10mm Stalingrad

I think I've finally settled in on 10mm as my scale of choice for the Stalingrad project.  It is a compromise.  I much prefer 15mm infantry, but my 15mm painting is too painstaking and slow for me to ever complete 3-400 infantry.  Furthermore, 15mm buildings are going to be either underscale or prohibitively large for the scope of this. Realizing that, I experimented with MicroArmour.  The GHQ vehicles are frankly amazing in their detail, but the infantry is just too small to be useful on a terrain-dense board.  Stalingrad was a highly infantry-centric battle and the 1/285 infantry just isn't big enough or distinctive enough to take center stage.

I'm impressed with the 10mm Pendraken infantry.  I wish they did some appropriate German pioniers, but Phil at Pithead assures me that he intends to release an updated pack net year sometime.  I'll be looking forward to that.  I have a slight preference for the Pendraken infantry, but the Pithead infantry is certainly serviceable. For vehicles, I am greatly impressed with the Pithead offerings.  Hopefully I can put up some photos later this week.

I've made a couple of drawings of my proposed mapboard (version 2) of Central Stalingrad.  The whole map:

It actually cuts off the railroad crossing in the south.  It also lacks the central landing stage and any detail on the banks of the Volga below the city.  At 4" = 100yd, it does compress the center of the area quite a bit, so it isn't completely accurate.  There isn't a lot of important terrain in the NW corner, but the hex grain forces me to put it there.

I drew this on hexes with the original intent of using Spearhead rules, which use squares to represent urban "sectors" or "zones."  Basically urban terrain is "area" terrain and LOS only exists between adjacent sectors.  Edge sectors are treated as regular terrain. The red lines delineate the edges.

I don't think this would be workable with traditional measures at battalion level, hence the hexes and sectors. 

Main buildings/features:

• Stalingrad Rail Station #1
• Children's House
• Nail Factory
• Fallen Fighters Square
• Univermag Department Store
• Specialists' House
• Water Works
• State Bank
• Brewery
• Flour Mill
• Warehouse
• Pavlov's House
• Zabolotny House
• 9 January Square
• Voyentarg Corner
• Milchaus
• Railyard

Here's a drawing of the NE corner around Pavlov's House.  The map has since been revised but I want to save it because I like the setup and want to stick pretty close to it.

 

Progress update

...or lack thereof.

For everything, a season.  It appears that spring is going to be devoted to varmint shooting, summer to fishing, and fall to big game hunting.  That leaves winter for painting little men and shooting 3-gun.

The biggest hurdle I've overcame is I now have a plan for terrain building.  I'm going to make my own hexes in the fashion of GHQ Terrain Maker. This will enable me to play Crossfire with a hex representing a terrain feature or SLiM.

Ongoing projects

1. I am pretty much stuck with the painting area in the shape it's in.  So, not going to make any progress until I get the house renovation done and get things squared away.
2. 15mm Stalingrad.  I have some Russians  based and ready to finish.  Still working on getting good rubble bases.
3. Terrain building in 15mm
4. 6mm Ostfront.  I think I will start with recreating 24th Panzer, as here: http://lancasterwargamers.blogspot.com/2013/01/toe-for-german-24th-panzer-division-at.html
5. 28mm WWII skirmish with Lardies Chain of Command.  I have enough plastic Bolt Action figures to do a German platoon and a Russian platoon.  I want to make some significant 15mm and 6mm progress before I start this.

So, it looks like Ostfront is the focus, with 6mm at thel level of 1 stand = 1 platoon, 15mm 1 stand = 1 squad, and 28mm skirmish.