Little World Wars at COW 2023

Tim put on a game featuring his latest 54mm excursion, this time into the Second World War. I’d already taken part in a few playtest sessions and was fairly familiar with the game. Essentially it is pitched at battalion+ type engagements with infantry companies of half a dozen figures, heavy weapons platoons and individual AFVs and guns representing platoons/batteries. In this it is similar to Little Cold Wars, the main difference being that infantry are represented at company and not platoon level.

Tim briefs the participants.

The game scenario pitched a British infantry battalion supported by a squadron of Shermans, assaulting a village held by units from 12th SS Panzer Division during Operation Epsom (iirc it is a historical scenario). This was the first time I’d seen Tims 54mm WW2 British before, in previous iterations we’d used Russians as proxies.

The Germans.

And the British. All 54mm.

There was a big turnout for this one, and I just went along to observe, but got roped in to command the British Support Company - a 3” mortar platoon and Vickers MG platoon, both transported in carriers.

The British infantry push out of the town. The tanks are over on the other flank. The leading carrier is transporting the mortar platoon to a reverse slope firing position.

The German Panther and AA platoon make an appearance. 

The mechanisms are tried and tested - a card based unit activation sequence to interleave the turn for both sides, small arms fire resolved by dice throws, but gun fire is handled by firing a nerf gun at a target. This had players queuing up to shoot at things, and nerf guns are surprisingly inaccurate, even at a range of a few feet, it did however generate armour casualties at a reasonable rate.

The infantry make it to the first hedgerow, but the British armour is fighting a losing battle.

The actual attack progressed much as the playtest games had - the Allies managed to push into the edge of town but eventually ran out of steam. All the players seemed to have plenty to do, and despite the large scale figures and vehicles, sufficient suspension of disbelief happened to make the whole thing hang together in a very satisfactory way. I expect there will be more outings for this in the future.