I am not quite sure how many different sets of WW2 rules I have played. I do know my first were home-made, then the first published set I ever used were Charles Grants 'Battle- for Practical Wargamers'- courtesy of Mr Carnegie and Blackness Library, early 1970s. More recently, I have played Blitzkrieg Commander (BKC), Airfix Battles, some hex based games whose name escapes me and Chain of Command (CoC). In between there has been Rapid Fire, WRG 1925-1950, Operation Warboard, and several others.
My favourite set at the moment is CoC, but it's principally a platoon level infantry game, other arms are support only. So no real chance to get squadrons of tanks on the table, and a very different command experience from other sets. I purchased Dave Brown's O Group, thinking it would give me the opportunity to get a few more AFV on the table and decided that as I already have WW2 forces in 28mm, 20mm, 15mm & 6mm, O Group would be perfect for 10/12mm.
Why another scale? Well, I am limited by the 1800mm x 1200mm table top I can squeeze into the magnificent man-shed, and if I didn't want hub to hub Shermans, then I needed to operate in a smaller scale. I have roads and other terrain in 15mm and buildings in 6mm, which visually will work. Plus, in 10/12mm, no one expects painting to be anything other than impressionistic. Finally, I have a 3d printer, and there are excellent free files available for most vehicles for the major combatants. Simply rescaling 1/100 print files (15mm) to 66.7% gives me a load of options, albeit at the cost of some fragile prints. I believe Pendrakens excellent range of vehicles are scaled to 1/150, so these are directly comparable.
My first two prints were 1944 & 1945 US, with an opposing Late War German Kampfgruppe. O Group generally uses 2 models for a troup/squadron, so common vehicles I printed off in sixes, with pairs for the other options.
Of course, my usual opponent Martin, having introduced me to the Cold War rules, 7 Days to the River Rhine (7DttRR), then decided to try out it's stablemate, Iron Cross. I might write up my thoughts on these in a future post, but they seem to work quite well. I still want to give O Group a decent try, but between BKC2, O Group and Iron Cross, I have plenty of options.
Naturally, Martin was also keen to get some new toys on the table. He already has substantial British & German forces for Later War, so I sorted him out with a few Soviets.. (although I did put my foot down and insisted that no one needed a dozen IS2..)
My next post will show the Germans... hopefully, soon!
