Friday, January 31, 2020

Battalions and Regiments! Oh my!

As I continue work on my Eastern Front WWII forces, I've been playing around with the idea of fielding WWII games with a company per stand and a battalion or more per side - both on and off grid .This would let me tackle some larger battles - in theory, in practice they'd be no bigger than a One Hour Wargame "army" one one end, and twice that on the other. Indeed, many people treat the stands in OHW as companies, not the suggested platoons, given the force composition.

Nominally, for the sake of building my forces, I'm treating a stand, gun, or vehicle as a platoon - this means I'l have enough variety to field just about anything for squad vs squad (unusual, given my figures are based two to a base) to a battalion or two where 2 infantry bases or 1 gun/vehicle equals a company. I'm using TO&Es from the GHQ WWII TO&E series available on wargamevault to guide this process by the way, and prevent me from buying everything that catches my eye (my empty wallet helps limit the acquisitions too!)

Anyway, here is some goofing around just setting them up on the table to get a look at the idea of two base companies (4" base frontage for infantry)- my Soviets are not following doctrine for deploying in depth by any means:

Dark grey PAK is 21st C. / Unimax / 32x / Ultimate Soldier
Above, two Panzergrenadier battalions with two companies of PZ IVs prepare to attack a Soviet rifle battalion with artillery support and a battalion of T-34s. And here is a close up of one of the battalions:

Mortar is 21st C. / Unimax / Ultimate Soldier and MG is CanDo Pocket Army. PAK is Italeri 1/32 model. Unpainted crew are CTS. PZ IV's are CTS as well. Soviet ZiS is Italeri 1/32.
In the above picture, the MG and mortar together represent a Panzergrenadier support company (2 MGs platoons, 1 mortar platoon), while the  PAK-40 represents the P/G heavy company (1 ATG platoon, 1 infantry gun, and 1 Engineer platoon, which I admit doesn't make sense given this representation - I am thinking of basing the guns on 4x4 squares, and putting the engineer base alongside)

I decided for giggles to quickly modify Morschauser Moderns and play a game. I settled on 1" = 100 yards (which meant a 400 yard frontage for infantry stands, and adjusting weapon and movement ranges) and played a small game on a 36" x 36" table (representing 2 miles x 2 miles roughly), using the roster option. The scenario was based on my faulty memory of a OHW scenario: a Panzergrenadier battalion had to capture a cross-roads and dislodge the Soviets from a hill, while the Soviets had to hold the hill and capture the cross-roads.


For fun, I decided to break out my transport vehicles, which I don't have nearly enough of, nor do I know anything about how they were used in actual combat situations. Looking at the photos, they're a bit, no make that WAY too spread out for battalion frontage I believe - but this was just a proof of concept so I'll forgive myself.

A mix of vehicles including 21st C., Marx (yes, it's a US vehicle. I was desperate!), Deetail, and CTS. The PAK next to the transport is a convenience to take up less space - this is how I'd do it in a square, but really it's trailing the vehicle
None the less, non-combat transports probably shouldn't move into small arms range of the enemy before disembarking their troops!

In any event, 1st and 2nd P/G companies race forward and attack the hill:

2 P/G companies with support attack the Soviet support companies - in this case the Britain's gun is playing the role of a Soviet ATG battery (of 2 ATG platoons). The kublewagen is for transport only - it's MG is not part of the fight. Ditto for the Sd.Kfz 251s MG, which snapped off anyway.
The Soviets sent three infantry companies on foot to take the crossroads from 3rd P/G company, who was supported by the battalion's heavy company:

I had a hard time remembering that the rifle company range was 6"(remember it includes all rifles, lmgs, and support paltoon weapons including any light mortar if present) and not the 9" spotting distance (these ranges come from a set of company-per-base rules which I'll talk about in its own post and work well with 1" = 100 yards).
At the hill, the Germans were driven back handily and the crossroads fell to the Soviet attackers in close combat (Morschauser close combat is deadly and gun bases have very little melee power).


*****

I realized when all was done that I had forgotten my morale recovery rule, used back during my Thanksgiving SoloCon. Perhaps the game would have gone longer than 30 minutes if I had remembered!

In any case, visually this game worked for me (ymmv) - I would go so far to say it felt more "toy soldiery",  which is always a  plus in my opinion. The feeling was no doubt aided by wonderfully simple rules, and by the presence of the transport vehicles, which look both wrong in a practical sense (they're like 600+ yards long) and right in a smiles sense. I found I had no problem thinking of 4-figure bases as companies (perhaps because that's how many other people game in other periods, if not WWII) and that confirmed for me I'm on the right track with this idea.

I think a grid might be even more effective, particularly when buildings are involved, but I haven't tried yet - I can definitely see using the Portable Wargame for this kind of thing if I go down that road. As for the rules I used this time, I have some thoughts for another post.

8 comments:

  1. Loving the models and admiring the progress. I will have to assemble my own troops and see what I have. Have you decided yet what base sizes you are using? I am still going with the Morschauser 3” Standard. I also decided initially to have enough toys for OHW scenarios and so two infantry bases are now defacto platoons. It’s a happy coincidence that we have the same configuration.

    As far as organization I am amusing myself with a pyramid scheme (!) with formations made up of three sub units. It’s a lazy way out, but at least I am not driving myself nuts trying to be ‘historical’. I have already trod that route. In my ‘youth’ I played collected and played Naps and would obsess over correct numbers and formations with the result of constant rebasing and reorganizing. Never again shall I suffer the tyranny of realism and will embrace my losing touch reality!

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    1. Thanks! One of these days I'll have to do a full parade - the German armor I have is in 4 scales though (1/32, 1/38, 1/48, and 1/50!). I suppose I could put the smaller ones in the back, the way model railroaders use tinier model trees to imply distance!

      I'm currently sold on the 2" bases - it was done so that I can try games of Crossfire (eventually) and meet the various terrain base-capacity requirements. While I am enamored of the 3" Morschauser basing - particularly as it allows one figure set further back to create the impression of a unit deployed for action, the 2" bases have grown on me. And I like two bases together for the 4" frontage - although the line looks unnatural for the period, it helps my brain with the abstractions - be they called platoons or companies. We'll see how long I stick with this basing though.

      Going with enough toys for OHW is a great plan - indeed, the ability to field 2 bases per unit of mortars and 2 ATGs for each side has guided some of my recent acquisitions. By and large, even though I prefer modified Morschauser rules (primarily modifying ranges), I still use OHW for the force and scenario generation. It's only recently as I've been considering some historical scenarios that I've begun looking at different force compositions.

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    2. Morschauser seems to go too quickly for me. Perhaps I am doing something wrong. Didn’t you post your rules once?

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    3. They play extremely quickly using the base rules with one hit removal, especially with just a handful of units. It barely merits setting up the table.

      The roster doesn't really slow things down that much either - although looking at Morschauser's suggested sample forces for a battle, it's easy to see how a game could take awhile with 25 and 39 units.

      For a OHW with 6 a side, it's going to be too fast, roster or not (although OHW is really fast too). I have multiple modifications that I've used to slow the game down alone and in combination.

      One is to use the roster method for strength points, but only roll 1d6 rather than 1d6 per strength point when units attack. So at most a unit loses 1 point per turn. I used this a lot a few years ago.

      Another is to steal Featherstone's saving roll from his simple modern rules. Whenever a unit takes a hit, it gets to save - 5 or 6 in the open, 4-6 in cover. You can use this with the roster method as written (attack with 1d6 per strength point and save against each hit) and it definitely helps units survive longer.

      I added a recovery phase to my game turn when I used Morschauser at Thanksgiving. So, any unit that has lost strength points can recover 1 point per turn, if they make a save at the start of the turn (same roll as above). This helps a lot when there are fewer units than Morschauser intended and, combined with the saving roll, provided a game of what I felt was reasonable length, but less than an hour (OHW never takes an hour for me either though).

      My latest attempt was a mashup of a variable attack dice variant of OHW and Morschauser's rules. They worked well I think - but I only played two games (one OHW scenario and one about twice as large).

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  2. “touch with reality!” Sorry, got carried away.

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    1. As I lost touch with reality long ago, I understand!

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  3. I bought OHSW on the strength of your blog posts. It arrived yesterday. I look forward to reading it and trying it. My brief look yesterday suggests I am onto a winner.

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    1. Excellent! I don't think you will regret the purchase.

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