Arnold Hendrick's tactical WWII game 1944 (formerly published by THE COURIER, now published by Lou Zocchi) includes a campaign game which I undertook to play last year. In this article I will describe the practical side of the game; this is not an account of how the campaign went but rather of how we got it started. Mr. Hendrick himself helped with the development of some of
the ideas described herein, but any blame for drawbacks or errors in the system should rest entirely with the author.
SCALE
For some time I had itched to play the campaign game, but had been intimidated by the vast numbers of units involved and the amount of space needed. The hexagonal playing table had to be 50 inches across, just big enough that it wouldn't fit on my sheet of plywood and many vehicles and stands would be required, all painted correctly.
The solution to these problems lay in the 1/285th scale Microarmor vehicles made by GHQ. Alternatively, one could use the 1/300th scale vehicles marketed by various competing firms (HERITAGE -- ed.). Using these small vehicles enabled us to halve all the distances in the game, including the dimensions of the stands, thereby bringing it down to manageable size. Rather than deal in fractions of inches, we made scaleddown visibility and range sticks.
RULES
We first tried the MEETING ENGAGEMENT scenario of the campaign game. After play had started, we realized that the HOGARD side must be allowed to move first; if YURICH wins the die roll called for in the rules, they get too large a headstart and wind up defending ground in what is supposed to be a dual attacker situation. We used several optional rules, notably flamethrower tanks.
A rule was instituted that a flamethrower tank must be identified as such when it is placed on the table. Play would have been more exciting without that rule, but I had some models of the Panzer Flamm III and I wanted to use them without forfeiting the advantage of surprise.
The map-marking aspect of 1944 has always irked me, particularly since the game does not have simultaneous moves. The small scale we used allowed us to do away with the map system and replace it by a system of numbered PSMs. Each player had an array of numbered squares on a sheet of paper, each square containing a PSM marked with a matching number. To denote a unit by a PSM, one places the unit on one of the numbered squares and puts the PSM from that square onto the board.
Then, when the PSM is spotted, one checks the number on the PSM and finds the unit in the corresponding square on the array. Screens divide the arrays so that neither player can see his opponent's array. The minefield rules were changed to fit the new system: a minefield is a cardboard rectangle and along with each one comes a dummy minefield of the same size. These are deployed face down. The only way the new PSM system changes the structure of the game is that one can now trace a PSM from position to position.
We did not find this change to be significant. The change in convenience of play, however, was quite significant.
FIGURES
The main question here is "How many figures do I need to play the campaign game?" There should be enough to deploy any TWO of the brigades on both side. Brigades tend to be understrength, so one can try to get by with a slight shortage here and there.
For example, many brigades include three armored fighting vehicles (each vehicle in 1944 represents five of actual TO&E -- Ed.) of some type. If you own five, you'll probably be able to make it through the campaign without ever needing six at a time.
To save time and money, we created stands by making counters as if for a board game. Carefully drawn in pen and ink, these were reduced and copied onto colored paper, then mounted on cardboard. Each counter, half the size of a normal stand of its type because of our reduction in scale, bears the symbol and name for what type of unit it is, and black circles indicating how many men are on it. Paper circles, cut out with a paper punch, indicate casualties and being pinned down: red for casualties, white for pinned down.
PAINTING
I started my Microarmor collection under the handicap of not knowing how to paint camouflage. Since I am now said to do so with some skill, my experience may be of some benefit to others.
To Start
The place to start is a book of pictures. There are many of these, but I found Murphy's Panzer Colors ($6.95 from Squadron/Signal) singularly useful. Humbrol makes paints specifically for panzers so one might as well use them. The Big Three are the red-brown, the green, and the overall sand. Panzer gray and track color can be useful as well, although I prefer to paint tracks with the red-brown because they were always encrusted by mud anyway.
Murphy describes in detail how the prototypes acquired their paint jobs, and the surest way to mimic them is to reproduce the original painting process on the model. For example, one can first apply a solid coat of overall sand and then apply generous blotches of green and red-brown. The blotches should be boldly applied and fairly large. When they are dry (and Humbrol dries very fast) a "veil'' coat of one other color can be added, encompassing the whole vehicle but so sparsely applied that the other colors are still clearly visible.
One possible "veil" is whitewash. Tanks were whitewashed for the winter and the coat was simply allowed to wear off in the spring. To mimic this, I apply Polly-S white in the lightest possible brushstrokes, always stroking down so as to simulate the streaks caused by rain rinsing off the whitewash. If I make too big a blotch, I just smear it downwards with my thumb or leave it as a patch of intact whitewash.
Another Veil
The other "veil" I use is red-brown. Applied with the driest possible brush (so dry that each stroke barely puts on any paint) this color represents the mud streaks common to most vehicles. One needs to take a little thought about which direction mud should streak on a given vehicle, but the improvement in appearance is remarkable. The mud treatment also looks good when applied over a vehicle of solid color such as overall sand: it results in clearly visible detail on the casting because projections stick out and catch more paint.
In painting my vehicles, I stuck to the same camouflage pattern throughout a given type of vehicle. For example, all my Flamm III's are gray with sand stripes. I don't know how prototypical such a practice is, but it makes the game much easier to play as well as simplifying the task of painting.
All of the above applies only to German vehicles -- the Russian idea of camouflage was a solid coat of green, or white in the winter. Mud can be added as desired.
To protect your artwork when it is finished, give it a spray of some protective coating. I use Krylon polyurethane furniture finish. It is mat, and no vehicle I've sprayed with it has ever chipped, either in normal use or even in abuse. This coat is very important as Humbrol colors chip readily and it is much easier to squirt some Krylon onto a dozen vehicles than it is to keep repainting them all.
TERRAIN
Prior to the game I made a set of maps of battlefields. Each type of hex found on the campaign map had to be represented, and the more plentiful types had to have more maps represented. There are more hex types than might initially be obvious because they vary both as to terrain and as to placement of terrain within the hex. For example, a woods hex with a road passing between opposite sides is different from a woods hex with a road passing between sides 120 degrees apart and each city gets its own map.
To set up the table top for a battle, we took a map for the correct hex type and rolled a die to choose what orientation it should have. Some hex types are unambiguous as to orientation. Then we set up the terrain on the table, measuring from the map very carefully because small distances are quite important in 1/285 scale 1944.
Once placed, terrain pieces were taped down. In retrospect, I think that we would have done better to make tabletop-size diagrams of the cities and simply play on them. Many interesting nuances, such as streets of varying widths, parks, bridges, etc., can and should be included in cities for 1944. Drawing them out once and for all would make them easy to duplicate for later battles in the same city.
That last point goes for non-city hexes as well. When a hex is the scene of two battles, not only must the same map be used, but it must be duplicated as closely as possible. Discrepancies of half an inch can utterly change the type of tactics possible in that hex. Imagine the plight of the player who is defeated by tanks charging from the woods to the village who then returns to retake the same hex and finds that the woods are now an inch farther from the village and that such an attack would fail.
This description of the preparations needed for the 1944 campaign game may leave you with the impression that the game is too much trouble to play. On the contrary, I found it entirely worthwhile. Victory conditions in 1944 battles (as well as others) often strike me as contrived and unrealistic.
In a real battle one has a more general range of goals than simply taking a given hill or bridge. In the campaign version of 1944 the same options are available, and the battles are greatly improved thereby. I would go so far as to say that only in the campaign game have I found 1944 battles whose initial situations and goals seemed realistic.
Related
Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. 1 #3
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1979 by The Courier Publishing Company.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com