Playing With Miniatures

I was just at a boardgaming event where the artist host used 40mm figures and large hexes for Battlecry 150. He also had wonderful three dimensional terrain! Although its easier to track what is going on with the original components, I certainly enjoyed the two games I played with these great toys.

Have you tried this out? Richard Borg himself started out uising the old American Heritage Battle Cry pieces (1960s) to supplement his first original BC demo games, and his pals seem to use minis as well. I played Memoir 44 Operation Olympic at one of his events only a year or so ago, and had some difficulty following all the action on an EPIC (Overlord) sized board. Luckily, as the Japanese C-in-C, all I had to do was hand out the cards (hey, we won)!

Although I haven't tried any Commands & Colors games with minis myself, I do play Heroscape, and have lots of that wonderful terrain, which I've also used for Star Wars minis games. I've seen it used with 54mm minis (which is the scale of my main historical collections) putting one figure on a hex, with various rules systems. I know that others have used this Big Scale for playing BC as well, through our discussion site (littlewars@yahoogroups.com).

I'd be interested in hearing the experiences of anyone else who uses (or has played in games with) minis to play Battlecry.

I had played earlier also with a 3D Terrain and painted miniatures

www.boardgamegeek.com/image/466740/battle-cry

but in meantime i change more and more (and prefer) the "Block" style of GMT games. This one is much more flexibel, if you want create customized additional blocks or complete ohter war epoches
(look to my Zulu, Little Big Horn or Afghan Wars alternates).

But you are right for sure, a nice 3D board and painted miniatures are fine, but costs a lot of more time and talent of painting and creating

I too have been using 28mm figures and customs terrain. It really brings the game to life!

Growing up in the border state of Kentucky my family and I always had a fascination with the American Civil War. So, back when I was a young lad, my family made a trip to Gettysburg, PA. While we were there my father bought me a pack of small, painted ACW figures. They were approximately 28mm in size and fairly detailed. I had such a great time playing with them while on that trip, as well as after I got back home. They really excited my imagination. So I went looking for more information on the civil war at my library. There I found a big, silver American Heritage book named "Picture History of the Civil War" by Bruce Catton. Inside were these amazing paintings of the various battles created by an artist named David Greenspan. Here's a link to a picture of one of the spreads:

squareone-learning.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Gettysburg.png

That was it. Those two things, the miniatures, and the paintings, pretty much sealed the deal. When I discovered miniature wargaming (through D&D) back in 1977 I was hooked.

Now for years I had been looking for a ACW game that would help me harken back to my earlier years. However, I was kinda late to this party. I knew of the 1st edition BattleCry but just never seemed to cross paths with anyone that had it. When ebay came along I started to purchase it but when I heard that a new edition was in the works I held off. I bought the 150th edition the day it came out, already planning to enlarge it to 28mm.

Years ago there was a game called BattleMasters. It was played on a large hex map with 28mm figures. I used that as a guide for my battlefield scale, created the terrain I needed, and bought and painted a couple of sets of Perry plastics. To show you the results I'll give you a link to some pictures I've posted over at Board Game Geek:

boardgamegeek.com/image/1856896/battle-c...y-edition?size=large

I think there are a total of six photos on that site if you look around a little bit. And I'm still working on this setup. I have lots of plans to continue to improve the way it looks. At the moment I've been creating modular roads. The roads have no effect on the game, they just add visual interest to the board and help to break up the "sea of green". Plus I'm keeping them as historically accurate as I can when it comes to their placement and name.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing this site continue to grow. I hope to contribute as well. At the moment I have a 1st day Gettysburg (afternoon) scenario set up on my kitchen table. I hope to play test it some more and if it seems to be enjoyable I'll post it down the line!

We with the Jackson (Miss.) Gamers always use miniatures instead of the blocks.  We have several players whose eye sight works better with miniature.  We play on a mat with 4" hexes.  We just played the Gettysburg 2nd Day scenario yesterday using 25mm figures.  Each unit was either four infantry stands, three artillery stands, or a single mounted officer.  It went very well and the Union side ecked out a 7 to 5 victory.  Sorry I didn't take any pictures.

And we also use miniatures for Napoleonic, Medieval, Tricorne, WW2, and Samurai C&C games.  Here's a brief report on the battle of Thannuris  from the C&C-Medieval game using 15mm figures.  

Jim