WW3 1956
!! UNDER CONSTRUCTION !!
KAMPFGRUPPE COMMANDER III Campaign
Click on the above links to go to each Scenario Page
I’ve been a WW2 wargamer for almost thirty years and have played at various scales and operational levels. For me brigade-a-side seems to be the best way to actually fight the battles you can read about in the history books, and gives a good mix of infantry, tank, and support. By far the best rules I have found to fight this level is Kamfgruppe Commander by David Reynolds, now in it’s third edition and available from Capitan Games here.
These rules are not overall that complex and you after playing a couple games you get the hang of them. Once you do they play like no other for me in this period and handle things like troop quality, and being able to respond (or not) to the enemy extremely well. Typical games in this campaign could be resolved within a couple of hours playing time, and means you can actually get the scenario played in an evening, and they give as far as I can see plausible historical results.
I used the period British O/S 1943 1/100,000 NW Europe maps available from the WW2 Topographic Maps Series at McMaster University in Canada - you can access this online here Maps are supplied under the Creative Commons Attribution: non-commercial 2.5 CA Licence
This is a fantastic resource for wargamers and to me gives just the right amount of detail you need, whatever scale or rules you are using. If you look through this website you’ll find maps for most of Europe, incuding Italy and also Korea for post-war scenarios.
When we translate the maps to the table we generally only put main roads on, and assume the smaller roads are subsumed into Open Ground. Similarly we only portray major groups of houses and use several town blocks under the rules to do this.
I game WW2 in 10mm which for me gives the best balance of big enough infantry to use practically but small enough to use tanks en-masse. I've tried several different painting styles over the years and hope to update this site with a painting page to share my experiences, I find these helpful on other folks sites.
There are a bunch of manufacturers out there nowadays but my forces were built up primarily with Pithead Miniatures.
I also use Pendraken, Minifigs and the new Lancer miniatures. My forces are based to the blitzkreig commander rules format, with 50mmx25mm bases typically for infantry with usually 5 figures to the base. Tanks are generally on 50mmx30mm bases, assets on 25mmx25mm single models, and formation commanders on 40mmx30mm bases.
There is a wealth of information out there for the wargamer, and the challenge is to find appropriate material that can be translated to the tabletop. My main sources for the campaign have been:
Osprey Elite no148, The Hungarian Revolution 1956 by Erwin A Schmidl and Laszlo Ritter. This is an excellent and thorough book on the Hungarian Revolution and contains a lot of hard to find information on the battles at Budapest and the wider context. Good history of Hungary and the lead up to the revolution as well as some good colour plates. Highly Recommended.
The Suez Crisis, MilitaryImages.Net this is a great website with a wealth of information on the Suez Crisis battles. Includes Orders of Battle for the various forces. Well worth a visit, here.
1956 Suez Crisis Pictures, again from Military Images.Net , great photos especially of the hard to find French Para's, see here .
National Service, Elvis and Me! by David Fowler. A cracking book following many National Service veterans in their time in the British Army and Air Force, many deployed in Germany and other theatres of operation. Very relevant to our campaign and well worth getting.
The British Army in Germany (BAOR and After): An Organizational History 1947-2004 by Graham E. Watson and Richard A. Rinaldi. Covers BAOR and deployments across various era's including 1950's and 60's - useful reference.
ParaData Website . See here for info on Operation Musketeer and the Paras at Suez. Lots of really good information here on the battle.
The Miniatures Page, 3rd Shock Army vs BAOR. See link on this discussion here , found this very helpful when looking at the Goslar Gap scenario.
Hammer, Anvil and Net by Richard Simpkin, BAR72, December 1982. Really interesting article that talks in detail about the Goslar Gap. See British Army Review Special Report, The Soviet Union and Russia, Volume 1 2017, can download it here
Ivan, Soviet Soldier, British Army Annual 1954. A really fascinating article on Soviet Soldiers of the period - is part of the BAR Special Report mentioned above.
Hungarian Free Press - Elvis Presley and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution see here
last updated 8/5/22