had obscene, ironic nicknames for everything on the battlefield and that carried over into wargaming. So I’m proud to say, that aside from teaching me my hobby, these gentlemen (along with my sainted, late Aunt Mary, the hippy pacifist) were responsible for educating me about the finer points of obscenity. Their position seemed to be that nothing could be as obscene as what they’d seen and done in Vietnam, so why sweat words?

I’m writing today about my old mentors because there’s an odd and sickening spirit at loose in our hobby today. Over the past couple of years I’ve been censored on several wargames-related forums for either a) bringing up sex or b) being offended at some moral moron’s postings about how great and good it is to kill [your favorite racist ephitet here] in the name of homeland security.

Now, when I say “bringing up sex”, I’m not talking about trying to open up critical discussions regarding “2 Girls, 1 Cup” on a gaming site. And when I mention being offended by militarist rhetoric, I’m not defending defeatist, American-hating rants against guys who say “Support our troops”. Nothing as extreme as that.

On Steve Jackson’s OGRE/GEV forum, for example, I was recently censored because I mentioned that maybe - just maybe - the military wasn’t a decent career for young people and that, perhaps, the U.S. (like so many other governments through history) was lying about the need for a war in the Middle East. I was subsequently called to order and almost banned for making a crack about telling “male” and “female” Ogres apart by looking at their input-output ports. This, apparently, was not family-friendly material for a website dedicated to celebrating a game in which players achieve victory by nuking their opponents’ civilian populations during atrocity raids.

Then, over on a well-known 6mm Sci-Fi gaming forum, I was censored by the owner for making negative comments about some REMF with a Walter Mitty complex. This mouth-breather’s sole combat experience apparently came from a couple of days of calling in airstikes on t-shirted boys armed with AK-47s during the invasion of Panama from the air-conditioned splendor of his AFV. He was using the forum (frequented at the time by several minors whom I was mentoring) to wax poetic about how “satisfying” shooting up civilian-occupied apartment complexes with a .50 cal machinegun was and how “beautiful” the results were.

And, of course, I have been told to watch my tongue when it comes to swearing on more gaming forums than I can count. Most of these places, of course, have automatic obscenity filters which are so sensitive that even “tits” and “pussy” get censored (but never, for some reason, “cock” or “dick”). Even though they claim to be “family-orientated”, the vast majority of their frequenters are men over the age of 16. But their owners claim, with a straight face, that the site must protect children from obscenity, even while its users portray the mass slaughter and hardship of war as good, clean fun for the whole family. (This, I might add, while the same computer which accesses these sites can quite easily be used by Junior to scare up free porn videos, 24-7).

Now, what’s wrong with this picture?

Steve Jackson Games has made the word “fnord” into a well-known piece of gaming slang, but relatively few gamers know its original provenence. It originates in the Principia Discordia, but Steve and his gang of merry pirates probably hijacked it from Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus trilogy. In that set of books, “fnord” represented a word which the Illuminati trained people to fear and avoid from from childhood on. The masses were brainwashed so that they literally couldn’t see the word, which gave them a feeling of free-floating anxiety whenever they encountered it. “Fnord” was thus liberally sprinkled through newspaper articles, election propaganda and any other important bit of information that the Illuminati didn’t want people to dwell on or discuss. Advertising propaganda, however, never contained the word, making consumption feel good and safe to the masses. In Shea and Wilson’s work, “to be able to see the fnords” means being able to see under the surface of things, to grasp information and messages that are hidden and, most importantly, to not be affected by buzz-words and emotion-laden phrases.

It seems to me that wargaming today is collectively having a very hard time seeing the fnords.

Folks, I am not a radical nor a flowerchild. I do not think wargaming should be banned in order to protect little kids. In fact, I think that the hobby was instrumental in turning me against war, because it led me to read serious military histories, which led me, in turn, to conclude that governments lie and that 90% of all wars are avoidable and a complete waste of treasure and blood. I think wargaming – coupled with the formal and critical study of history – can be an incredibly useful way to teach children about what war means and why it should be avoided.

What blows me away these days, however, is the sheer number of nimrods, know-nothings and jingos in our hobby who think that war is a manly, enobling enterprise, that bloody-minded patriotism is good for kiddies and yet who simultaneously believe that the mere sight of the word “fuck” or the mention of sex can somehow cause irreparable damage to a child’s eggshell-fragile psyche.

In short, our hobby has been overrun by people who are completely unable to see the fnords.

Now, I don’t think that these people should be censored or expelled from our discussions. To the contrary: if they hang around long enough, perhaps they’ll learn something. But it annoys me to no end to have to listen to modern-day pollyanas tell me to “watch my language” and “avoid politics” in order to save these fuckwits’ oh-so-sensitive, supposedly Christian and Patriot values from offense. Fuck them. Fuck the horse they road in on and, while we’re at it, (in the words of the immortal George Carlin) fuck their children, too. After all, Mommy and Daddy seem to be happy enough to teach the little brats to be wads of cannon-fodder for the military-industrial complex, so why worry about what obscenity and pornography are doing to their brains? Their own parents consider them to be disposable and the U.S. Marine Corps has killed far many more of America’s youth than sex has.

If people want to game at war, they should not be offended by profanity and politics. Soldiers sure the hell aren’t. And if people are worried over the power that “bad words”, improper political opinions and projectionist fantasies have to warp their childen’s minds and bend their spines, THEN WHY THE HELL ARE THEY TEACHING CHILDREN TO PLAY AT WAR?

In the best possible interpretation, such people are unable to see the fnords. They have been so brainwashed by their culture’s hegemonic morals that they can no longer adequately discern what is and what is not a real threat to themselves and their children. In the worst possible interpretation, such people are evil souless fucks, minions of Satan himself, who honestly believe that having premarital sex is more of a sin than killing a defenseless human being or spending the rest of one’s life in a wheelchair.

To the first group I say wake the fuck up. You no longer have the luxury to live in Candyland and I certainly can’t be bothered to be sensitive to your need to stick your head straight up your asshole. You don’t like my tone of voice, my politics, or my profanity? Fuckin’ fantastic. The door’s right there, sister. Don’t let it bang you on your ass on the way out.

To the second group... well, let’s just say that karma’s a bitch of a wheel and it grounds very finely indeed. As an anthropologist, I study whores, pimps and johns for a living and most of the people I have met professionally are far more ethical and Christian-minded than you lot could ever hope to be. If you EVER come near me or any children I am responsible for, you’d better come fast and furious, because I will not meekly submit to your plan to turn children into the Hitler Youth of the New World Order without giving you Louisville Slugger in the teeth. (Rhetorically speaking, of course. Did I mention that I’m a pacifist?)

Have we got that out of the way? Good. Now let me explain why I’ve chosen the rabelasian tone I occasionally use throughout this blog.

War is obscene in the strictest sense of the term, a fact front-line soldiers throughout the ages have unanimously recognized. You want to talk “objectification of the body”, or the “profanation of the sacred”, supposedly two of pornography’s greatest sins? Well, you’re not gonna find anything better than war for turning human beings into disposable garbage. To try to portray war – even as a game – cleanly and antiseptically or, worse yet, as something which enobles man, is one of the worst obscenities of which I can conceive.

Nonetheless, it is undeniable that war has its appeal. It is the socialized abandonment of rationality in the face of adversity, the body-politic wallowing in thanatos, pagentry and blood. As individual human beings, we’ve all been there, right? We’ve all felt the urge to smack some fool in the face instead of trying to reason with him. It’s part of humanity’s animal nature, which we can perhaps productively channel, but which we will never get rid of.

This is, of course, why I enjoy wargaming and why I don’t think it’s a danger to kiddies.

Wargames allow us to vicariously live out our natural interest in chaos, destruction and really nifty pyrotechnics with no cost at all to society and the world around us. I’ve seen a lot of strange shit in my life, but I’m happy to say that I’ve never seen little lead men bleed or call out for their mothers as their lower intestines pour out onto the ground around them. Not even while in a non-legal state of mind have I seen this. However, as a resident of Rio de Janeiro, one of the world’s most violent cities, I have seen real people do precisely those two things on several occasions. Believe me, I am WELL aware of the difference between fantasy and reality on this point, even if other people out there don’t seem to grasp that there is one.

The only threat I can possibly see from wargaming comes from the numbnut ignerint motherfuckers who think that it’s a wonderful adjunct to teaching their children proper civic and moral virtues: “Gun those gooks down, son! Y’know, yer uncle did just the same thing in Vietnam. You should be proud of him.”

I would like to see these assholes driven from the hobby. Better yet, I would like for their children to see them as the blow-hard, wanker, wanna-be petty tyrants that they are. I hope their sons become out-and-about leather queens when they grow up and their daughters become radical feminist pacifist civil disobedience earth-mamas (or vice-versa). It is with this goal in mind that I have adopted the tone that I sometimes use here. I hope it brings out the futility of war, its obscenity and lack of any redeeming social value. If swearing, sex and confrontational politics really does warp young minds, turning them away from the beatific contemplation of Church and the Fatherland, then I fervently hope that many youth are corrupted by my words. More realistically, I hope to give a handful of mature readers of every age a few low yucks, some food for thought and decent, wargames-related content.

For those of you who find my words offensive, please take your penny-ante, hypocritical bullshit on down to Games Wankshop, perchance to find someone who gives half of a wet rat’s ass about your complaints.

For the rest of you, enjoy.

Peace.

Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette

Rio de Janeiro, November 4th, 2009

Well, what can I say, ya know? I play with little toy soldiers.