Scale

In the books, the combat occurred in large scale. By that I mean you had entire Corps doing battle. A Corp, if you aren't familiar, is between 40 and 80 thousand troops. You can see more details about general ground force organizations here. The enemy usually masses with a ratio of about 100:1 in favor of the enemy. That's 4 to 8 million troops against 40 to 80 thousand. Engagements occur in areas described by miles.

I briefly considered using 6mm (1/300) scale for this, but then realized that a distance of one mile would be 17 feet, 7 inches (roughly). That's a big board. Realistically the only way to model a mile in scale would be to use 2mm scale (1/914) which would put 1 mile at roughly 6ft, the long edge of a standard board. For perspective, that means that a three story building would be less than half an inch tall. The Washington Monument (555 ft) would stand a little more than 7 1/4 inches tall.

The other option is to go the Avalon Hill route and simply put it all on a (potentially hex) board and look at it from the strategic level. Each unit would be denoted by a marker as shown on the previously linked page. This would allow just about any size engagement to occur, but generally will take it more in the direction of simulation and away from game.

Alternatively I can focus on smaller engagements. At the 1/300 scale, a 6'x4' table represents a field of battle 1800' x 1200', or about 549m x 366m. 1/600 scale (3mm), the field doubles to 3600' x 2400' or roughly 1.1 km x 0.73 km.

More than likely I'll stick with 1/300 scale as that is the NATO standard scale for sand-table war-games involving micro armor. This, however, realistically limits the engagement size. A potential solution is to hybridize the scale using an operational scale map to denote force movements and placement, while using the 1/300 scale board to fight out actual engagements. Adjacent forces would have positive effects on the battle for the allied side, negative effects for the enemy.