Point 213 in 28MM

So,

About ten years ago Drunkensamurai and I had this grand idea to play a historical scenario for the battle of Point 213 during the Normandy campaign. The Battle was the German 101. Schwere SS-Panzerabteilung of four Tiger 1's against the British 4th County of London Yeomanry with at least 17 tanks. The battle in a nutshell had the four Tigers ambushing the British that had stopped along a road in column to conference since they did not see any German activity all day. This however changed as the Tigers unleashed hell on them and surprised the British column virtually wiping them all out.

It didn't help that Battlefront put up a PDF of the battle for Flames of War with a nice map and detailing of the armored units that fought in the battle. So Drunken and I both agreed that this would be a cool game to do in 28mm on a 8'x8' table. At the time though, there were not many good WW2 vehicles on the market in 1/56th scale. So we decided on using Tamiya 1/48th scale tanks, they fit in better with the mostly Black Tree Design forces we had, so off we went buying tanks.

Tamiya 1/48th Firefly

Tamiya 1/48th Cromwell

I got as far as collecting the two tanks above, Drunken had a couple of more tanks then me, but right about the time we were buying these vehicles is when Japan had the serious earthquake and tsunami. This caused problems for distributors and it became tough to get Tamiya models at a good price. So we shelved the project for a later date and knew we would come back to this project. Well as these things happen, we never did anything with it and just kept the project shelved until earlier this year.

You see, earlier this year I decided that it was time to liquidate my 1/48th scale armor for more of the 1/56th scale plastic armor kits that companies like Rubicon and Warlord have out. It made it tough to mix 1/48th tanks with 1/56th tanks of the same type, so I sold off all my 1/48th scale stuff to a local friend. With the funds I decided to replace all my existing models I sold in the new scale along with a few other kits. That's when Drunken and I started talking about reviving the Point 213 game again. He committed to replacing his tanks to the new scale and we started talking about doing this project once more. But we were looking at least 23 vehicles and that was a bit steep in pricing for us when your talking $30.00 a tank. So we happened to be talking to another friend and he said he would help out with the game by purchasing some of the tanks for the game.

Drunkens British armor

  So now with another sucker lucky gamer joining us, we set out to acquire all the models needed for the game. Each one of us would build one build at least one British troop of tanks being one Sherman VC Firefly and three Cromwell tanks. Drunken and I purchased the Tigers and Drunken picked up a couple of other vehicles and tanks. All of the vehicles are Warlord kits, I had picked up a Rubicon and Warlord Tiger, but will be picking up one more Warlord Tiger to keep it all Warlord models.

Rubicon Tiger and Warlord Tiger

So with that goal in mind, my wife got me a belated birthday gift of one Warlord Firefly and three Warlord Cromwell's. They arrived last night and I jumped straight in to assembling the Firefly, which I have to say was a great little kit to put together.

Warlord Firefly!

So with that, we are only missing three tanks (Cromwell CS tanks) that Drunken will be picking up in the very near future. So last weekend we got out what tanks we had at the time and play tested the game in our local shop. The response we got to the play test game was amazing, people were blown away by the number of tanks (which was only half!) we had on the table. One Flames of War player thought we were playing Flames in 28mm and absolutely loved the look of the table and the idea.

8'x4' table!

Cromwells running away from the Tigers!

But one thing that we both realized after the play test game, we need terrain, lots and lots of terrain, specifically Bocage! We are estimating we will need at least 48 linear feet of bocage sections, each section will be 6" long, which means about 96 pieces of terrain! Luckily another friend of ours just did up a few bocage pieces for our local shop and we will be using his technique of using insulation foam, Woodland Scenic course ground foam and lots and lots of glue!

So there you have it, another big project lined up for 2017, so stay tuned...

TK