"6mm. How many to a squad-stand ?" Topic

Im thinking of building up some crossfire armies in 6mm, since it'd be very cheap to get a company or two of each of the main powers.

If each stand represents a squad or thereabouts, how many 6mm guys would you place on there?

Im pondering between:
A: a representative standard (5-6)
B: 1-to-1 (10 or 12 or whatever fits the nation in question)
C: 1-to-1 but with attrition (so most stands would be 6-9 guys)

A is cheaper and requires smaller bases
B looks more imposing, but more mini's and larger bases
C is propably the most realistic.

I'd say 3 – 6 figs, depending upon the effect you want, and the thickness of your wallet, e.g. (50% of the real number of troops in the squad).

You can use 2 figs for smaller fire teams, and 1 fig for leaders, snipers, and other specialists.

I'm also looking at getting into 6mm. I would say base3 or 4 to a stand. Reason being is that:

(a) In real combat, a lot of them would be hard to see, behind or in cover. Also, dismount squads come in small, unwieldy numbers like 5 or 7 anyway.
(b) Putting them in buildings is easier.
(c) In 6mm skirmish (I want to start off this way) you can use 3 or 4 to a base mixed with singles. That way, moving around single squads is fairly easy. A full squad of say 8 is 4 plus 4. One casualty takes it down to 4 + 3. Another takes it down to 4 + 2 singles. This way you never have to move more than three stands per squad.

I base my WWII 6mm at 1 to 2. So a 10 man squad would have five figures, etc. I still use the base sizes recommend in Firefly. It looks good and is if I recall 1.5 inches wide by about 3/4 inche deep.
William

My 6mm figures (SF for Dirtside II) are based 1 figure to 1 man. So 8 to 10 men per squad. Whether you can do the same for Crossfire would depend on the ground scale and thus the size of the squad base.

You need a pretty large base to make 10-12 men look good rather than bunched up, which hurts one of the big advantages of 6mm; being able to play a big battle with plenty of room to maneuver on a reasonably sized table.

I would go with 8-10 for regular infantry, 5-6 for recon.
That would be on a 20x40mm base, or maybe 25x50mm. On something like 30mm square, half that number.
They don't look bunched up. Guys stuck together.

"That would be on a 20x40mm base … On something like 30mm square, half that number."

20x40 is 8 square cms, 30mm square is 9 square cms. Either has plenty of room for 8 6mm figures, but as I said, it depends on the ground scale.

I'm planning to use 6mm for a 1947 type game (WWW2 as it's being called) Squad stands will have 6 to 8 figs per base because this seems to look right to me. Base size will be either 25mm squares or 30mm squares.

Pete

I do 5-man squads for Line Infantry and 4-man for Heavy Weapon teams

I use 1:1 rules. For WWII most squads contained 9-12 soldiers so I use 2 or 3 stands per squad. The first is the BAR, LMG or Bren stand of 2-3 figures. The rest of the squad is on 1 or 2 additional stands with 3-4 riflemen each. The squad leader is designated by an SMG armed figure on one of the rifle stands. For later war scenarios I replace one of the rifle stands with a 2 man Bazooka, Panzerschreck or PIAT stand per TO&E. I like this system because (A) it allows for removing stands to show attrited units and (B) separating the LMG stand from the rifle stands permits fire and manuever. Plus it looks good at this scale. Three figures fit well, but four can look a bit crowded. The bases are 5/8" x 5/8" sheet styrene.

For moderns I use the same basing philosphy but usually field two fireteam stands of 3-4 figures with auto rifles and a SAW plus an additional stand with a light or medium AT weapon crewed by 2 figures.

Heavy weapons are mounted on the same size stands with an appropriate number of crew.

Deployed guns are on 1" x 1" stands. I don't base vehicles.

"20x40 is 8 square cms, 30mm square is 9 square cms. Either has plenty of room for 8 6mm figures, but as I said, it depends on the ground scale."

More area but less width.

I do my 6mm stands as "fire teams". They certainly could be used as full squads depending on the rules. I generally use about a 20mm base and put 2 PA or elites, 3-4 for regular infantry, and 4 to a base for militia types. I make specialist stands as needed – LMG teams, mortar teams, missile teams, snipers, scout/FOs, etc. For the fire teams, I use the same size base (though my militia LGM teams are on smaller bases than the 4 man fire teams), and for singles, like scouts or snipers, I put one guy on a 6mm washer.

I like Lampyridae's idea of a base of 4 plus 4 individuals.

That's how we do 15mm Rapid Fire (actually stand of 3, stand of 2 and 4 indivuduals and a leader) When the unit suffers casualties, you trade out and "make change"

I like the 1-1 but I use 4 man fire teams per base so two bases make a squad, one team can lay down a base of fire supported by crew weapons then the other team can maneuver depenting on the terrain, and three to two for crew serve weapons depending on the weapon, this is for modern and si-fi, looks a little crowded but the numbers look rigth to me

I use 8 figures on a 30x20mm stand. Quite crowded but it looks good. I used to do 4-5 on 30x30mm which probably was a more realistic spread of guys, but in 6mm it looked like an empty base. I almost always game 1x stand = 1x platoon so it's representative anyway.

I follow something similar to Sgt McWarMonkey's approach -- two stands of four figs each. That way a squad can take two hits before being rendered non-combat-effective. Assessing individual casualties is just a little too granular for my taste.

I have about five different types of infantry in my non-GW collection, including the Irregular "NSF" human and alien infantry both. The nice thing about Irregular's stands is that they come pre-based in fours and twos (the twos being the support weapons).

A. on a 40x30 base, looks "right" to me.

Thanks for the ideas folks.

I tried sticking 6 guys on a fairly small base (1X1 inch or thereabouts) and painting them. Very quick to paint once I got the hang of it.

6 men look enough like a squad to me, so I'll propably go with 5 or 6 for infantry units.

actually thinking about it, I may use the number of figures to identify the type of stand.

5 figures for rifle squads, 6 for SMG and 4 for engineers. This helps make it easier to figure out exactly who is who on the table :)

1 – 1 hell its cheap enough…