GHQ Models Forums

Hello everyone,

My roomate and I have just gotten into Micro Armour - WWII. We both purchased a combat commands box and some terrain maker hexes to get started. While our order was in transit we cut out a bunch of 1x1" squares and drew a board to learn the game on. We got the hang of it relatively quickly. Our order arrived last week and we now have all of our models painted and based, with the terrain maker hexes all made up to play on. After about a half dozen games we made up a list of things we wanted to ask the forums here. Neither of is are new to wargaming, having played things like ASL, panzer grenadier, World in Flames, etc. So here is what we wanted to know!

1) What defines when a unit is "occupying" am objective? It was always mentioned vaguely in the rulebook and we couldn't seem to find anything about exactly what was required. We resorted to "last player to have had complete uncontested control of the objective terrain is the current occupier". Its a rule we threw together to keep the game going but clarification would be great.

2) What is a good number of TM hexes to have and in what ratio? We are primarily engaged in 1941 North African engagements. The tiles we did purchase didnt fill up much table space, barely a 20"x30" space. What is a good stock to play on games on a board with an average size of 24x48? How many hill hexes would you recommend building? How many Wadis? Help here would be greatly appreciated.

3) Buildings. Engagements at the squad level see your units inside individual buildings or even rooms. Operational or strategic games see you simply moving on to the space representing a town or city. In Micro Armour do your infantry stands have to actually be in a building to gain its benefits? Or at this games scale do you have an area (such as 1-2 hexes) sectioned off and everything in that hex counts as having its benefits?

4) Very specific scenario question but it came up in out last game. If a unit that is disorganised close assaults a disorganised unit, and neither deal any damage (no S, (s) or D results) who must run away? The rules state that a disorganised unit must move 1" away from any unit adjacent to it, but who moves first? Do they both flee?

Thank you in advance for any help, we are very much enjoying MATG-WWII and aside from the above questions, we haven't found anything wrong with it (Aside from my roommates cohesion 15 Germans failing to get ANY orders for 8 of our 13 turns in the last game. There were some laughs, especially sense after his GHQ got taken out his units suddenly sprang to life for the rest of the game, good times)

Regards,
Ivicus

Welcome Ivicus,

For the TM question, I would plan on getting the number of hexes you would need to play the size of battle. I have played from a 4x8 table to 20x12 tables. Also, you may want to have some different hexes for terrain that are not used all the time.

We primarily play with the scenario generation rules, instead of historical battles, so we are mainly looking for a good variety to make interesting battlefields without running into the situation where it always looks the same, but with the hill on the other side. In order to keep our options high, all of my wadi hexes are painted as open ground on the reverse side, and all my open ground hexes have either roads or soft sand on the reverse side. Thank you for the reply though!

I like to mix up my terrain boards too. Here is what I do.

I have terrain maker hexes for desert, and European. My desert hexes have a ton of flat that have small dots of vegetation randomly spread out. I also have some road hexes in the desert paint, some wadis, and I have some hill hexes. To get some variation in color I had 2 slightly different colors of paint mixed at Lowes. This keeps my board from looking too monotone- I use the slightly darker in some of the lower parts like ditches and wadis. In some places I'll mix the colors to create another shade. I think that this looks more natural because landscapes are made of a huge number of different shades of the same color. I don't mount my hexes, I keep them loose so that i can put in the road, take out the wadi, add a hill, etc., and then I'm not playing the same board everytime.

I do basically the same thing with my European hexes. I have a mix of flat, some with no trees, some with a lot of trees, some farm fields, hills, roads, streams, some bocage hexes, etc. Obviously with the European hexes I use a few more colors, but some of them are the same colors that I used on the desert hexes- roads for example. The paint is cheap, I think that it was about $8 a quart at Lowes- I got the cheapest latex paint that they have, and a quart lasts a LONG time when you are just using it for hexes.

I think that I started with 2-3 packs of the 1/2" hexes just to experiment, and see how the terrain maker works. I have no idea how many hexes I have now, I just add a pack or two when I want to create a new element for my boards. I think that if you start out with 4 packs of the 1/2", one pack of the 1/4", and one pack of 1", that should give you a nice mix to make some flat hexes, roads, streams, hills, etc. I use the 1/2" hexes the most by far. I have never used the 1 1/2" hexes. Before I got into making any hexes I thought about using the 1/4" for all of the flat because for the same money you can cover twice as much table, but then went with their recommendation. Now I completely understand why you use the 1/2" for the base level elevation- you then have an elevation to go down from which really looks nice for road ditches, stream banks, minor depressions, etc. If you start out with the 1/4" everywhere, then you have nothing to go down to for those lower elevations, and it won't look good.

One thing that I would also recommend is looking at the photo guides here on the website and in the GHQ catalog. They are really helpful, and show how to make a variety of hexes. I usually make my hexes assembly line style, and can crank out a large number of them in an evening.

I how that this helps get you started.

Thank you Cboy3

The hexes I did purchase already are completed, I'll try to get some pictures up when I get home. I bought a quart of light sandy colored latex paint from Home Depot, Popcorn ball I think was the color. For the 1/2" hexes I painted them completely with that color and then came back with a heavily watered down dark brown to 'stain' the hexes in random patterns. Once that was dry I came in with half and half Elmer's glue and water for the small patches of vegetation. I served in Afghanistan so I sort of knew what I wanted to see for desert terrain but I know that North Africa is a bit different, particularly in the amount of random vegetation. A quick look on Google Earth Pro (which is 100% free now guys, in case you didn't know. Its fantastic for getting down to an area and seeing what a 400 meters looks like from arms length, can't reccomend it enough) showed it was a little more patchy. It didn't come out exactly how I had envisioned it but its playable.

My original buy was a set each of TM hexes. Very quickly we realized how many 1/2" hexes get eaten up by making hills, so we ordered another 4 packs of those (which I believe arrived today, according to the tracking, just waiting to get home). My current plan is to take 2 packs and make reversible road/open hexes, 1 pack reversible open/rough terrain or soft sand, and the last pack I'll use to Mount the remaining hills I need to build from our last purchase.

Thank you for all the info, but in the interest of this not accidentally turning into a discussion on terrain building (not that I mind, but I may open another thread for that) does anyone have answers to my rules related questions? Particularly the objective and building clarifications.

Thank you all,
Ivicus

Pictures as promised in my last post. Not much but its all the terrain I could make with the hexes I had. Note all hexes that are not hills are double sided, with one side being open terrain and the other being some other terrain feature (wadi, road, soft sand, etc.)


Overall view of the board


A closer look at the Wadi's. Soft sand hexes on the left.


Hills closer up, don't quite line up properly, but was my first attempt and I'm okay with it.[/img]

Looks good. Keep up the good work. I'd play a few times and get a feel for how you like the size and how much more you want to expand it. It looks like you have room to maneuver around so just adjust according to the size of the battle.

Sorry, I do not know the GHQ WWII rules at this time so I'm not able to give any input on them. Red Lief helped to develop the rules so hopefully he reads your questions tonight.

Thank you all for your support! As it turns out the package that was delivered today was actually a book, not my next set of Terrain Tiles. Those should arrive tomorrow if the pattern holds. That being said I would greatly appreciate having one of the developers give me their intentions regarding my rules questions, as personally I feel it is more accurate to the game they tried to make, than what the rules may actually say. I look forward to Red Lief's Reply.

On a Side note, are After Action Reports something that are acceptable to post in the Military Model's Forum or is there somewhere else I should post them, I have some juicy ones. They are from small games but me and my roommate are quite imaginative when it comes to making up reasons for that natural 12 on 2d6. Many laughs are had, and heroic and hilarious deeds are abundant.

Thank you all once again,
Ivicus

On this forum there is a topic AAR: show us your games (use search).

"Occupy an objective" means to be phisicaly on it, it doen't means simply to control. or secure it. Your in-house rule wil negate the effect of artillery. What will haoen if ny artillery destroy your unit occupying an objective? You can't be stil consdered occupying the objective as you were the last to control it.

"Buiding" is a definition of type of terrain type. Youare in bilding when you are in this terrain with the exception of mounted cavalry or moving on a road through it.

For close asault it never happend to me, but I woud say that both remain where they are as the disruption has not been inflicted by the close assault.

I hope this may help

As for the thread "AAR: show us your games" - this is a good, convenient place to display your After Action Reports, but not a requirement. You could, if you want, create a new thread or put it into one of the other threads (but with the likelyhood that, over time, it would become buried deep in the listings).

To TAMMY

So just having a stand on it counts as occupying? So if a hill were to be the predetermined objective then its possible for two people to occupy it as the same time?

Our concern was if that is the case then what would stop someone from holding a bunch of jeeps or armored cars just outside the range of units on the hill until the last turn. Say the objective of the scenario is for the German player to occupy the woods in the center of the board. On the last turn of the game he rushes 10 armored car stands at it and after all the opportunity fire only 1 gets in. What your saying means that the German player has won, even if the allied player still had a regiment or more in those woods?

I'm not saying you are wrong or anything, just trying to be clear on how it works.

Thank you,
Ivicus

I had in mind a "point" objective not an rea one. In any case if both sides can claim the occupation of the objective it is not occupied for the victory conditions.

Obviously this apply to area objective only and if it is quite large you may specify "occupy the MAJORITY of the objective" but this would require an accrate definition of the area involved.

I see what you are saying. In regards to a point objective it seem's pretty easy to figure out, but as far as Area Terrain is concerned we will use common sense. In the event of a debate where we cannot determine who has majority control, we will defer to "Contested" and say that neither has control of the objective until a force more clearly controls it.

Thank you for your respose!

Ivicus