Christmas Issues: 1938 England

[Mr.Marx]

Hey all.

This Christmas my father, in a strange act of charitability, has sent me half a dozen 1:35 scale ww2 AFV kits because they will 'Go well with your warhammers'. Amongst them I have a BT7, two KVs and a BA-10.

 I’ve never really been into making models so they can gather dust on a shelf, so I’m thinking up war gamming applications for them. I have never done anything in the 1:35/32 scale before either.

So far my favourite is this 1938 British Civil War thing. Its something I don’t really know anything about other than what I read in war games illustrated on a  7 hour train journey from Kent recently, and in that it looked rather cool. I think some liverpudian leftwingers could be armed by the soviet union? It would be cool at least.

I need a decent 54mm(ish) scale rules set for starters and kind of need to work out some background.
So, can anyone who knows more than me tell a little to help me along?

[Arlequín]

The KV Tanks are a bit late for VBCW and you're pushing it a little with the BT7. I'm not aware of anyone doing 1938 in 1/35th, so you're breaking new ground with this one.  While I wouldn't want to dissuade you from VBCW, I think you'll find your models will only find use in WW2. 

The 1938 Civil War thing is quite cool imo. You could do worse than splash out on the sourcebooks as they will answer many of your questions. I can't help you regarding rules, but I'd imagine any skirmish set will scale up to 1/35 by doubling movement rates and weapon ranges etc.

[fastolfrus]

There's a free set of 28mm rules "And Was Jerusalem Builded Here".
Start with those (because they are free) but double the ranges for 1/35th.
They had their own thread a few weeks ago :

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=14945.0

1/35th can be fun for gaming but it does take a lot of space or lots of terrain (if you play on a small area everything will be at close/point blank range).
Armoured vehicles might be best restricted to MG only - eg they've run out of main gun ammo. (otherwise their range and effect cound be truly devastating).

See if you can find Mike Blake's group - the Skirmish Wargames group - they game a lot of 54mm / 1/32nd stuff. Mike is a member here.

[Mike Blake]

It's an interesting idea - a sort of spreading of the Spanish Civil War (which the Skirmish Wargames Group do do in 54mm). Unfortuately, like the other posters say, finding c1938 civilians in 1/35th will be a challenge, though there are some around, eg European refugees. SWG do 1/32nd, nor 1/32th, so we are not up on the stuff available in that scale, I'm afraid (there really is a big difference in the size of the figures - think old 20mm and new 28mm).

As to tanks in such big scale games - they become set dressing, and something to hide behind! The rules should make them slow to respond to what is happening on the table - ours certainly do - and thus they do not dominate. In fact they become very vunerable, especially if there are a few mines around, or the terrain in snowy and sloped (rules for sliding) or someone opens a hatch to get a better look around... We have incorporated them in WWII and SCW games quite successfully.

Mike

[Rich J]

We use my rules (obviously I would say that  ) Flying Lead for our AVBCW games as we enjoy small skirmish type games - they are aimed at 5-15 figures a side on a smaller space and last around an hour ... for 54mm you would need a 4x4 table space probably ... they allow the characters to be 'vanilla' or more tooled up ability wise (more light RPG type game) ... AND they are £5 from Ganesha Games.

Whatever you choose the 'genre' is great fun as you can fit anything into the story line .... good luck!