After our recent 6mm tactical games, I have a hankering for something more operational level. I'd like the idea of playing more of a battle and less of a skirmish. That isn't easy in WW2 as the scale is huge, and arguably operations are better run as board games, but I've been checking out what is available on the tabletop.
The granddaddy of this genre seem to Chris Kemp's Not Quite Mechanised, which emerged from the Wargames Development organisation and their Conference of Wargamers; a wonderfully British and geeky institution.
Chris has a blog of the same name here and seemingly another older one here. I think the wordpress one is the current one but I found this old free version of the rules here. It seems for a very long time NQM was ever changing but a printed version is now available and I have the rules on order from Lulu.
From an earlier version of NQM came Tom Gow's Megablitz as an actual published product. The book is now long out of print, and the Yahoo group swept away with the others, but I managed to snag a used copy in lovely condition and there is Bob Cordery's old website here.
Bob also gives his recollections of the development of NQM and Megablitz here and here. Tim's blog has a lot of old posts and Steven Thomas has some clarifications for Megablitz here.
Steven also has a wider and in depth look at the whole operational level of game rules here.
Another development of the NQM/Megablitz stable is a free set by David Kershaw called Assault Gun. They no longer seem to be under development or played much but are still available via the Board Game Geek file section here.
The scale of all these games varies slightly from company stands in NQM to battalions or infantry regiments in Megablitz or Assault Gun, but the general level is that you command whole Corps, Divisions and possibly army groups. Logistics are included to some extent but without a lot of book keeping. i might want even more detail here but that might be tedious. I'm interested to try this level out as something different from the wall to wall elites that usually predominate in WW2 tactical rules. I'm keen to see how the German commanders cope with inadequate horses to move their heavy artillery, or having to keep their panzers supplied across the vast expanses of desert or steppe. Games are typically based on historical or hypothetical scenarios.
An interesting aside is how most of them seem to have been played with larger scale miniatures than I would have expected. 15 or 20mm look to be the norm. I would have thought 6mm was the natural scale for operational battles but then I suppose we are probably back to the whole question of whether this could be done better as a board game.
See Martin Rapier's 20mm Megablitz games here vs. Fister's micro armour here. Both look great, so it's probably my perception/prejudice more than anything else.
Visually, I like these multi-based 6mm units from Peter at GridBasedWargaming. I think this might be the way to go but the larger bases mean you need a bigger playing area. We probably have that but it's something to ponder.
Next time, I'll pull together the links and thoughts on Kiss Rommel and that vein of operational rules.