More Pico Armor Fun

Soviet T-72 tank, BMP-2 APC and infantry section - and a Canadian penny

Over the past few years I have periodically dabbled in the Oddzial Osmy's 3mm tanks and troops (example here).  We have even played a game of Cold War Commander using them (back in 2008, I think, but I'm guessing - I couldn't find it on the blog, so it must have been a while).

Motor rifle company in BMP-2s

I am very impressed with the sculpting and casting quality of this range - these are really, really neat.  And the scale offers a chance to "air out" the game a little bit on the table, with engagement ranges that "look" more realistic on the table, and crowds of armour that don't crowd up.  But would this catch up with other gamers?

BMP command unit (round base), BRM recon track, and a platoon of BRDM AT launchers

When I had first purchased these figures I based them in groups, so each stand would literally represent a platoon. But the look still didn't quite work for me - I have always loved tons of tanks on the gaming table, but disliked the "hub to hub" effect this produced in terms of the look.  This happens even with the smaller size figures like 15mm (for examples, see nearly any Flames of War game).  

ZSU-23-4s - an essential for any Warsaw Pact commander

The hub-to-hub effect happens for a lot of reasons on the gaming table which I'm not going to drone on about here.  I thought 3mm might solve it, but the group bases still looked crowded...even allowing for the smaller scale, the tank platoon, for example, still looked crammed into the square base. 

Before on the right, after on the left

T-72 command base (20mm round)

There are certainly times when armoured vehicles mass on the battlefield, but generally they are quite spread out. How to get this on a reasonable sized table, while still playing with a ton of tanks?  I started to experiment with individual basing for the 3mm stuff last summer - example here.  Recently I finished another round of the figures, and re-based some of my previous stuff on individual bases, enough to get tonight's game going.

T-72 company

I think Oddzial Osmy has a devoted fan base - the range is very, very comprehensive and new stuff keeps coming out. Check out the Pico Armor online store to see for yourself. On forums like TMP, however, I have often seen the small scale panned on the grounds that the figures are impossibly small, and "might as well be paper counters".

Leopard C1 squadron

TMP door-knobs aside, 3mm will not be for everyone. For me, it is a lot of fun to work on these little tanks and troops.  It is a challenge to find the right colour shades to make the figures more visible, to shape the groundwork a little bit, etc. You can get a pile of them for a small sum, the range is unbelievably complete, and I even love that they mildly evoke counters - after all, I was a huge fan Avalon Hill games like "France 1940".  I'm also a big Cold War tank geek, so I can "see" the shape of the vehicles right away.  I'm not sure that will hold for the more casual participant.  These will probably need some labels to help with identification. 

Another view of the Leopard C1s

Will this work for gaming? We'll see tonight - we will be playing an imaginary WW3 game, using the overall Soviet invasion plot of the 1984 movie "Red Dawn", in which three Soviet army groups crossed the Bering Straight and tried to link up with a southern Communist pincer coming up from Mexico.  The Soviets are trying to pass through Brandon on their way to the states - and the Canadian Forces have a little something to say about it!

Pico-Sized Deviation - 1/600 Scale Tanks

A Centurion Sho't and a T-62 from Pico Armor beside a Canadian penny.

While waiting for the latest round of stuff for my Golan Heights Project to dry etc. I had some fun today painting up some pint sized tanks - 3mm/1-600 scale tanks from Oddzial Osmy. These are available through the excellent folks at Pico Armor.  The quality of these sculpts - particularly considering the insanely small scale - is incredible.   Often derided by the pointy-headed TMP denizens with lines like "oh, I guess you would need counters for the infantry, or to even see what it is hah hah", the amount of detail that Oddzial Osmy manages to cram on these tiny models speaks to incredible sculpting talent.

QRF T-62s "drying" and waiting until the arms build up on the Golan Heights Project can resume

I have some modern Canadians and Russians in this scale, based in groups on bases.  What is so neat about this scale is that it offers the nutty gamer (like me) the chance to try and show "what it really looks like" on the table - a small table.  My T-72 battalion - it really is (well, it is very close) a battalion of tanks - 33 of them, spread across on the same number of bases I would use to represent a battalion in Spearhead with 6mm/1-285 models in Spearhead.  With the 3mm scale you can game high level divisional breakthroughs, and simulate games where the units cover a lot of territory (or at least try to).  It's fun.

Centurion Sho'ts - the round base is meant to represent a command tank

And yet.  And yet.  On Curt's Analogue Hobbies post about a 1:1 Civil War unit (check it out here), he mentions the curiosity of wanting to see an entire Civil War regiment lined up.  My hobby mind is tormented the same way about armoured units.  I sort of have that with my Canadians and Russians, but   even with the small scale, they are still crammed on the bases.  So despite the tiny size of the models, the tanks are still all packed together, creating an axle to axle look that I strive to avoid, even as I play games stacked with armour in all sorts of scales - yes, I am the problem.

Inspired by that 1:1 Civil War post from Curt, I wondered what individually based Ozzdial Osmy tanks might look like?  If they were individually based, the tanks could spread out where it made sense, but with the small vehicles, you could have a lot of them on a normal-sized game table.  But what would it look like?

T-62s from Ozzdial Osmy - I attempted to replicate Syrian camouflage on these vehicles

In my research for the Golan Heights Project, I have found the battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War lend themselves well to this experiment.  They were primarily fought by tank units, and featured LOTS of tanks.  While I certainly will paint a pile of them for 15mm scale (after all, I'm nuts and I love painting tanks), the 3mm/1-600 scale would allow for an average table to fill with tanks and still not look too bad in terms of the axle-to-axle effect.

Pico Armor products are very reasonably priced, so the experiment is one of minimal expense.  I based some tanks on 20mm square 1.5mm-thick wood bases from Litko, using 30mm round bases to represent the tanks of company and battalion commanders.

A T-34/85 on the left, and a Tiger II on the right. 

I did a couple of experimental WW2 tanks as well - a Tiger II (yes LOL) and some T-34 variants.

T-34/85s on the left, King Tiger in the middle, and T-34/76s (1943) on the right, with a Canadian penny to provide some scale

I was happy with the results - this was a fun diversion. These tanks paint up really, really fast. I will add a few more during my next pause, and then at some point I might try and rack up a "Valley of Tears" type game for the guys. And see what I can come up with for basing infantry - not to worry, it won't be 1-to-1...

New Pico-Size Project

Well, after the rush to complete some Napoleonics through the new year, it's time for a new, and hopefully much quicker, project. Rummaging through the pile-o-stuff in the basement, I found my stuff from Oddzial Osmy - 3mm scale modern armour and infantry. I had been reading a bit about the 1973 Yom Kippur War lately, and it clicked that a scenario in 3mm from the Sinai in 1973 would be the perfect short project. I got started over the long weekend (and after all, with the rain and the "spring" like freezing temps, what else was there to do?). Here are some pictures of "test" figures.

The Modern Spearhead rules include a scenario pitting an elite Egyptian armoured brigade against Israeli armoured reserves in the Sinai near the canal late in the 1973 war. I thought this would be a good "target" scenario to start with. Here are some T-62s - the rounded base equals a command stand.



We have gamed previously using these super-small figures. The detail is great - incredible, really, considering the scale, and the figures paint up fast. The depth of the range is really something too - they have almost every relevant tank, armoured vehicle, aircraft and helicopter. Dealing with the distributor Pico Armor is a breeze, with excellent customer service. It's also great price-wise - 15 tanks are like $4 US.

I still love the GHQ stuff for Spearhead, but this scale has several advantages. One thing that is neat about the small figures is that you really do have a tank platoon on the base. Another is that you can represent a much bigger battlefield on the same scale of table - you can play a game on a smaller table, or a bigger game on a normal table.



The scenario features a total of six battalion-sized units on the table - four Egyptian and two Isreali. All and all about 54 bases on the table. I'll do a little project tracker on the blog to help keep me moving, and post pictures as I go. Right now I am still doing "test" figures. I have pretty much nailed down the Egyptian colours. I am still struggling, however, with trying to get the right colour mix for the "field gray" the Israelis used in 1973. Watch for more progress in the blog.