"Why don't you see Rifle Grenades in games?" Topic

Take your favorite company level game where the smallest moving unit is a team. Why do games of this scale model mortars and bazookas but don't model rifle grenades?

Heck, some of the most popular rules will differentiate rife, rifle/mg, and mg teams. Why not add an additional rating for rifle grenades?

I would presume a team packing rifle grenades could do things that teams without them could not do. Maybe better at circumventing bullet proof cover? (i.e. the rifle grenade shot in BoB against the German MG in the roof of a building).

Am I misunderstanding something? Is the rifle grenade so ultimately useless that it's not worth modeling? Or is it so ubiquitous that it's assumed to already be in all stats?

They don't want you to hurt yourself.

Watch out boys, the OFM is en fuego!!!

Disposable Heros rules have rifle grenades and they work very wekk.

Arc of Fire rules cover rifle grenades.

Battleground WW2 uses them as well.

Disposable Heros is for skirmish. I believe Arc of Fire is as well.

I'm curious why the rifle grenade does not translate up one more level to company level games where the smallest unit is the team. FOW, Mein Panzer, IABSM (I don't these rules, they may actually have rifle grenades).

Another way of asking the question is why do these games abstract out the rifle grenade but model the little weeny mortars that are found in many of the platoons?

I believe Battleground WW2 is also a bit too fine for my question. I'm not familiar with the rules, but a review ( TMP link ) I just googled said "It is far more exciting with each side having one squad ( and maybe a tank ) ."

Again, why doesn't the old rifle grenade past muster but the little 50mm-60mm mortars get their own stands?

IIRC at Hot Lead I played an early war game of German (? Deutchland Regt) against Morrocan Infantry in a holding position [1/72 scale]. Can't recall ruleset.

But, I was quite surprised that the Germans had a rifle grenade when it was used against my FT17. It was my first encounter with rifle grenades being used.

Rapid Fire has Rifle Grenades, and you can put a brigade on the table :-)
(This is proof, really, that RF is just a 1:1 set masquerading as a high level set).

That really is a POV thing. In an individual game, it makes sense for using rifle grenade to be a distinct choice; it confers a seperate combination of capabilities and risks on the figure.

In a squad-is-a-unit game, I as the company commander should not have to tell the guys with rifles to use a rifle grenade. It the weapons choice is available to that squad in that place and time, then they should be assumed to use it when they shouldm not when they shouldn't, and don't bug the captain about it.

Now, as captain I do worry about what the mortars, the MGs and the other support weapons are and how they are working together. But even then, if they guy with the mortar achieves what I wanted him to by beating the enemy to death with a rock, I don't care.

You might ask if your rules allow the right capabilities to a rifle team with rifle grenades compared to without, but that is a different question -- IMHO, YMMV.

The rule we use (Face of Battle) cater for them, but I rarely give them to soldiers. In the battle accounts I have read (from all sides) I rarely find references to them being used i n the first place or that many soldiers carried the pots needed to launch them. I issued them i one game, ut the chance never arose to use them.

Cheers,

Burkhard

I dont know why the rifle grenade is left out. I do believe that RGs SHOULD be represented in some manner, whether abstract or not. But…

Since we are dealing with teams of men rather than individuals I think that in most cases the rifle grenade can be adequately abstracted into the characteristics of the rifle team/squad. The light mortar (generally) is a weapon system worthy of distinction. Company commanders don't usually micromanage the employment of grenade launchers. But the light company mortars do concern him. Furthermore, any target that is in range of rifle grenades is also within small arms range. Given this, is there really a need to model and adjudicate a rifle grenade attack in addition to small arms? If the unit has AT grenades, then this too can be dealt with as part of the units characteristics.

In the case of grenades, the US 60mm mortar round packs a bigger punch and the weapon has a greater rate of fire given enough ammunition, it can also cover a larger area. One man with a rifle grenade launcher is no match, based on these characteristics, for even one light mortar.

In games were you have a squad or more represented by a stand of troops, you have worked your way out of RG's being effective. What I mean by that is, is say early war German squads, they are made up, on paper anyway, to have Sqd Ldr, Asst Sqd ldr, LMG and assistant, 4 riflemen, 2 grenadiers. The Grenadiers would likely only have 2 or 3 grenades a piece, maybe less depending on supply issues and other circumstances. When a single stand represents all of those guys, the effect of a couple of grenades would be overstated if the whole stand had an advantage that lasted the entire game. However at the skirmish level, they make perfect sense, and can better be represented by game mechanics.

We use them all the time in Battleground WWII games.

Brian

Rifle Grenades and Anti Tank rifles are the forgotten weapons of WWII (and a few other periods) I have books that show almost every single weapon ever made, but when it comes so such things they are strangely silent.

"We use them all the time in Battleground WWII games."

Again, Battleground WWII is a skirmish game.

Opps didn't see the small print.

Brian

Or is it so ubiquitous that it's assumed to already be in all stats?

I would think that this would explain a lot of cases – if there is a rifle grenadier in every squad or platoon, and if that grenadier has a low number of grenades, then (considering the not so massive effect of rifle grenade) it might not be worth the effort to go tracking on which one of the squads bases has those grenades.

OTOH if you have dedicated grenadier teams working together, and with sufficient amount of ammo, then it might be interesting to represent them. According to some posts I have seen here, WWII French were supposed to gather the 3-4 rifle grenade men in the platoon together and use them in a coordinated fashion – it could be interesting to have a stand within a rifle platoon to represent such use in-game.

Griefbringer

Griefbringer,

>According to some posts I have seen here,
>WWII French were supposed to gather the 3-4
>rifle grenade men in the platoon together and
>use them in a coordinated fashion

That's correct.
All three squads had one plus an other under
platoon leader command.
FWIW, both US and German WW2 infantry
platoons had a few.

In 1917/18, VBs throwers were sometimes
gathered at coy level under CO's lead.
Every French infantry coy had 16 of
them (4 in each platoon, 2 per support squad)

They were used in this fashion mainly
in defensive mode or for small local
counter-attack 'preparatory bombardment' <g>
Up to 180 metres range, they could be quite
deadly against an advancing foe.

Germans found them worth enough to issue
a copy to their shock troops in Spring 1918.

AFAICT, there were the only indirect fire
mid-range weapon available to infantry platoons
up to the 1950's.

I've fired few of them in the late 1980's
(modernized RG, US finned tail style).
Their effect was rather surprising, a bit like
a very small mortar shell, tiny splinters
up to 50 meters around point of explosion.

Guys hiding behind a concrete/stoned wall from
your LMG fire might have had a hard time with
those IMHO

AFAICT, there were the only indirect fire
mid-range weapon available to infantry platoons
up to the 1950's.

British had 2" mortars at a Platoon level.

Disposable Heros rules have rifle grenades and they work very wekk.

I say, avid gamer, i that well or weak?

PS, I know you meant "well", I just had to poke you with a stick…
--
Tim

In a squad-is-a-unit game, I as the company commander should not have to tell the guys with rifles to use a rifle grenade. It the weapons choice is available to that squad in that place and time, then they should be assumed to use it when they shouldm not when they shouldn't, and don't bug the captain about it.

Hallelujah, Lentulus.

While I agree that for a 1:1 game (1 figure = 1 soldier) it should probably be an available choice, your comments above are something that sometimes game designers forget. In the past, anyway.

To design a game:

1) Pick a level of command you want to represent; and

2) Design the actions available around those that would reasonably be expected of a sub unit two levels down.

This is how most, if not all, armies teach their commanders, ie, manage two levels down, at the most. Actually, the adage goes something like "manage the subunit level directly below you own and be aware of the location and disposition of the sub unit level directly below that one. Beyond two levels down, you must trust to your commanders and men that they are doing their job."

PS, this is why I am a bit doubtful of game mechanics where a designer says a stand represents a fire team. As far as I know, at least from my infantry training in the 80s – and doubtless things may well have changed – that fire teams were not actual solid units. Before a mission with my squad I would divide it up into fire team 1, fire team 2 and the C2 group (two light machine guns and the squad 2iC) for fire and movement. But this could vary by casualties, whoever was sick, etc, and all soldiers were comfortable with any role. In defense, there were no fire teams – the squad was divided into groups of two soldiers who shared a slit trench.

How ridiculously off topic. My apologies, but I won't delete this as I took the time to write it…
--
Tim

Derek,

>British had 2" mortars at a Platoon level.

That's why I talked about 'mid-range'
(infantry weapons range) for rifle grenades.

From my understanding, hand grenades were
'short-range' (0-30yds), RG 'mid-range'(50-200yds),
and light mortars 'long-range' (100-500yds)
indirect fire weapons for infantry platoons.
I guess EW Germans had light mortars too.
They later deleted them but kept RG AFAIK

"How ridiculously off topic. "

Actually, very much on topic. This is a game design issue.

Also, thanks. I am designing a Franco-Prussian game where the player is roughly a division commander, and I have been getting way to wrapped up in battalion level thinking. Thanks for the poke back on track.

Nuts has them as well, though I think we usually forget about it.

I'll have to bring them out next time

Nuts is also another skirmish game.

You guys have to be trying to get my goat.

"This is a game design issue"

I concur. And even if it's off topic, I appreciate the fact that you're not listing off yet another skirmish game when my first sentence clearly focuses the question on company level games. Sheesh. If it's all the unwashed masses read, I'll write a paragraph for a topic title next time.

Anyways. I do agree in the 2 levels down general rule. I believe you've written about it in the past. So a company commander deals with issues down to the squad and special assets such as bazookas and mortors and assumes his lt and non coms can deal with the rest.

So an ideal game to fit this mold would have squads and weapon teams as the smallest moving elements. Cool there. And the rifle grenade is not generally flashy enough to warrant the COs attention. So the grenadier doesn't get his own stand. All fine. But wouldn't a rifle squad containing one or more grenadiers be better suited to accomplish certain tasks then those that do not? Many games differentiate squads (or fire teams) by bolt action rifles vs. semi-automatic rifles or integral mgs such as the BAR (not an mg in my book, but bear with me) vs. a MG42. I wouldn't think Company COs spend a lot of time worrying about what type of weaponry their troopers are carrying. But are EXTREMELY aware of the limitations and/or advantages provided by that equipment and do everything in their power to put their troopers in place to maximize the good and minimize the bad. Hence tactics taught and practiced by squads with automatic rifles and BARs is different then those used by squads with bolt action rifles and MG42s.

I think the rifle grenade is an interesting and useful but woefully overlooked tool. I would like to see a company level game add enough texture to their squads or teams so that tools like the rifle grenade can be represented.

And for that matter, can differentiate between a fully automatic rifle like the BAR and full blooded mg like the MG 42.

I guess EW Germans had light mortars too.

Yep, the Germans had a 5 cm mortar on platoon level until 1943 or so.

Also the Soviets had them in platoon level in 1941, later to be moved to company level and then dropped out in 1943.

The Japanese kept their 50mm "Knee mortars" in use for the whole war, and had several of these on the platoon level.

US paras had a 60mm mortar team (with crew of 6) at the platoon level.

Not sure if the Polish light mortars were platoon or company level weapons.

Italians strangely kept their Brixia light mortars on the battalion level. But then again that was a strange piece of equipment to begin with.

Griefbringer

Rifle grenades were one of those things only used in fairly unusual circumstances. If you consider specifically the US army in NWE they were unpopular in many units. Some seem to have particularly liked them – these being those which did a lot of street fighting. You needed to use special bullets and there are stories of soldiers forgetting this and blowing themselves up.
Those enthusiastic adopters also experimented with the 60mm mortar round fired from a rifle with the barrel strengthened by wrapping wire round it. Supposedly worked quite well.
Specifically ONLY in street fighting though.

My explanation is that it is someone else's job to provide support… until you can't call that support at all and your officers start looking for alternatives.

Ther';s an account from one allied unit that a particular german unit they encountered seemed to have a lot of rifle grenades and a lot were fired at them over a few days.
Maybe the jerry unit didn't have any mortars or something.
But it is interesting that the allied unit thought it very unusual they were receiving rifle grenade fire since in theory every jerry squad had a rifle grenadier.

The 50mm mortar would be crew served, which ought to make it much more effective than any weapon served by an individual.
The mortar would also have many more rounds and it's 2 jobs are firing he and smoke. That;s all the guys are expected to do.
The rifleman, otoh, is expected to do much more and including shooting his rifle. So shooting his one or two rifle grenades are just part of what he does.

In most circumstances the difference in effect of one rifleman out a squad shooting grenades rather than bullets is going to be negligible.
There are exception such as when engaging tanks and I've toyed with ideas on how to model a pretty poor shot AT grenade out a squad in sg2 ww2. This has been a very low priority since IMO the effect is going to be pretty awful.
Rarely worth the consequence of giving one's position away.

My Dad was in the chindits and trained extensively for jungle warfare. I have read someone claim that the rifle grenade was preferred by the chindits because it didn't go of on contact with the trees like 2 inch mortar rounds.
So I asked Dad.
He says they didn't use them in his company AT ALL since they often damaged your rifle and nobody wanted to break their rifle in the middle of the jungle in combat.

So all you needed was a bad rep and NOBODY would use a weapon at all.

From a strictly gaming perspective i found grenades are a very useful weapon as they have a blast radius capable of knocking out several figures at the same time. The disadvantage is that you had to be very close to the enemy to use them.

I don´t like them. I prefer my soldiers to be armed with a honest rifle or LMG´s, not an explosive device that you could throw from the far side of the table.It´s like every squad have a minimortar!

Talking from a skirmish wargame point of view: Imagine three squads of US infantry, each one with a couple of rifle grenades. They could be positioned at a safe distance and start pouring an enemy position with six blast templates each turn. Quite gamey, isn´t?

Maybe GL are deliberatley ignored because of this…

Ruben

For company level with games platoons and sections, the only time I bother with rifle grenades are for WW1 where e.g. late 1916 British rifle platoons had a dedicated rifle grenadier section.

If you are going down to teams, the one rifle grenadier isn't going to make a huge amount of difference. A team of the might, but this was pretty uncommon in WW2.

In Battleground grenade distances seems way too low. House rule: chuck one hand grenade twice the distance: 12 inches. Rifle Grenades 18 inches. In the Skirmish Campaign scenarios I am playing now, there is one GL in each Red Army squad, but with only two grenades.

In Battleground grenade distances seems way too low. House rule: chuck one hand grenade twice the distance: 12 inches. Rifle Grenades 18 inches. In the Skirmish Campaign scenarios I am playing now, there is one GL in each Red Army squad, but with only two grenades.

The effective range of rifle grenades was anything up to 250m. They had quite a long minimum range though (100m?)

Were rifle grenades fired direct as well as indirect?
Andrew.

We added rifle grenades to Bolt Action for no better reason than my wife picked up some German infantry which included two figures with them. We treat them like a 2" mortar but with only two grenades each. I'd guess (with no evidence whatsoever) that they were not very accurate and the shot in Band of Brothers would have been a very lucky one, but if anyone can tell me different I expect Pat would be only too happy to hear about it.

Yes they were fired direct. In 1941 they were the US Army's only first line anti tank weapon! Later an adapter was issued that enabled them to fire standard frag grenades. The "special bullets" used to fire them were souped up blanks (I have some of those somewhere…) and initially the 1903 Springfield was retained at one per squad to fire them until the development of the M7 Launcher for the M1 Garand.

That said, one GI's memoirs of being a rifle grenadier with the 29th ID in Normandy recall that he was issued with six rifle grenades before going into the line and they were the last ones he ever saw…………

In IABSM section weapons are factored in- a section with no MG loses a d6 when firing, one with an extra bren gains one. I'm guessing the guy with the RG is factored in here as you worry about the overall fire power.

2" mortars for the Brits are different- very few HE rounds were carried. I miss my smoke when attacking with a different country 😞

More to the point who is ugly and fat, yet still married, and married to a woman who wargames? Charisma or Rohypnol?

I can cook a pretty good meal and I never. ever ask to drive her zippy little convertible. That seems to do the trick.
So long as her dinner is ready when she comes home from work my life is as sweet as a sweet thing. She's the only individual I know personally who has more toy solders than I do….Ancient Egyptians, Vikings, WotR Yorkists, Confederates, Germans and Canadians for WW2 Europe all in 28mm and 20mm WW2 Indians for Burma/N. Africa/Italy. Will it make you really, really sick if I tell you that our bedroom accommodates a 12 foot by 6 gaming table?

Holy thread resurrection. 6 years later?

On the upside, my wife dabbles in ASL once in a while.

Pretty much felt the question was hanging there waitng for an explanatory response Weasel. Am I happily smug about my situation?…yup.
I always got the impression that ASL is too complicated for little brains like ours, but maybe I'm doing it an injustice? We do tend to play fairly large games but it might be nice to do section (squad) actions from time to time. Is ASL more accessible than it looks?

The ammo supply was 3 rifle grenades a day per launcher, so I would expect some one was using them to really blast the other guy.

the supply rate was the same for Germans and Americans. From what I read it seems the American launcher was the best and used until the introduction of the 40mm launcher.

At the short range setting A GI could shoulder fire it into a 2nd or more story window. ( A Gent I game with love the M-14 for this and his squad used it in Vietnam).

YouTube link

YouTube link

YouTube link

and at 16min the rifle nades use start

YouTube link

Here is a clip for the French use of a mass of Rifle grenades,

YouTube link

and Note the Germans replaced 42? the 50mm mortar in platoons to 82 short mortar (stump thrower). Good out to 1000m. It was lighter than the regular 82

YouTube link

My WW2 armies are mostly built around Eastern Front '42. According to Wiki (I know!) the Germans began issuing a variant of the PzB 39 modified as a grenade launcher (in lieu of the 50mm mortar) from '42 – I quote

"Starting in 1942, remaining PzB 39 rifles were rebuilt with a shortened barrel (590 mm) and an affixed Schiessbecher ("firing cup") attachment threaded to the barrel and used to launch standard rifle grenades. The cup was the standard type used with the ubiquitous Kar 98k infantry rifle and the ammunition was also interchangeable; there were three types of grenades: an anti-personnel grenade, a light anti-tank grenade and a large-diameter anti-tank grenade. The grenades were propelled by a special cartridge with a wood bullet. The rifle was also outfitted with a special sighting arrangement for firing up to 150 m and the wooden forend was removed. These converted rifles received the designation Granatbüchse Modell 39 (GrB 39) and remained in use until the end of the war."

Is this weapon covered by any rules? I'd like to use it using the Battle Group Kursk or CoC rulesets.

In a company game the problem is both doctrinal and fraught with supply issues. Our solution MG is to allow some effectiveness (but not great) effect against treoops isn terrain where they are known to be but cannot be engaged by direct fire. For intance behind a mound of earth which protects them from fire in that direction. This is not too far from the tactical doctrine i.e they are used to cover areas where direct fire is not possible. In addition some teams may be allocated one option to "soak" a small area like a mini artillery barage but this uses a lot of ammo so is very resticted.

If it's of interest, I've found three unit and personal accounts from the British Army in Germany, circa March-April 1945, reporting the sudden appearance of 'showers of little yellow rifle grenades'. In all three instances this was reported as a completely new and unpleasant experience.

My guess is that regular German troops, like the British Army of the period, didn't really bother with rifle grenades. However, as Germany was invaded, the newly-raised Volksgrenadiers and Volkssturm were equipped with anything and everything that Germany had left in its depots, including tons of rifle grenades. For Volkssturm it was probably the nearest thing they had to mortars or artillery.