The Commander Series Forum

Hi

I've never thrown a dice on a board yet, but I just took the plunge and ordered a paper copy of BKCII yesterday after much deliberation. The mood of this forum swung it for me over FOW and other rules. I'm interested initially in WWII Early War and North Africa and have been painting up H&R 6mm units since March - having a gap of 25 years since I last opened a tin of Humbrol.

Can someone tell me what dice I need to buy - I'll be playing solo and want some quick games to get the swing of it. Do I need any other equipment?

My works-in-progress are here: http://worldwarshed.wordpress.com

Lots and lots of D6...one or two tageting dice (arrow faced, although mine have numbers as well).

IanS

Ta, do I need 10-sided dice?

Another question! I'm basing on 40x20mm MDF bases, how many men per infantry base? 5 looks a bit bunched up, so I'm figuring 4?

Like the web site. I think those British guns are 25lbrs. Some neat ideas re the painted air recognition flags on kitchen foil and the wire hoops for trucks/half tracks. I'm just going through the same process myslef using paper soaked in acrylic varnish to stifen it, but it doesn't get the folds like your foil!! Painting tiny swastikas was a challenge for my eye sight.

I have 7 H&R infantry on the same size base i dont think they look to bunched at all, 4 figures(at least to me) doesnt look enough to represent a platoon of 35 ish

Thanks! Foil was a real breakthrough after lots of sticky pulp on my fingertips. Once it's glued down you can press the foil down over the rocks/bonnet/crates and it looks just like fabric would.

Ta for the gun ID, all info like that is appreciated as I bought most of my stuff unlabelled in a lot off ebay.

I used a pen for the swastikas, cross first then the hooks. What did the Allies use as recognition flags?

Happymc, how do you arrange your H&R men? I've the Eighth Army strips which have all standing the same pose except for one with some Sten gun.

i randomly scatter them on a base, im using standard british infantry mixed with the infantry support weapons pack, i have a bren team(2 men) on every base, 1 SMG or an officer type and 4 riflemen, or in some case i have used the prone 2 man light mortar team in place of 2 riflemen for variety( i appreciate they have no effect on game stats), for IATW i use 2 teams (4 men) and 3 riflemen, when i get my act together i will post some pics, i think they look fine with 7 per base not over crowded at all, i have used 6 on elite units(SS/Paras) to differentiate them slightly and 5 on recon infantry bases.

I've been basing 4 or 5 to a base. As Happymc says, that seems too few to represent 35 men (50 plus for a full strength platoon). However, 7 or 8 to a 40/20 base looks far too crowded to me. Any NCO who's a veteran of the 8th army or Afrika Korps would be screaming at his men to spread out and stop bunching up, otherwise a single MG burst or shell would wipe out half a platoon. I think some members advocate using a larger base size, with more troops, so they appear more spread out, but I think this would be a bit unwealdy on the table top - perhaps not in desert terrain. I think 4 or 5 figures to a 40x20mm base is a good compromise. Perhaps 5 for regulars, 4 for elite and I use a square base for recon infantry.

I base each H&R infantryman individually and randomly glue them to the base. I think the days of infantry advancing in line abreast went out with the Somme and Paeschendale. About 1 in 2 bases has a bren team or anti-tank rifle with an assortment of infantry. I try to get the best figure use out of each pack as I'm too mean to buy more figures than I need.

Not sure how realistic it is, but I've seen models depicting RAF roundels on the roof as an air recognition signal.

Nice pics there! I like the terrain board

Dice wise, 'normal' size d6's for rolling to hit etc, and 'tiny' size d6's for marking hits on units - get them in two colours and you can use one colour for hits+suppression, and the other for units with hits that aren't suppressed.

We also use a third colour of tiny d6 to mark units that have Op Fired or done an initiative action so we know to knock the command penalty off

And as suggested, a direction dice (the ones with arrows on).

No need for d10's or other funny sizes, except perhaps for turn counters... although we've started using the rather nice casualty counter from Warbases for that as they look better & can be flocked up to contrast with the table - http://www.warbases.co.uk/#/accessories/4533097...

If you were to spread your infantry out realistically* then bases would be a ridiculous length Its (an infantry base) a representation, certainly at this scale and realism has to take a bit of a back seat.

* a platoon skirmish line can easily be 100 metres long so at 1mm = 1 foot(or thereabouts) so a realisitically spread out unit would need a base 328mm long

On the die front, I use about 20 (the GW size ones) D6 in my games, for those rare occassions when you get to through loads of the blighters.

You will also need some small D6 to mark hits, suppression and initiative or opportunity fire. I use 5mm-6mm size ones, with white for hits, red for supprssion and blue for Initiative/opportunity fire.

A scatter die is required for artillery deviation. Some clear templates for artillery are also very useful.

On the figures per base front, it's up to you on what you think looks right. Another factor is how many bases you can get out of a standard H&R bag.

The Blog looks good BTW and hope you have fun with your first solo games. Keep them small and simple to get a handle on the basic rules and work up from there.

first time at trying to upload a pic here so go easy on me when it fails miserably(damn the lack of a preview button)

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/47050722atN08/7636... 6mm WW2 Germans

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47050722atN08/7636... 6mm WW2 Germans

nope sorry any suggestions anyone

the last one does link through to the photo showing 7 men on a standard 40mmx20mm base, so is it over crowded or not?

Welcome Dafyddh

The figures per base are to your own preference. It all depends on what you like the look of plus with BKC is usually 9 bases a Bn so with 4 per base this would leave you 14 left for any command and Recce units.

With 5 per base this souls leave you only 5 extra !

Regards

Sean

I think good advice there Sean.

For my taste, yes - it's a bit crowded. Doesn't look bad and I wouldn't be unhappy using it, but I might go down to 5 figures. I think four would be too thin on the ground

As Sean etc have said, it's down to your preference though

The spacing per man during WW2 varied by nation. Here is a link to a site with that information
http://balagan.org.uk/war/ww2/snippet/infantry-...

Average platoon frontage is about 100m. At the ground scale in the rules of 1cm = 20m a platoon would have a frontage of 50mm
At 1:300 the spacing per figure would be 13mm for Germans and 17 to 23 for Russians. I use 4 figures per 50mm base mixing the regular infantry pack with the weapons pack.

Hi bilb

Sorry, at work at present so can't follow link till tonight. Quick question though, would the infantry be spread across that frontage or would they be concentrated into firebases? I'm guessing in defence they'd be more clustered, but widely dispersed during the advance. I seem to remember this from talking to my dad who was in the RAF, but had small arms training as part of his role.

Cheers

Thanks for all the advice, far too hot to do anything in the shed today, however I was watching the BKC walkthrough on YouTube today and it showed mortars, HMGs and grunts all on separate bases. The advice here though is to mix them all up though.

i have my support units(MG's/Mortars) based seperately, some might have the odd infantry man dotted about but mainly weapons & crew.

I think people are refering to mixing some of the H&R heavy inf figures in with the normal infantry as some are not weapons crew as such and can be used as standard infantry.

A breakdown of the H&R packs are online, i have a copy downloaded if you want it.

incidentally their are some handy counters here courtesy of todd.jayhawk

http://itineranthobbyist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10...

attoxicpixie, you would hate my mortar units, 10 men/wpns per base

What is on a directional die? My local games shop (not GW) didn't know, so I bought a blank die. Looking at the video I need to go back and buy loads of D6s and marker dice too....

Cheers. Is a bren gunner and his pal lying down a heavy unit or one to mix with regular riflemen?