April 2010 New Releases

[Timothy OConnor]

I'm not really sure where you guys are going with this discussion. To me 6mm figs are to game large battles (ie A/I War, Cold War, etc.), the exact oppositie of modern "asymetrical" war. Unless you are gaming a BHD in The Mog I really don't see any realistic wargame situation can be gamed out with 6mm irregulars. By definition they fight small scale skirmishes. Which are better gamed out at a larger scale, IMO, like Ambush Alley stuff.

I have modern/near future/sci-fi figures in 6mm, 15, and 25/30mm. I can assure you that 6mm is VERY valuable for gaming this type of warfare.

In a modern fight from Iraq, Afghanistan, or Lebanon, one can see infantry, IFVs, tanks, gunships, aircraft, drones, and arty all in the same fight. I've read many memoirs and unit histories resulting from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that explain how this happens from platoon to battalion-level actions. In every case these combined arms ops featured heavily armed and well equipped forces vs infantry insurgents who stood and fought and sometimes won!

You simply can NOT field that many different troop types in a single 25/30mm game. The models are just too big relative to any reasonable table space. And appropriate terrain is nearly impossible at that scale too. Even 15mm is problematic relative to unit variety and battle scope. Games such as Flames of War in 15mm look COMICAL with massive unit density...more like an ancients game than 20th/21st century warfare.

In a 25/30mm sci-fi battle with my two little boys we'll push the limit on a 6' x 8' table and field 3x IFVs and a couple of tanks per side plus appropriate infantry. But if I want to replicate part of Fallujah or a combined arms Soviet op in Afghanistan (easily a mech battalion with at least a company-sized+ helicopter air assault) then 6mm is the ONLY way to go.

6mm combined arms ops are VERY entertaining, even when one side is a heavily armed modern force and the other is "merely" insurgent infantry mounted in nothing more than technicals and civilian vehicles. The terrain, rules of engagement, and use of IEDs means the insurgent infantry are not only not helpless they often have significant advantages over their heavily armed enemies!

And if backed by external enemies insurgents/irregulars can be well equipped to defeat even heavy armor and advanced aircraft. In Afghanistan the Soviets faced US-supplied stinger missiles and in Lebanon the Israelis faced the latest Russian RPGs and ATGMs which could easily destroy the best Israeli tanks. Operation Anaconda spread across an entire valley and the fight described in the book "Ambush Alley" featured a battalion-level combined arms op.

And how's this for a "skirmish" vs a pure infantry skirmish force? Those are entire battalions on ~700m frontages!



I've gamed lots of such battalion-level fights at 1 stand = 1 platoon. Think marine BLT vs insurgent infantry in a coastal nation and you have an excuse to field LAV-25s, LCACs, Cobras, M1A1s, HUMVEEs, AAVP, and you can see why 6mm is so valuable.

[Panzerleader71]

But, the reason why the US armed forcdes in Iraq and the Coalition forces in Afghanistan are doing so well is that they are hitting the Taliban/Insurgents with overwhelming force. True you can set up a battle with battalions of western forces, but how many times are they met with like sized "Irregular" forces?

[Theodore]

...As we see it, the difference between insurgents and irregular deals more with the organization, and political situation, than the look of the people involved. In an earlier post someone included a link that shows an image search of "insurgents". When you see a photo of someone on a street, armed with an AK-47/RPG/etc. and he is wearing local street clothes, maybe has his face covered with a keffiyeh or a hood, is he an irregular, or is he an insurgent?...
GHQ

What he gets called is irrelevent. But now we can't call them anything but imaginary. But the money you invested to create Middle Eastern buildings, civilians, and the western and local forces used by conventional armies to fight those insurgents is wasted until you provide figures for those insurgents.
Your approach to the Middle East is best ** CENSORED ** as an approach to the Pacific war in WWII. If you created every vehicle used by the US Army, Marines, Brits and Australians including those ONLY used in the Pacific, then created a line of buildings to represent Island huts and buildings, then created a pack of civilians for the Islands, and then never produced ANY Japanese infantry. Would you sell any Marines, buildings or civilians? Absolutely by the collectors, but what gamer in their right mind would buy those forces until you produced Japanese forces to fight.
You have produced over 100 packs of miniatures to provide all of the forces the US, UK, and Israel need to fight against the Mahdi Militia, the Sunni Insurgents, Hamas, Hezbollah, and many others. Along with that you produce the buildings and civilians for them to fight among and for the cost of producing a pack or two of middle eastern irregulars you have made 100 other packs in your catalog less valuable, less useful, and less marketable.

Remember, they're just like us with families to feed and bills to pay. Would you risk a sizable chunk of cash on developing miniatures that only four or five individuals might buy? Think about it.
...
He is right. Improvise. I had planned to paint the straps on the Bush Warriors as folded over jackets with a contrasting shirt underneath. Using the 3 foot rule they would have looked just right.

If I wanted to go with the 3 foot rule, I would not have spent 22 years buying GHQ and would have bought from their competitors whose vehicles and figures look just fine from 3 feet.

But my point is that GHQ has already invested a sizeable chunk of cash producing miniatures that have absolutely no other purpose than to fight middle eastern insurgents.

SO those miniatures have no purpose for war gamers unless their are insurgents to fight. WHile GHQ has close to 100 items in their catalog that are useful for games against insurgents (M-E buildings, M-E civilians, aircraft, US, Israeli, and UK forces along with a lot of soviet equipment used by the Iraqis.)

Without Middle Eastern irregulars (who represent 99% of the fighting in the last 30 years) why would anyone buy Middle Eastern civilians for them to hide among and behind? Why would anyone buy M-E buildings unless they wanted to fight urban combat such as Falluja and Baghdad? You can say these would serve fine in conventional operations, but most of that fighting has been conducted out in the desert away from civilians where you need little terrain.

But what about the forces GHQ made that are solely designed for fighting insurgents?
Just looking at the US line, we have 2 Humvee variants designed solely for COIN operations Iraq. If nobody wargames scenarios with IEDs, why has GHQ invested the money to develop two MRAPs and an IED removal vehicle? So just a quick look turns up 5 vehicles in the GHQ inventory that have no purpose other than fighting insurgents, and why would anyone buy them if there are no insurgents to fight?

That does not even begin to get into the vehicles in the GHQ catalog, that might be valuable in other types of operations but have only been involved in combat in Iraq. This includes the M1A2 Tusk, the entire Stryker line, and many more.
Why would anyone make or buy a 5th M1 variant (under the 3 foot rule), designed solely to survive street fighting against insurgents if there are no insurgents to fight and no gamers interested in those battles?

... From a gaming standpoint, at this scale I don't see the benefit of "irregulars". THose sorts of skirmishes tend to be shoot n scoot with very small groups of armed bozos, even in Iraq and Afghanistan. They rarely hang around long enough to be pummeled by superior firepower in the case of the US.

That is a total misunderstanding of the situation in Iraq. Not to mention Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. While ambushes and IEDs wer common, their were routine battles with far mor than a battalion worth of US troops involved, so dozens of stands of infantry and vehices at 1 stand to squad level.
Also can you not see the tactical challenge involved in those scenarios, where disimilar forces fight trying to get the other side to fight it out on their terms. While Timothy mentions Falluja, this was going on around Iraq on a company and battalion scale routinely.

...I look at this way, I asked for an Admiral Scheer for years. I finally got one, but until that happened I had three Graf Spee's painted three different schemes. Were they 100% accurate, of course not, but they were better than using a Bismark for the other two ships.

Yes every line is going to have gaps in it. My point is and has been for years, that GHQ has left out the entire enemy side of the war. It would be like producing US and UK Micronauts and producing no Germans, in a world where no one else makes German ships in that scale either. How many US or UK micronauts would GHQ sell if no one in the world made German ships for them to fight against? It is wasted investment to create a line of troops if you do not also create the troops for them to fight against.
IT would be just as foolish in that scenario to argue that there is no use making the Germans since no one is buying the Allies who have no one to fight against.

I'm not really sure where you guys are going with this discussion. To me 6mm figs are to game large battles (ie A/I War, Cold War, etc.), the exact oppositie of modern "asymetrical" war. Unless you are gaming a BHD in The Mog I really don't see any realistic wargame situation can be gamed out with 6mm irregulars. By definition they fight small scale skirmishes. Which are better gamed out at a larger scale, IMO, like Ambush Alley stuff.

The reason people are going to larger scales and abandoning micrarmor is because of this mistaken attitude that battles are not occuring. I am not ready to join the legions that sell their microarmor at a loss on ebay or aat the Historicon FLea Market and abandon fighting battles and switching to skirmishes or FOW tank battles at which the gunnery ranges and ground scale make it look like you could exchange lances with the enemy tanks.

How many Cold War scale battles, battalions and brigades, are occurring in subsaharan african irregular warfare? Probably fewer a decade than some of the bad weeks in Iraq.

[Theodore]

But, the reason why the US armed forcdes in Iraq and the Coalition forces in Afghanistan are doing so well is that they are hitting the Taliban/Insurgents with overwhelming force. True you can set up a battle with battalions of western forces, but how many times are they met with like sized "Irregular" forces?

That is irrelevant, an attacker needs at least 3 to 1 superiority to succeed in an attack, so rarely in history have any battles been fought between like sized forces.

This is about scenario driven games, modeling REAL warfare.
If I want like sized forces on a perfectly symetrical game board I'll play checkers.

If you want to simulate modern warfare, then you have to fight insurgents, they are the only ones offering battle in this era.

If you want to play a game simulating a modrn battalion commander, they you have to see how you go into a city full of buildings and civilians, trying to find an enemy you may out number 5 to one or more, and hunt them down without getting into too many ambushes, without killing too may civilans by modifying your tactics and targetting.

We have reached the point that th military is debating the validity of awarding medals for commanders and troops who suffered through enemy fire and made the 'courageous' decision to take friendly casualties to avoid causing innocents to die because the insurgents were hiding behind them. If GHQ wants to continue to sell troops for modern warfare, then they have to udner stand that modern warfare is not a US tank battalion hiding in the woods while a a Soviet tank regiment charges blindly across open terrain without any infantry on the battle field.

[Panzerleader71]

You are not really getting my point. I can only think of about 2-3 occassions where Canadian forces in Afghanistan have been involved in a battle with more then a battalions worth of "Irregulars" that's over a period of 10+ years. Most are small company sized engagements.

Now, this is where I have problems getting my head around so many people wanting "Irregular" forces in 6mm. Most of the Battalion sized games I play have a scale of 1 stand=1 platoon. At that scale you are only, probably, going to be fielding at 3 stands of irregulars in most "modern" battles. To me asymetrical warfare is small strike groups of insurgents attacking a larger force hit-and-run style. Not trying to match the firepower of an MEF head on. Perhaps I am wrong, what is the "average" size of a insurgent group engaged in Iraq/Afghanistan? Or, are we basing this on hypotheticals where Bin Laden throws all his fighters into one battle? Put another way when have seen massed units of Taliban entering a set battalion sized battle over the last 10 years?

Because, my overall point here is that to me this is such a small niche of the wargame market that I think (not to put too fine a point on it) that the niche should be glad that GHQ has put thought into it at all. The more traditional lines (WWII, Cold War eras,etc) are still their bread and butter. Here is a company doing its best to supply a requested commodity, and it is panned right out of the blocks for its efforts.

[Turk]

Personally, I like the new 'regulars' that GHQ released this month. I think they are much more useful than an 'irregular' set for wargaming, but there is certainly a need for 'irregulars' to fill select engagements in recent conflicts (Israel, Iraq, etc). In my opinion, using the Middle East civilians pack is a more realistic way to represent Iraqi and Afghan fighters than a pack of armed irregular fighters. The enemy may be brave when showing off for the cameras, but once the good guys show up, they are less apt to run around in anything that could be seen as a threat to US/allied forces. This may not be the case when facing the Iraqi Army or Afghan National Army (which would make excellent wargame scenarios). To me, playing a modern counterinsurgency game isn't fun, but if I did play one I would make lots of 'civilian' stands and mark only one or two with a symbol on the bottom of the stand to show that they are in fact insurgents with concealed weapons. Again, I am not trying to say that 'irregulars' shouldn't be manufactured or anything. Just throwing an idea out there for modeling a realistic modern counterinsurgency engagement.

In my opinion, the future of warfare will still involve conventional wars with heavily armed regular combined armed forces battling in out. Nothing in the last few years has shown that conventional warfare is obsolete.

[Timothy OConnor]

But, the reason why the US armed forcdes in Iraq and the Coalition forces in Afghanistan are doing so well is that they are hitting the Taliban/Insurgents with overwhelming force. True you can set up a battle with battalions of western forces, but how many times are they met with like sized "Irregular" forces?

After nine years of fighting ( twice the amount of time we spent fighting WWII), and spending $33,000 for every man, woman, and child in Iraq and Afghanistan (to date, direct cost), all with no end in sight, I would hardly say we're doing "well". Kharzai is famously referred to as the Mayor of Kabul while in Iraq the central government has more connections to Iran than to us and the Sunnis aren't fighting only because we're paying them not to and protecting them from the Shia central government.

Those mere "skirmish infantry" in Iraq and Afghanistan have managed to pin down the largest and most advanced military organization in the history of the planet while bleeding our treasury dry (if it weren't for communist China we couldn't fund these wars.)

With nothing more than AK-47s (and Lee Enfields!), RPGs, and IEDs they're still such a threat that we can't leave either country. In fact, we're "doing so well" we keep sending MORE troops!

Can they field entire divisions? Nope. They don't need to. Just a few insurgents can fix an entire western platoon or even company in place due to our aversion to casualties. We then expend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in munitions to kill 5 guys armed with AKs and RPGs. A few hundred insurgents demands a major, multi-battalion operation as we've seen in Afghanistan recently.

That's where 6mm figures and combined arms battles comes in.

If a western force is conducting a major sweep against a few hundred insurgents you're going to have infantry, IFVs, tanks, gunships, maybe transport helicopters, air support, and arty.

Often a blocking force will be inserted via helicopter to seal off escape routes. Then the ground assault starts with infantry, tanks, and IFVs. When contact is made or the terrain becomes difficult the infantry dismounts and moves to close contact.

When they clearly ID their targets they either call gunships/air support or direct tanks and IFVs where to fire depending upon the rules of engagement and presence of civilians. They may then move in to seize the ground previously held by the insurgents.

Meanwhile the insurgents are using snipers, mortars, and IEDs to slow the attacker's advance. Pockets of insurgents (squad to platoon) will hold as long as possible while inflicting casualties and then try to slip away via concealed escape routes. The regular forces then begin a frantic hunt for these "squirters" while trying to avoid IEDs.

It then becomes a cat-and-mouse game as the insurgents use hit and run tactics to inflict casualties while avoiding the regulars superior firepower. In game terms it becomes an issue of timing.

[Timothy OConnor]

You are not really getting my point. I can only think of about 2-3 occassions where Canadian forces in Afghanistan have been involved in a battle with more then a battalions worth of "Irregulars" that's over a period of 10+ years. Most are small company sized engagements.

Every WWII gamer thinks he's playing as Patton and every battle is another Bulge! There are more tabletop Old Guard fielded than ever existed in the real French army. We're gamers, and we're going to gravitate to the most interesting fights and troop types.

When fielding 1:1 platoons or companies we imagine we're fighting the critical point of a larger battle (or a bathtub scale version of the entire battle). And when we're field 5:1 battalions we still think of individual models as single tanks instead of abstract platoons.

But the fact remains there have been large scale ops against insurgents involving hundreds of insurgents on one side and multiple, reinforced, combined-arms battalions on the other.

I strongly recommend the following books for a sense of large scale COIN ops:

- Not a Good Day to Die

- No True Glory

- The Bear Went Over the Mountain

- Afghan Guerrilla Warfare

- The Soviet Afghan War

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we NEVER, EVER fought our way through Fulda Gap against the Soviets in the 1970s or 80s. But that has NOT stopped nearly every microarmor gamer from fielding hordes of T-72s to "re-fight" large scale conventional battles that were never fought!

At the very least the Soviets fought large scale battles in Afghanistan and Chenya and we've engaged in multi-battalion ops against hundreds and even thousands of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From the perspective of large scale fights that have actually happened I would say it's far more reasonable to argue for 6mm irregular figures than to play "Fulda Gap 1984" scenarios that NEVER happened.

[Theodore]

You are not really getting my point. I can only think of about 2-3 occassions where Canadian forces in Afghanistan have been involved in a battle with more then a battalions worth of "Irregulars" that's over a period of 10+ years. Most are small company sized engagements.

Now, this is where I have problems getting my head around so many people wanting "Irregular" forces in 6mm. Most of the Battalion sized games I play have a scale of 1 stand=1 platoon. At that scale you are only, probably, going to be fielding at 3 stands of irregulars in most "modern" battles. To me asymetrical warfare is small strike groups of insurgents attacking a larger force hit-and-run style. Not trying to match the firepower of an MEF head on. Perhaps I am wrong, what is the "average" size of a insurgent group engaged in Iraq/Afghanistan? Or, are we basing this on hypotheticals where Bin Laden throws all his fighters into one battle? Put another way when have seen massed units of Taliban entering a set battalion sized battle over the last 10 years?

Because, my overall point here is that to me this is such a small niche of the wargame market that I think (not to put too fine a point on it) that the niche should be glad that GHQ has put thought into it at all. The more traditional lines (WWII, Cold War eras,etc) are still their bread and butter. Here is a company doing its best to supply a requested commodity, and it is panned right out of the blocks for its efforts.

Many of us also play games at 1 to 1 scales, with usually one stand per squad.

Just to discuss one of the latest battles, the Taliban fielded up to 1000 fighters in Marjaf, so that would be 100 stands or about 400-500 figures. Not worried about the Taliban though, GHQ has already provided the figures for Afghanistan. On the Pakistani side of the border where they face less airpower, the Taliban has concentrated 3-4000 troops for battles versus 15,000 Pakistani troops. Heck they took 1200 KIA in one of the campaigns, that is not something you can game even at platoon level in 28mm without having a gymnasium.

As for Iraq, 1000+ fighters was fairly common for cities that were insurgent hotbeds. Najaf and Ramadi saw actions where reinforced US brigades were fought to a standstill by 2000+ fighters. The first offensive agaisnt Falluja faced a similar outcome. During the second battle of Falluja, and even with all of the warning, the jihadis left a rear guard of 2500-3000 fighters to keep the US busy while the rest of their fighters scattered to Ramadi, Baghdad, and many other cities.

If Iraq was a small niche, why does GHQ manufacture so many vehicles that have only seen action during the COIN phase of OIF. Even advertising them as OIF vehicles, when they do not provide a single figure for those vehicles to fight against.

I am not trying to pan GHQ, I have thousands of their vehicles and have been a customer since I was a young private in Ronald Reagan's army. I am trying to point out a critical flaw in their modern microarmor line, that is not only hurting GHQ but the entire microarmor community. The inability to play games with good figures, that represent the great majority of modern warfare that has been occuring every day for 7 years is part of the drive to game in other scales. GHQ has invested tens of thousands of dollars to produce US forces for fighting in Iraq, and there is no need to buy those figures until they produce someone to shoot at them. Even if those specific figures don't turn a profit, people who buy them will have to buy US Army, Marines, UK, and other forces to fight those insurgents. But the lack of insurgents, means I don't buy the forces to fight them and the passion to invest more in microarmor just isn't there. I have Desert Storm, Iran Iraq War, and Arab Israeli War forces, but other then rounding out units I haven't bought more than a handful of packs in the last 7 years. I was all geared up to start playing Iraqi Freedom games, but even the initial engagements stongly featured Saddam's Fedayeen forces in civilian clothes doing most of the fighting. So I put off buying all of those forces until insurgents were available. Seven years later I am still waiting for troops to fight a war that has been running all this time. And thousands of my gaming dollars have gone elsewhere. With the announcement a year ago that GHQ was finally making some irregulars, I guess I got up the hope that GHQ had finally figured it out. But instead we get figures for subsaharan Africa, how many brigade sized battles have you heard about involving them?

[Panzerleader71]

"Many of us also play games at 1 to 1 scales, with usually one stand per squad. "

Hmmm, interesting. I would have thought a larger scale would be better for that. But, I guess it would work. Myself, I have found myself opting possibly for Ambush Ally for this scale of battle.

Also, I am going on what I have personally observed at Cons, not that I have been able to attend many, but when there is a micro armour game it usually WWII based, with a one or two Cold War Germany scenarios. If anyone is playing the Flaujah version of Where's...darn how do you say Waldo in Farsi? it is usually one of the larger fig scale. Though you do make a good point about the "new" kit that GHQ has put for Iraq needing more enemeis to shot at...I suppose.

I don't know, perhaps my bias toward 21st Century warfare is creeping into my gaming outlook.

[Turk]

The US military has learned a lot since Operation Anaconda 9 years ago. "Not A Good Day To Die' is a great book, but it doesn't represent the norm for engagements since then. I'm not sure when this shifted from a military to a political argument, but I wouldn't say that there is no end in sight for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm pretty sure most of the US troops will be out of Iraq soon. What the Americans have figured out is that soft power is the best way to end the war and these big battalion size sweeps are inefficient and not the answer.

There have been more wars around the world than just America's battles. In the past 10 years we've seen conventional wars in Georgia, the Caucasus, and other areas. Just because someone likes to game battles from Iraq or Afghanistan that represent an atypical operation doesn't mean that gaming Georgia vs Russia, Armenia vs Azerbaijian, Iran vs Iraq, or 'could be fights' like Turkey vs Greece or Russia vs China is wrong.

[Theodore]

But people are playing the larger scales in part because no one makes the figures in the smaller scale. Or more accurately, GHQ makes 98% of the figures, buildings, barriers, and buildings and then fails to make the absolutely essential 2% of figures needed to represent the other side.

I have no issue with people playing other conflicts, I do also. But has GHQ specifically created a large chunk of miniatures (at massive expense) to support those wars?

What I am pointing out is that GHQ has created buldings, terrain, civilians, and coalition vehicles for fighting Iraq and for lack of 1-2 packs of insurgents make 100% of Iraq scenarios impossible to play for those who like GHQ quality, not vehicles and troops that only look good from 3 feet.

[Timothy OConnor]

Also, I am going on what I have personally observed at Cons, not that I have been able to attend many, but when there is a micro armour game it usually WWII based, with a one or two Cold War Germany scenarios. If anyone is playing the Flaujah version of Where's...darn how do you say Waldo in Farsi? it is usually one of the larger fig scale.

You are correct. Nobody makes appropriate 6mm figures so it's impossible to run most modern scenarios in the scale.

Remember too that 1:1 doesn't have to mean individually based figures. A stand could be a fire team of ~4 figures, a sniper team of 2-3 figures, a mortar and 2-4 crewmen, etc. That is the Flame of War basing system and it looks much better in 6mm than 15mm!

Using 1:1 figure ratio and team-sized stands a squad is 2-3 stands and a platoon ~9 stands (3 rifle squads and a weapons squad). And 3-4 vehicles and you have a mech infantry platoon. In 25mm those vehicles will cost $20-40 each for a total cost of roughly $100 but only $10 in 6mm.

[Theodore]

I typically uses 1" by 1" stands with 3-5 figures to equal a squad, but I also play at the platoon level using the same stands to represent a platoon depending on the rules.

In that 1-1 scale a US mechanized bn with cross attachments will typically field 40-50 stands of infantry and Bradleys, a company of 14 tanks, and a variety of support platoons.

[Timothy OConnor]

I typically uses 1" by 1" stands with 3-5 figures to equal a squad, but I also play at the platoon level using the same stands to represent a platoon depending on the rules.

In that 1-1 scale a US mechanized bn with cross attachments will typically field 40-50 stands of infantry and Bradleys, a company of 14 tanks, and a variety of support platoons.

I started at 1 stand = 1 fire team. Moved up to 1 stand/squad.

I then settled on 1 stand = 1 platoon because of all the neat toys GHQ sells.

But I don't get wrapped around the scale axle anymore. My 1:1 friends describe their small unit actions as if they're fighting major battles! My 5:1 friends describe their tanks and infantry as individuals.

Over time I realized that nearly every nominally 1:1 game is approached like a bathtub scale version of larger battles. Thus a single platoon exiting the table becomes a "strategic breakthrough". And every nominally 5:1 game is played like a Hollywood movie with individual heroes hunting individual tanks with bazookas.

Whatever our nominal scales we all seem to approach our games at a weird double scale. I think the Perry twins called this "grand skirmish" and I've embraced the concept. 1 figure = 1 man, 1 tank model = 1 tank. A group of models = a higher level unit while the whole force is considered an even higher echelon formation and the fight isn't a skirmish but an entire battle made up of individual actions.