WW1 using Rapid Fire & Pendraken 10mm (First Game 17.9.2014)

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Hello

I am thinking of starting a WW1 project, with scenarios based on sections of major battles such as Verdun, the Somme (British & French sectors) and also Cambrai with tanks.

I usually play with my 15  year old son.  We play LOTR and Force on Force with 28mm and have played Rapid Fire with 10mm and 28mm.

I think that the WW1 battles are more interesting at a bigger scale than squad against squad so was thinking of using Rapid Fire.
This way, I could field say 10 tanks and a lot of infantry.

I want to keep the costs down and was thinking of using the Pendraken 10mm range. I will need small armies for British, Germans and French.
I am thinking of a 3ft square terrain board with trenches cut into foam.

Has anybody tried anything similar and does it work?

Are there any published statistics for WW1 vehicles in Rapid Fire?

Or a suitable set of easy play WW1 rules & army lists?

Can you recommend any scenarios and army lists that I could easily adapt?

Are there cost effective alternatives (using 15mm, 20mm plastics etc)?

Thanks

Mick

[Red Sveta]

You could try Crush the Kaiser rules which are very Rapid Fire-ish in feel and are designed for the Great War.  Pendraken have some new Ww1 figures which are really nice. I have committed myself to 20mm for ww1 or I would have gone with Pendraken on this.

[Phil Robinson]

Mark Piper has some Rapid Fire WWI mods here

http://www.worldoptions.com.au/fourpipers/rapid/

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Dear Phil

Thank-you - that is just what I was looking for

Mick

[fastolfrus]

We play a lot of PBI locally (Peter Pig, Company level WWII rules), they play quite well for late war (1918) actions, but only at company level, although you could field an infantry company supporting a half-dozen tanks. They are designed for 15mm, and play on a 4'x4' table.

There is a Peter Pig WWI rule set, Square Bashing, divisional level plays on a 4'x3' or 6'x3' table.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

I have just been costing the options in various scales.

If I want 100 infantry and 5 WW1 tanks:-

10mm Pendraken Metals is £30GBP
20mm Airfix & Hat plastic & Emhar plastic tanks is £50GBP
15mm Peter Pig metals & resin tanks is £70GBP
20mm Early War Miniatures metals & Emhar plastic tanks is £100GBP
28mm Great War Miniatures metals & resin tanks is £295GBP

When Victrix bring out their planned plastic WW1 infantry, this will save a good £80GBP on 28mm.

It is a pity that Valiant do not make 20mm WW1 infantry.  I have some and they are very nice sculpts.  Their WW2 sets are outstanding value for wargamers because you get a good mix of troops including HMG and mortars.I noticed this during the comparison and I am very tempted to use Emhar tanks with slightly converted WW2 Valiant figures.  This option works out at £56.GBP

I have orderd at Pendraken.

Mick

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Here is an update

Figures
I decided to use Pendraken late War German and British.  So far, I have 60 infantry, 3 HMG, 3 Artillery guns for each side.  I also have 2 X MkIV male, 3 x MkIV Female and 1 x A7V.  I will add more artillery and mortars at some point. (I have some WW2 items as substitutes).

Painting
The figures are painted in a fairly simplistic way as at 10mm, the game will tend to be be greens verses greys.  

The British were sprayed black and then damp brushed with Vallejo Russian Uniform, which is a greenish khaki.  I did not want to use English uniform as that would be brown troops on a brown base.  Next, I picked out the hands and faces using Vallejo flesh.  The weapons were painted in black with a drop of silver mixed in.  Finally bayonets were painted silver.    German infantry were done in a similar way but with grey shades.

British Mk IV tanks were undercoated with GW Black spray and painted with Vallejo Russian Uniform.  The tracks were painted in black with a drop of silver mixed in.  The noses were painted with white, red and white stripes.  This colour scheme is actually from the end of WW1 but is easily recognised.  In 1916, tanks were simply painted brown to match the mud.

Rules
I am going to use Rapid Fire for Rookies so that we have a simple game to start with.  I am using a figure ratio of roughly 1-20, so a Company is represented by a unit of 10.  A Battalion is four companies.  Each scenario will have extra rules based on the actual battle and tactics.

Basing
I decided to base the infantry on 15mm deep rectangular bases. This is the narrowest that works with the Pendraken figures.  I can fit then into some trench terrain without the trenches looking like motorways.  They are in units of 10 based 4 on 30x15, 3 on 30x15, 2 on 15x15 and 1 on 15x15.  This gives me 10 figures that can be arranged in a line 90mm x 15mm in a trench or two ranks 45mm x 30mm etc.  I can also remove casualties to get any number from 1 to 10.

HMG, MMG, LMG, Anti-tank rifle teams, Flamethrowers and Mortar teams are on 25mm round bases.  This makes it easy to see special weapons crews.

Artillery is based on 40mm round bases.  Square bases would be better if they will be used with limbers but round bases look more like emplacements.

Tanks are on rectangular bases about 60mm x 30mm.

Bases are 3mm thick from laser cut wood from Litko and or MDF Warbases.  They were painted brown, then with PVA and dipped in sand.  The sand was painted with a dark brown wash and a final drybrush of Vallejo Iraqi Sand.

[grant]

Really nice looking project!

[Wirelizard]

Very nice!

10mm or 6mm WW1 has been something I've considered doing, might have to look into the Pendraken 10mm again at some point. As you said, the smaller figures get the "big battlefield" feel much more easily than larger stuff does, much as I love 28mm these days!

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Dear Grant,
Thank-you

Dear Wirelizard,
I do 28mm in ancients, medieval, fantasy, WW2 and moderns.  I find that with 28mm on a 6 x 4 ft table, games with vehicles quickly get crowded.
I have some WW2 in 10mm as well, and it works very well for larger games.


At the moment, I am trying to figure out how to do trenches. I have some resin trench pieces that sit on top of the table (a bit like ramps), but they don't look right.
I think I need something more like a board so the trenches go into the table.

Mick

[fred]

Nice work Mick, the mono-chrome schemes work very well.

WRT trenches - I agree that the ramp based ones look very odd - though in a few areas they actually model the rampart style trenches pretty well.

With 10mm figures you don't need to cut down too far to get a decent looking trench, I've been playing with some 25mm blue foam sheets, and using a dremel with a drum tool to cut/melt out the trenches - this is a pretty quick method.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Dear Fred,

I may try that idea of cutting foam with a Dremel.  Rather than one board, I am thinking of making two long gently sloping shallow hills, each with trench systems so that I can make "no man's land" wider or narrower to suit the scenario.

Mick

[fred]

Mick - I like that idea. I have been thinking through options for representing the trench and shelled zone. The gently sloping hill idea would work well as you could have them sitting on a normal gaming mat to represent the wider battlefield that is less churned up. Having some no-mans land boards to spread the two trench lines further apart would work well.

Just reading Storm of Steel, and the author frequently refers to the 'crater field' as the area they are occupying as the defensive zone. Sometimes this is behind the  main trench line, other times I think it is because the  main trenches have been shelled so heavily they don't really exist to much more. So it may be that just having some trench boards replaced with craters / no-mans land would work too.

I am mainly intending to play GWSH so the scale  is much larger, so I think I will be representing trenches at a much more abstract level, almost area terrain.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Trench Terrain (27th July 2014)
On Friday, I visited the local DIY store to look for blue hard polystyrene foam but did not have any.  They did have the standard soft white polystyrene foam in various thicknesses including 10mm.  I also bought a sheet of 2mm Perspex 500mm x 250mm.

I drew on the trench layout with a marker pen and cut it out with a hot wire cutter.  To make sure that the front trench line was straight, I clamped a thin piece of wood to the foam to act as a ruler while cutting.  I bevelled the front edge with the foam cutter to make it slope down to the table.  I also tried making a gentle slope by ironing the foam through two sheets of newspaper. This works quite well but you must be careful not to actually touch the foam with the iron – if you do the iron will be ruined.

I used hot glue to glue the foam to the Perspex sheet.  I cut a few shell craters into the foam with a scalpel.  As the foam is soft, I put on a very thin layer of papier-mâché.  This was simply a matter of painting the surface with PVA glue and adding one ply of Kleenex tissue.  Once dry this gave a harder skin over the foam that was easy to paint.  The surfaces were painted brown.  Next I coated the top surface with PVA and sand.  This was given a wash of 33% PVA with 67% water and coloured with the brown paint so that it looked like cocoa.   This dried overnight.  The next step was a drybrush of Vallejo Iraqi sand.  The final stage was to add patches of static grass and a few tufts.

I am very pleased with the result.  I will try a few games before building a mark 2 version.

[fred]

Wow! That's worked remarkably well. The rise is barely visible at the front edge.

You could add a bit more detailing to the trench, if you want for example , sandbags at the front, some corrugated iron or wooden supports / walling in the trenches.

I might have to give something similar a go.