Small WW2 East Front battle in 6mm on blog

[Shaun Travers]

Hello all,

I am back into gaming.  I recently posted an ancients battle report and now it is a 6mm east front game on a small board.  I also used it as an opportunity to try out using cards instead of dice for my own rules.  The battle report is at this blog post:

https://shaun-wargaming-minis.blogspot.com/2019/08/ww2-6mm-game-east-front-1942-testing.html

Here is a image from the report where the Russians are storming a IG18 75mm gun.

[Just Jack]

Shaun,

 

Awesome, man!  A great report, and I’m so happy to see you getting back on it.

Man, that was always going to be a tough one for the Soviets, wasn’t it?  No real AT capability with a Stug sitting across the way, AND a 75mm Infantry Gun?  Of course, you did the Reds a huge favor by pushing the gun way out onto the hill, unsupported! 😉

It was no surprise to me to see the German gun get overrun, but it cracked me up about the Soviet MG team there.  Not much mileage out of either MG team.

Would getting the second Soviet ATR up in the center really have helped?  I’m not sure of the ATR’s ‘real world’ capability, but it certainly would have been a flank shot at pretty close range.

Thanks for posting buddy, I loved it.

V/R,

Jack

[Norm S]

Another great example of getting a lot of game out of a small area.

The idea of cards is interesting, with my reservations being card counting and the spread of cards giving a too wide variety of result, in the same way that a D10 with heavy modifiers can do compared to a D6, though I find 2D6 the most satisfactory because of the bell curve effect on results. Interesting to see something new.

[Shaun Travers]

@Jack,

I rolled to see if the gun would actually deploy on the hill, and it did.  The force ratio was not that great and so yes, it was always going to be a challenge for the Russians.  The Stug is an early one so the armour is not so great but even then the AT Rifle is not great and at a distance is lucky to get a pin, close up on the flank it has some chance of a kill.

@Norm,

Thanks for the comment – responded on the blog before I saw it here!

[Thuseld]

This looks great and excites me to get small scale gaming in. How have your made your fields?

Experiments here: http://inexperiencedmodelmaker.blogspot.co.uk/

Tranquil Stars updates: https://tranquilstars.wordpress.com

[Shaun Travers]

I keep meaning to improve my 6mm terrain.  It is OK and serviceable but I am always looking for the energy to improve it.  For the last few years if I have the time and energy, it goes into playing and not terrain building!.  I originally bought some 6mm on a whim and did spend some time putting some terrain together from bits of wood, paper buildings and carpet tiles.  The fields are a thin doormat cut up.  It had the grooves already and was quite flat – perfect for 6mm!  Even the colour was fine,

[Just Jack]

Shaun,

Sorry man, I should have realized you were dicing for placement.  You may be Australian, but even you wouldn’t put the gun up there by itself 😉
And it’s cool to see I’ve got the same read on the ATR vs Stug as you, proves I’m not totally off my rocker.  I’m working on getting to the East Front, probably going to have a brief stopover in Greece though.  I look forward to more of your East Front batreps.

V/R,
Jack

[Shaun Travers]

Actually Jack, no need to apologise – the gun was the only unit I diced for.  The hill was sooo tempting i diced to see if a unit would go there (yes), and then which one (Gun),  and then if it would get any support (no).  I have the scenario and forces generated for the next game but haven’t set it up yet.

[Just Jack]

Good, I wasn’t about to apologize! 😉

You don’t know how happy I am to see you playing again, giving me something to read!  Keep it going!

V/R,

Jack

[6mmwargaming]

I’ve read you blog and I’m keen try some of your WW2 rules for solo gaming. They look great for an evening game and I figure i can setup board and come back to it when I have time. I also have a bunch of figures I brought to play the Winter war, but I never started due to a lack of rules.

Would it be easy to mix parts of “Advance to cover” and Platoon advance to cover” as I’m not super keen on a grid?

My 6mm Wargaming site https://6mm.wargaming.info

[Shaun Travers]

I have created a few rules over the last 7 years, all a little different form one another. To answer your question i will quickly give some background.  Advance to cover (from January 2015) was the last of the Advance series and attempted to combine Battalion and Company rules into one set. I used this set the most for 20mm and 6mm.  It is based on always rolling 1d6 and adding/subtracting modifiers.  Firing, morale  etc is done by units that are normally 3 bases (3 figures in 20mm representing a section; 3 bases in 6mm representing a platoon).  Card based activation.

Post January 2015, after playing a fair few games with my children, I got enamoured will rolling a number of dice, the “to hit” number of each die is the same and with adding and subtracting the number of dice rather than rolling 1d6 and adding and subtracting to the die.   Only really interesting in rolling a small number of dice (one to five) rather than buckets of dice.  I started rewriting Advance to cover to incorporate this mechanism and then got sidetracked (to to lack of time) into working on games I could play in a lunchtime.  So I took the Company level Advance to cover draft rules based on number of dice, made it work for 6mm where a base (section) rolled 1-3 dice rather than a platoon and activation is via a dice roll rather than cards as it seemed to work better that way due to the small number of bases on the table.  I also made it work on a 12×12 grid so I could play at lunchtime on a 24cmx24cm table.  This rules were lightly tested in mid-2018 and called Platoon advance to cover.  So they work similar to Advance to cover but one unit to one unit, multiple dice rather than one die and dice activation rather than card activation.

Roll forward to this year and the game I played used the Platoon advance to cover rules but I did not use a grid and simply converted all grid references to centimetres with 1 grid square = 4cm. This was for a 48cmx48cm board.  For a 2’x2′ board I am aiming to go with 1 grid square = 2″ (5 centimetres).  So you  can use Platoon Advance to cover without a grid very easily (with the one change I think I would make artillery templates a circle rather than a square).

Because they are much the same family you could easily mix parts of each that you liked.  The firing and morale etc should produce very similar results even though one is based on a single die roll and the other on multiple dice.   Conversion between the two for ranges is very easy too – in Advance to cover infantry move 6″ (or 6cm in 6mm), in Platoon advance to cover they move 2g. If you wanted to convert between the two 1g=3cm.  I felt that on a 2’x2′ 3cm was too slow for 1g with the small number of bases on the table for Platoon Advance to cover (5-8) but with a more units 1g = 3cm would probably work better as a game.

Sorry for the long ramble, the short answer is you can mix them 🙂

[6mmwargaming]

Hi Shaun

 

Thanks for the informative response. I got a chance yesterday to read both, and I liked them rules which seem to have the right amount of detail(for me). From my reading the 2015 Advance to Cover are more complete, but I prefer the multiple dice approach of Platoon Advance to cover.

Looking at my figures I realise that now i need to get buying and painting as I have very few Germans. I haven’t start on my winter war stuff so I will go with early or late war France. I’m also looking for something suitable to play solo (rather than the usual just play both sides response) and the activation rules look like they suit it.

 

 

My 6mm Wargaming site https://6mm.wargaming.info

[Shaun Travers]

Advance to Cover is definitely more complete and a bit more playtested.  The Advance to Cover activations (whether cards or dice) were designed to be very solo friendly as that is how I tend to be play them.   If you do get around to thinking about using them more, fell free to ask me questions!

[Author]

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