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.