It is often said that one of the most important military principles is maintenance of the aim........
Sadly, for the butterfly wargamer, easier said than done....
A rather depressing realisation of mortality as I get nearer retirement (mentally already there!) has led to a desire to not only complete projects, but also realise those that have been in the planning stage for decades....
One of my planned projects has been WW2 in the Western Libyan desert, especially 1940 to 1941. For years I have been collecting reference material, books and miniatures but have never got around to making it happen.
It was very close about 20 years ago when I had lots of 15mm awaiting paint, working on a platoon per stand basis (Command Decision / Spearhead). Sadly, real life intervened, followed by job moves, physical relocation, yet more job moves, redundancy, family, new career all of which pushed it to the back-burner....
In the intervening time, my ideas and outlook have changed considerably. No longer do I want complex rules, nor tactical type games. Instead, I have embraced the idea of operational style games, with stands representing battalions as a basic scale. Rules such as Megablitz, which I struggled with as concepts, have now become the level for C20th games.
As I moved towards that tentatively, I found for a while that I wanted both. So, rather than use the 15mm, I ended up collecting "20mm" versions specifically to try out games at operational scale. Mentally, I think I was retaining the 15mm "just in case".
A few years ago, I discovered the old GDW "double blind" series of boardgames and in particular, Operation Crusader:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6814/8th-army-operation-crusader-the-winter-battles-for
The concept is each side has their own map and has to discover the enemy's units through contact. Not only perfect as a campaign, but also for distance play. I have picked up a couple of copies cheaply from eBay. One now resides some distance away in the North, the idea being to play it as a campaign, fighting the battles with miniatures "some time". A combination of chatting to my perspective opponent and a book purchase once more raised the idea to "centre stage".....
I thus spent some considerable time digging through boxes as I had the strange urge to build quirky British armour.......resulting in unearthing the likes of these:
There is of course, lots more.....
I have plenty of source material that can expand the OOB in the game. I started working out what is needed for a full Megablitz orbat.......
As this grew and grew, I could feel myself becoming dispirited and I started to convince myself I should just concentrate on the existing projects......then I began to have the thought that it wasn't necessary to create everything, especially infantry. The game has battalions of armour, but infantry are in brigade or regimental strength counters with stacking limits of a brigade/ regiment and battalion per hex. I'd already started working out how to translate this to a 4" hex from the game using the different ground scales. ...
I'm now wondering about everything on 2" / 50mm wide stands and having infantry as a brigade / regiment but keeping tanks as battalions; the desert was really about mechanised warfare with infantry tending towards static defence or inf v inf slogging matches. Even 3 infantry stands per division would allow them to be individual battalions for a brigade action if needed.....with multiple small divisions, enough for a full divisional action with a stand as a battalion.....
I cannot but help wondering if I shouldn't just concentrate on finishing the existing projects; sadly the itch just won't go away!
