"FoW Pacific Organizing US Marines" Topic

OK, so we've been doing Flames of War in our group for some time now, and we do occasionally prefer scenarios over straight up points games. I also recently acquired a ready to play 15mm Japanese company. I am looking to add a force of US Marines to oppose them. Here's my dilemma.

A standard FoW unit is a squad of infantry represented by two bases, these squads then organized into platoons. Typically each base has 4-5 figures on a medium base to represent an 8-10 man standard squad with 1 LMG to make it a Rifle/MG squad.

Now, the Marines from '44 on had 13 man squads with three fire teams of four men with each section having a BAR and the rest having M1s. (I'm not sure if the Corporal had an M1,M1 Carbine, or SMG).

My thinking right now is to model each squad as three stands of 5 (Sgt+1 section) 4 (1 section) and 4(1 section).

I'd then count these as MG stands since that seems to be what BF does with Late War German 8 man squads with 2 LMGs.

The platoon would then have 3 squads each plus and HQ stand for a total of 10 stands. I might also add the option for a bazooka stand at the platoon level and the option to replace 1 srand in the platoon with a flame thrower team.

Rating would be either fearless/trained or confident/vet. I haven't decided yet.

What do other FoW vets think?

Next thoughts are what to add for support. I assume each marine co had a mortar and MG platoon? I haven't looked yet to figure out if these should have 4 or 6 stands in them + command.

Thoughts?

link

There free intel briefings on the above link in the files section.

Thanks, wargamer. I've bookmarked it and will check it out later.

The US actually has Rifle stands, because the BAR just can't put out the amount of fire that a Bren or MG34 can. They get a special rule (Automatic Rifles) for the fact that everyone has semi-auto rifles, though.

3 stands per squad is reasonable, since that lines up with paratrooper squad sizes.

I'd suggest Fearless Trained, Marines historically have better morale than the Army. (Fearless Trained is about the same points as Confident Veteran, btw)

Mortar and MG platoons are simply one base per weapon, plus an HQ stand. There may or may not be an observer team for the mortars.

A lot will depend on what year. For example when the Marines first landed at Guadalcanal many if not most were still equipped with the Springfield. The amount of firepower a Marine squad could put out drastically increased over the years.