Vietnam Wargaming with 10mm scale figures
Skirmish gaming means using individually based figures in forces of Company size at maximum. It does not really afford the opportunity to hold 'big' games, i.e. battalion scale search-and-destroy missions, full-scale airmobile assaults into multiple landing zones, major attacks on firebases and so forth. Now, I know that many people will say that Vietnam was, for the most part, a war of small scale fire-fights involving platoons and companys and that, whilst battalion sized operations were frequently the norm, battalion-sized battles were not, simply because it was so difficult to entice the NVA and VC into such large-scale engagements.
Nonetheless, such big battles did occur and, besides, wargaming has always been as much about the 'what ifs' of a particular War as it has been about the actual historical events themselves. I wanted to examine the possibilities, as well as actually re-create on the tabletop, some of the 'what ifs'. I also wanted to do so on a large scale and consequently chose to 'down-size' my collection of 20mm and 15mm figures to a smaller scale and, by using smaller squad sized bases, be able to fight bigger battles.
Drawbacks of Larger Scales
One of the major limitations wargamers face in relation to the size of the battles that they wish to recreate is the physical constraints placed upon them by the size of the available playing area. A good-sized wargaming table, say 8 feet by 6 feet, may appear quite large but, once you have deployed a full Company of individually based 20mm figures those seemingly wide table-boundaries begin to shrink alarmingly.
Certainly there is room for that VC village that you are going to search, and there may even be room to send your platoons off to the flanks in order to approach it from different directions. However, what if the VC simply decide to bug-out through the back-door? More importantly, what if they decide to bloody your nose first and then bug-out?
There is little room on the table-top for artillery blocking fires and even less room for the wide-sweeping flanking maneuvers of a mobile blocking-force? The situation is not easily resolved, even if you change scale by using 15mm figures. You could, at a stretch, at this scale, and on a suitably large table, field a battalion-sized force at 1:1. Nonetheless, even if you now have the room to maneuver such a large force, you also have to move an awful lot of miniature soldiers every turn (about 200+ for an infantry battalion)! And, finally, when your game is over, where do you store all those figures, the terrain pieces and your 8x6 table?
These were some of the considerations I looked at when deciding whether or not to start a 10mm collection.
Figure Bases and the Benefits of 10mm Scale
A 10mm figure is not only half the height of its 20mm counterpart but it is also about 1/4 the mass and therefore the frontage of a 10mm figure is also considerably less than that of a 20mm figure. So, using 10mm miniatures means that you can place a lot more soldiers into the same sized area. More soldiers is good (that's almost a wargamers mantra!) but this also increases the problem of moving such large numbers of figures. The answer is simple, place multiple figures on a single base.
Comparison of 10mm and 15mm figures
This option then precludes skirmish games as a base of figures moves as a single unit. However, once you have accepted that this method of organisation rules out the skirmish game, your options are still considerably enhanced. A single stand of 4-5 figures can represent either a squad or a whole platoon. If the organisation of your forces is correct, then figure stands are usable unchanged irrespective of the scale at which you game whether it be Company, Battalion, Brigade or even Divisional level.
