Tactica 2024 – Historical

This February I attended the Tactica wargames convention in Hamburg for the first time, after having been tempted with pictures of beautifully presented gaming tables for many years.

Situated in a community centre that suitably looked like a fort with moat from the outside, the atmosphere was quite different from typical shows held in sports or convention halls. Spread over two days, I opted for the Sunday which should have been the less busy. The location shots below are from early in the day – it did reach what I would call a capacity crowd later, spread out between the main trade and gaming halls plus a multitude of smaller gaming rooms containing about half a dozen tables each.

Since there was no program to easily reference the gaming tables as to who built them and what they depicted, I’ll leave my snapshots of some of them here without further comment.

More information and pictures can be found on the Tactica website, and the Tabletop Deutschland blog is promising a closer look at the displays in the near future, as they provide every year.

Salute 2023 – World at War

Kicking off the World War I and II coverage is a pseudo-historical game in Mark Copplestone’s ‘Little Soldiers’ inter-war setting, staged by the Cornwall Wargames Association. If I understood/remembered correctly, the rules used were an adaptation of the Memoir ’44 boardgame.

Moving on to the ‘real’ war, 1/72 Wargames recreated a section of the Kaiserschlacht 1918 with the 36th Ulster division under German attack.

The Zagory Rebellion by Cornwall Wargames Association

The Zagory Rebellion by Cornwall Wargames Association

Kaiserschlacht 1918 by 1/72 Wargames

Hugo’s Heroes created scenarios during World War II inspired by classic Airfix model sets from the 1960s, and brought some of the original plastics along as well.

Getting my Airfix by Hugo’s Heroes

Getting my Airfix by Hugo’s Heroes

Getting my Airfix by Hugo’s Heroes

The Retired Wargamers Reloaded had constructed a massive and beautiful board for a 15mm scale battle around Carentan 1944 using Rapid Fire rules.

Eagles and Lions at Carentan by Retired Wargamers Reloaded

Eagles and Lions at Carentan by Retired Wargamers Reloaded

The Lard Zone had its debut at Salute this year, and WWII was well represented by games of Chain of Command.

Saint Côme du Mont 1944 by Joe Bilton

Saint Côme du Mont 1944 by Joe Bilton

Holding Oosterbeek 1944 by Nick Skinner and Rich Clark

Salute 2020/21

Salute was a bitter sweet event this year. My main motivation for attending has always been to be impressed and inspired by the gaming and display tables, with shopping opportunities as a bonus. This year I had a shopping list, consisting largely of new rules systems (Oathmark, Stargrave, Gaslands Refuelled), a box of Fireforge peasant zombies for my necromancer to summon into his Warhammer 8th edition army, plus the obligatory new KR case to carry the latest forces I managed to paint.

All that purchasing luckily distracted from the lack of photo opportunities. For some years now the number of jaw dropping displays has been steadily declining, and this year they fell off a cliff. My respect goes out to anyone who manages to build and bring a table full of terrain and opposing forces to a wargaming show, especially as a club effort without any related rules or miniatures to sell. Still, the amount of empty floor space due to missing traders, and worse, tables that had been set up but remained vacant on the day, didn’t inspire my photo journalistic fervour of previous years. Therefore I only took some snapshots of two displays in attendance.

The first was created by the Loughton Strike Force, who are consistently bringing amazing looking games to Salute. Their ‘Stalingrad – Fire on the Volga’ was played using the new ‘O’ Group set of battalion level WWII rules. You can see many more photos of it on their website.

The second display that stood out to me featured World of Twilight. The creators have been attending Salute for many years, and I always enjoy looking at their unique miniatures and terrain. I believe this year was the first time they brought a ‘full size’ table, with lots of buildings and little vignettes.

I guess next year, with the show scheduled to be back in its regular April slot, will tell what the new normal for Salute is going to be.

Support Sections

I continued with my late war Germans and completed the infantry support units. From start to finish the force took me 6 weeks of building and painting 64 figures, amounting to 300 points in Battlegroup, a squad level engagement. Costing £27.50 for two sets of figures (plus £2.50 for the German Field Grey Vallejo paint), this is probably my cheapest and quickest playable force so far. Going smaller scale, plastic and Army Painter dip in a historical setting really makes a difference for getting things done.

I put together two medium mortar teams with loaders, two MG42s on tripods, an additional grenadier squad with an MG34 on bipod, plus MG ammo carriers. I still have a spare medium mortar and MG42 but felt it’s unlikely I would every use those. I also didn’t build the 120mm mortars since I would rather have them as off table support.

Two panzerschreck teams, a medic and enough grenadiers with panzerfausts to equip every squad complete the infantry element of this army. Next up, armoured support and possibly some halftracks.

Beyond the Beaches

For the longest time I have been contemplating which scale to collect World War 2 forces in. A while back I bought the Battlegroup rule set thanks to its good reviews and the nice presentation. Its miniature photography is really the best in capturing the eye level view of a soldier in the field that we are hoping to recreate with our wargames (well, I am anyway).

The choice then came down to either 15mm or 20mm scale, and I opted for the larger of the two. Since I am more interested in infantry engagements over tank battles, individually based soldiers appealed most to me. I wasn’t going to go with 28mm since I wanted more room for manoeuvre and more realistic weapons ranges on my usual 6’x4′ gaming table, in addition to cheaper armies that would be easier to store.

I kicked off my collection with a platoon from a German infantry division fighting in Normandy 1944. It is based on the army list in Battlegroup: Overlord – Beyond the Beaches.

I am only going for reasonable representation with regards to colour schemes. In terms of accurate base uniform colours, the opinions online are already divided. I opted for Vallejo’s German WW2 Field Grey. All other colours are chosen from the range of paints I had in my collection for all-round use.

The figures are kits from the Plastic Soldier Company. They are easy to assemble hard plastics. Details are a bit soft and there were some mould lines to scrape off but I am happy enough with the quality to keep using the range. All figures come with integrated bases, so after gluing them to 1p and 2p pieces (40mm Renedra plastic bases for the MGs) I used Polyfilla to blend them in. This provided a good ground texture at the same time.

I simply applied a layer of base colours over a white undercoat and then brushed on Army Painter Dark Tone. My usual grass mix works in this scale and setting I find. After giving them a dusting of Testors Dull Coat they are at an agreeable gaming standard for me.

The only ‘conversion’ I did was replacing the antenna on the radio operator (which broke off anyway) with a plastic broom bristle.

The platoon contains three bipod mounted MG34 teams. I painted up two in deployed mode and one advancing for now, to give me some variety. For gaming later on I will probably want all three deployed. First off, I am going to work on various support units though.