My first game with 3mm scale minatures

I played the desert scenario 1 with a gamer who has never done miniatures before but lots of boardgames. He picked up on it very quickly and played very well considering that he had the Italians and I won the 1st turn initiative! His name is Rick and lives near Decatur.

He seemed to like it and said that he probably would have preferred larger miniatures for his first game. My tiny order system was a bit fiddly but not terrible.

We got 5 turns done in 3 hours* and called it because the Italians were pretty beat up. I told him that it SEEMED worse than it was because he could regroup quite a bit. And I made some errors in reading the charts, forgot to place wrecks etc. These could have made a big difference so I was impressed at both his grasp of the system and playing ability.

The 32x48” (80x120 centimeter) playing area in centimeters was scale equivalent to a 6.67x10’ table rather than the scenario usual size of 6x6’. So I used the extra depth to allow reinforcements to deploy rather than having all appear on the edge & feed on laboriously… which CD suggests them to havespent a BMA and required to be moved on ‘hasty’. This probably saved time too compared to the usual approach.

One HUGE thing that made the game go faster and more comfortably was that we were both seated at a relatively small table (36x54”) and didn’t need to do the usual stretching, hopping and running that a ping pong table requires. And since you’re seated, you’re closer to the play surface than when standing. We sat at either perpendicular to the no-man’s land which is atypical but seemed to work well… and charts were hung at one end. One could squeeze 2 more players in or without much crowding a 3rd player at the end of the table for the side that needed 2 players.

If you played a campaign, then it would probably be better to have several small tables like this than a giant ping pong table with several major actions. And that would match the box-to-box approach of Battle Axe as currently in the CD3 edition books (see picture at the beginning of this post).

On balance, 3mm is so affordable, easy to paint well enough and comfortable to play on a small table, seated that I feel it makes up for the tiny size and fiddly orders. I have thought of another orders concept that is radically different but needs testing.

I possibly have another guy showing up Saturday that I haven’t seen for but made it to Springfield several years ago—Vic, so I may get another view to report.

I will continue my pace like a true Italian leg-infantry commander!

*I played pretty loosely, forgetting about forced back portee and to order companies and we kept the game going at a good pace!