World War II

World War II was probably the dominant conflict in terms of the media, toys and other gamers as I was growing up in the hobby. But apart from a brief excursion in 10mm (using the horrible Skytrex Action 200 range) which went nowhere, I had never got into it personally. Then, just when I had decided that I had all the periods I would ever need, certainly for this project, I suddenly found myself launching into 1944 in North West Europe in 20mm. How the hell did that happen?

AB British weapons teams. Even my painting can’t disguise the excellent sculpting

A number of factors. I had admired the kits coming out of Plastic Soldier Company for some time, in a "wish we had that when I were a lad" kind of way. Much simpler than even Airfix, several models to a box and supplied with crew and stowage: real wargaming models. Then Too Fat Lardies published Chain of Command, a set of rules that live up to the hype, but ensure your wargamer megalomania is kept well in check as they really only support a platoon a side.

Where it all began: Military Modelling, February 1982

Finally, my misidentification of a newly released model sent me on a wild goose chase down memory lane that ended up with me obtaining obscure resin models from hard to contact suppliers and launching into the creation of a British Recce Squadron. The gory details were recounted in a thread on the now sadly defunct WD3 forum, but my recollection is that it was all the fault of those enablers R. Mark Davies and the late, great Allen E. Curtis. End result, I had a whole new period.

A mere 40+ years later…

Given the small size of the forces I’m building, I suspect there are not many scenarios they will work for, but using a combination of Chain of Command and Joe Legan’s Platoon Forward, I will be using them for Scenarios 5, 11.