Flames 12: Wargaming Flames of War in 12mm

 

I've been very impressed by the new Victrix range of 12mm/1:144th scale range of WW2 miniatures. 

Fairly limited in range as yet, they promise great things, including infantry at some stage.

I'm not sure how I'm going to use these though. Straight transfer to down scaled Flames of War;  Rommel operational level rules; or Two Fat Lardies forthcoming operational level rules O Group? Really not sure yet! So last night, having rush painted a dozen Cromwells and half a dozen Panthers, I thought I'd see how I got on with a Flames of War scenario...

Given that these are much smaller than their 15mm brethren,

I had to adjust the distance scale of the FOW rules. At first I thought that halving everything would be easy, but for some reason it didn't look right, so I reduced everything by two thirds, excepting artillery impact zones and orders ranges, in the interest of photogenic dispersion.

That would still make my 6 x 4 foot game mat a relative 9 x 6 footprint - pretty grandiose!

I though that putting up 1140 points of Cromwell's up against 1120 points of Panthers in a No Retreat scenario would provide a balanced game - how wrong I was! The Cromwell squadron made full use of the space available to concentrate on a covered approach up the middle and a detached troop heading for the secondary, distant objective.

Playing in this scale certainly allowed more scope for tactical approaches and seemed to look the part. 

The Cromwell squadron seemed to take an age to eventually reach the wooded area to set up for the rush onto the near objective - playing in this scale has its drawbacks too! As soon as they reached the edge of cover, the Germans sprang one platoon of Panthers that were in ambush on the brush covered banks of the stream. 

The initial salvo wasn't too bad, but the second and third salvos were decisive. One remaining troop of Cromwell's felt that a bold dash for the objective, with the aim of getting behind the Panthers, was the only hope for survival, but further casualties ended that plan. 

The same tactic of racing heedlessly over on the hillside was initially impeded by problems crossing the stream, but once the reinforcement Panther platoon was up...

and had found the range, proved equally ill-advised!

A resounding defeat for the Cromwell Squadron within 4 moves. However, they may do better with the full all arms mix of infantry and artillery once these are released - and a handful of Fireflies or Challengers wouldn't hurt either!

I look forward to the opportunity to test that theory - but not to painting the infantry in this scale! However, once they produce T-34s and the like, I imagine this scale will come into its own when trying to recreate actions on the rolling steppes out East!