"Designing a ToE" Topic

So, I'm finally getting to a long-deferred project to keep me sane during the long winter months that lie ahead: I'm designing a 3mm scale sci-fi army for Future War Commander. I'm making liberal use of the U.S. Army's FM 100-60 on OPFOR design, and it's occurred to me that when you try to obey real rules for this kind of thing, it can really be quite difficult. On the one hand, uniformity of force capabilities usually means that you end up with a lot of the same kind of vehicle, which, although realistic, strikes me as a bit boring, and fairly uncommon in a Sci-Fi game milieu. Typically, players seem to use a much broader variety of vehicle types than would normally be present in a smaller scale force. But when I try to cram all the different kinds of vehicles I like into a single force, it gets so eclectic I'm not sure it would make for a good game.

At any rate, I'm mainly interested to hear about other people's experiences in ToE design for games like FWC. To get at what it is that I'm designing at the moment, the force follows a model I used in a 6mm Scale project called the Earthlight Division, and following liberally the lead from Thad Blanchette with his Grey Army. The original Earthlight Division was from an Amercian-Canadian colony; the origin of this force is a well-developed "Inner Colony" of largely Middle European origin; I'm considering calling it the "St. Vincent Brigade" for some reason, maybe that's the name of the colony world? French, Italian, Western German and Belgian largely come to my mind. The lead maneuver elements are a tank battalion (with a single type of main-force Hover MBT), a mechanized infantry battalion (again, with a single type of main-force Hover ICV), an MLRS battery, an anti-air detachment, and a command section. Recon will be handled by drones, and air support I'm holding in abeyance for the moment. The feature of the unit is a pair of BOLO-like Cybertanks, which I'm cribbing from Battletech and using out-of-scale (Iron Wind Metals is a GREAT source for this, by the way: the IWM tanks for Battletech typically have many more weapons than usual for an MBT, due to in-verse biases towards multi-gun tanks, and so they make great out-of-scale Ogres/BOLOs).

In general, I'm using restraint on the number of different vehicle types in favor of reaching for some kind of authenticity in all this, even though it is sci-fi. I'd be very interested to hear people's thoughts, though – how do you go about building forces like this? What rules, if any, do you follow when you build your forces? Do you ever run up against your forces getting too eclectic or diverse, with some elements not getting enough play? What's your process?

By the way, this is The Grey Army, in case you don't know what I'm talking about:
link

The diversity of vehicle types comes in when you swap platoons or companies within the armour and each battalions, attaching air defence, recce and engineering elements accordingly………
I followed current trends and equipped my Eurocom force with wheeled vehicles – I used Brigade Models 6 mm stuff, went with one chassis type with the variety of turrets and configurations for task and purpose…..very modular…….heavier forces like my Armour heavy Solar Union have tracked vehicles ………
For TOE's I figured what I wanted with a rough layout and then selected a suitable model with enough variants to fill my needs………based them on various doctrine like the Eurocom above or indeed a UNSC marine force with grav landers and flyers……I also have an 'airmobile' infantry force with transports and a gunships…….

As was already mentioned, it's cross-attachment that promotes variety in a big armored battle; the tank battalion might have a company of dedicated tank destroyers/assault guns/what have you's attached from another unit in the brigade or division, or the recon unit that's attached to Brigade HQ is operating closely with your mechanized infantry battalion today.

That's why even when I'm designing forces for 15mm (or possibly even 28mm) forces, I tend to work all the way up to the Division level in terms of force composition. I will never field *close* that amount of stuff on the tabletop, but it helps visual what sort of cross-attachments and supporting formations might exist for a given army, and what those would translate too on the tabletop.

-Will

I mix standard mechanised infantry platoons with other formations (including heavy infantry, scout,airborne, tank and walker platoons/squadrons).

My standard platoon has two armoured cars Wheeled) for the command squad (four troops in each) with three tracked IFVs for the three squads of troops (eight troops in each).

A Tank squadron is four troops of three tanks and two command tanks. The walker squadron follows the same organisation.

A scout section has small armoured cars with four troops in each and there are only four vehicles.

Airborne assault troops are delivered from drop ships. They are from the airforce so have their own org.

For an army I will take platoons or squads from whatever takes my fancy.

EG: Mech Infantry platoon with a walker squadron in support and airborne cover from a single drop ship. The lead and tail vehicle will be from a scout platoon.

If you like Thad Blanchette's stuff, you might want to take a look at his TO&E notes for his New Vistula Legion, here:

link

Basically, you can do whatever you want with sci-fi TO&Es, which is what makes them so much fun. Personally, I think that if we stick to relatively near-future-style sci-fi armies (stuff that's based on late 20th century armies), we can see a few trends, however.

Cross-attaching has gone on at progressively lower levels ever since WWI. Back in 1914, and infantry division was just that: hordes of infantry backed up by a (mostly) direct-fire artillery regiment and maybe a regiment of horse cavalry. The main operational maneuver unit was the corps, made up of a couple of these divisions.

By the dawn of the 21st century, however, the main manuever unit had been transformed into small brigades which pretty much contain an equal mix of all types of units. Task forces are tailor made from these units, with the mix appropriate to a given situation. Brigades may be heavy or light (more air-transportable), but they all tend to a mix of arms.

These tendencies will probably only increase in the future, so you're totally justified in building a self-contained brigade-sized force with all types of vehicles and units.

My current project – the Popular Liberation Army – is a small "division" of three two-battalion line regiments, an artillery regiment, a mecha battalion and a armored cavalry battalion.

The battalions themselves are small: three companies each of ten vehicles, which I translate into two stands per company.

Total, the "division" has:

24 T-225 Boris stands
14 Alligator APC stands
24 Infantry stands
4 Heavy Weapons stands
8 Mechanized artillery stands
6 Mecha stands (DP9 fleet scale gears)
2 Armored car stands (recon)
4 Light APC stands (recon)
4 Infantry stands (recon)

It needs some air support and engineers, which I have not bought yet. It will also get a heavy regiment of three titans in support.

I see this as a "Soviet-style" unit which isn't particularly star-mobile. It's built to fight on one planet and is something of a "shake-n-bake" formation: build one, if it's destroyed, pull another out of the oven.

As such, it will tend to fight as a cohesive unit. But even a formation such as this one will create "Maneuver Groups" for specific purposes.

A typical reinforced battalion-sized forward maneuver group, charged with scouting ahead of the division and taking crucial road junctions and bridges, would be built around a tank battalion (6 T-225) with an attached infantry company (2 Alligators with 4 infantry), half the recon battalion (2 light APCs, 2 Infantry and a armored car), a mecha company (2 mechas) and an artillery battery (2 mechanized artillery).

This gives you a nice little task force for a coffee table-sized encounter battle.

The rule for this sort of thing, if you have a Soviet-style army, is to use a basic unit (a battalion or regiment) and tack on companies from the higher echelons. NATO-style armies will more often swap companies to build tank- or infantry-heavy task forces, with support from the higher echelons added in.

At 3mm, you have the luxury to be able to build an entire formation and mix 'n match within it as you please. The PLA division I list above cost me about 40 dollars to put together – with the DP9 mechas being the most expensive component!

A word about IWM: their battlesuits and protomechs make great 3mm mechas that are far cheaper than DP9!

These are going to be the PLA's heavy titans, by the way: Blue Moon Robot Legion Striders, 3 for 12 bucks.

I did some MTOEs for 6mm Dirtside awhile ago, based on combined arms company-teams. Here's a sample org chart or two:

The rest are here:

link

Nice work Jav ! Cross-attaching and the Battle Group, Co.Tm, Task Force concept has been around for sometime. We always cross attached infantry and armor units in the Army. The Combined Arms Tm Concept. I designed my TF Legion based on some experiences on as an Infantry Officer.

The TF has an MBT Co., 2 ACAV Plts., 2 Infantry(skimmer mounted) Plts, a Section of SPFA and an Anti-Armor Section. Plus TF HQ …

Thanks for all the suggestions! It's really cool to see the thought processes everyone is following as they go. For me, this is the TOE I worked up this evening for The St. Vincent Brigade. It's going to be interesting to see how/if this pans out.

One feature of warfare that I expect to continue is ever-increasing firepower at the smallest unit.

Back pre-WW1, infantry battalions were just that. Nothing but infantry, maybe a couple machine guns in support. Firepower came from lots of guys shooting at the same time, and artillery was a completely separate branch.

I'm a bit fuzzy at WW1 TO&Es, but my impression is that there might be a MG company for each infantry battalion. Mortars and other light trench guns are still separate from the infantry battalion.

Step up to WW2, though, and now there is a heavy weapons platoon for each company, with both mortars and MGs. US Armored Rifles actually had an MG squad and Mortar squad per platoon, but the general infantryman all had the same weapon.

In Vietnam, the individual squads started getting their own pocket artillery in the shape of grenade launchers, and there was a MG squad in each platoon.

By the mid 1980s, the full-power MG had been replaced with a squad automatic, but it does the same job as the full-power MG: puts down lots of lead. There are two of those SAWs per squad, one per fireteam. There's also a grenade launcher per fireteam. So the smallest possible unit of maneuver, the 4-man fireteam, has light artillery and a machine gun.

Right now, the designated Marksman and antitank gunner are squad assets, not fireteam.

With a 4-man fireteam, I can't see how to get BOTH a DMR and an ATGM. That would mean all 4 members of the fireteam have a specialty weapon, and the team leader has other priorities than picking which target to shoot personally.

Also, one of the basic riflemen in the fireteam is the assistant gunner for the SAW, and the other basic rifleman is usually the fireteam leader. So there's just not much space for additional weapons at the individual soldier level.

At least not as long as we're thinking what the basic infantryman can carry without a powered exoskeleton.

Roll out powered armor, and you could see some really interesting TO&Es, where the basic infantry weapon is a SAW or heavy-caliber MG.

I think it might be interesting to apply the same idea to a vehicle unit, where there are some more lightly armed vehicles as scouts and escorts, and a couple heavier armed vehicles as the "squad automatic" and "pocket artillery" portion of the vehicle fireteam.

Or, you turn it around the other way, where your basic tank has multiple different weapons for different uses.

Say, each tank has a 120mm main gun (or whatever your favorite gun caliber is), but in addition it has a mortar or large-caliber autoGL for indirect HE, as well as a machinegun for anti-infantry and/or anti-aircraft work.

A couple of things here…

If your future universe includes star travel, then remember that – unless there's some sort of really cheap way of going from planet surface to planet surface (i.e. a gate) – this will be orders of magnitude more expensive than any other form of travel.

Starmobile units must thus get the maximum bang per kilo.

Their troops will be highly trained, their equipment extremely portable (and probably light). In fact, probably the BEST way to do starmobility was done by Jerry Pournelle in his Co-Dominium universe: starmobile regiments get sent to other planets with a bare minimum of absolutely necessary equipment and equip themselves in situ with whatever's available, meanwhile raising local battalions as auxiliaries.

The very best book I've ever seen which describes what starmobile warfare would be like, however, is "A Small Colonial War" by Robert Frezza. It's almost impossible to find and I've never been able to lay my hands on its sequels. I DO have a relatively poorly formatted PDF of it, however, which I'd be happy to share.

Frezza's book is what Blanchette claims to have used as a model for his New Vistula Legion: a starmobile force that can deploy as pure infantry or with very light armor (mostly wheeled APCs and armored cars).

The book has a wonderful description of what it takes to send a brigade-sized force to another planet and keep it there for a few years without much resupply. At one point, one of Frezza's characters asks why they don't have all sorts of high tech tanks and what not. His commanding officer responds that for the transport cost of the battalion's single armored car squadron, they could've piled in three more infantry companies.

In this 'verse, bodies are far more important than gadgets. Every colony world worth the name has completely integrated, almost fully automatized factories that can be tooled up to produce whatever's needed. The Empire thus only sends the minimal amount of armor necessary to establish a bridgehead and capture some of these factories. Once down, the invaders recruit and build locally. Brainpower, manpower and training are far more important than overly complex vehicles.

In Frezza's book, the imperial commander has been cleverly avoiding a mandatory TO&E reorganization for a decade. The new organization would strip about a third of the battalion's line troops, but make it that much more starmobile. The commander disagrees with this assessment, valuing the ability to have a manpower reserve, given that he knows that trained replacements from earth will be few and far between.

Lion in the Stars, the kind of future vehicles you describe are basically those of Steve Jackson's "Ogre". Every combat unit worth the name has an anti-armor, anti-infantry, anti-air and integrated indirect fire capacity. Units thus have one defense and attack strength for everything and terrain doesn't block line of sight (in Ogre Miniatures, at worst, it adds a -1 to an attack die roll if NO friendly unit can see the target).

The trick with this sort of military sci-fi is to tweak the technology enough to allow for the fun toys (hovercraft, absurdly big vehicles, mecha, etc.), but not so much that the model of combat becomes completely unrecognizable from late 20th century armored combat.

The best way I've found to do this is to presume that humanity gets interstellar flight capacity tomorrow as a gift from "benevolent" aliens who really see Earth and the relative handful of worlds around it as something like an Indian reservation: a "protected" sphere which either allows "primitive" peoples to live in accordance with their native cultures or to catch up and assimilate to the galactic mainstream (the political line changes with whatever group happens to be in power in the Galactic Government).

Human technological developments become strictly controlled and overseen and most scientific innovation stops. In fact, some already-existing technology (nukes, say) is prohibited as being "far too dangerous for the use of under-developed peoples". Of course, the various human governments can BUY alien technology like stardrives, mecha, artifical intelligences and hovertanks. They can even adapt these using already-existing human tech. But the really cool stuff (relativistic missiles, man-portable anti-grav units, legions of cybersoldiers, etc.) is flat-out prohibited. Of course, some gets through, but it's few and far between and the silly little primitives don't know how to adequately use or maintain it.

Mr. Average, I very much like the St. Vincents!

This is a good, balanced, all-arms force. My only tweak would be to add a company of combat engineers and another battery or two of artillery (today's U.S. BCTs have 24 guns per two line combat battalions, I believe).

You might give the artillery battalion a four platoon escort company of infantry, too, or attach one at brigade level. This would protect your artillery and drone base of operations while freeing up your line companies. This base company would probably go heavy on the support weapons: every platoon having at least two mortars and each squad two heavy machinegun or the equivalents, plus anti-armor rockets. No need for AFVs for these guys: they just go with headquarters and the artillery and plotz down to defend, one platoon per battery/HQ section. This would help the unit be a fully contained, operation brigade.

You also want to attach a transport and maintenance battalion.

By the way, what softwear did you use to produce that nice TO&E?

At another level, I am really impressed by the Stryker company TO&E. Integral direct-fire HE and light AT with the MGS, integral indirect-fire with mortars, integral scout/sniper element, and three platoons of infantry (each with 3 infantry squads and a MG squad).

What the company doesn't have is organic medical (that's at battalion), integrated recon (brigade asset), and a supply chain (assigned to the brigade from Corps or higher).

Stryker BCTs are really the current standing 'cavalry' regiments. In the US, cavalry regiments of the 1860s and later were combined-arms units intended for long-term independent operations.

I actually used the Stryker company TO&E for my idea of what the Future Combat System infantry company would look like, and expanded the MGS platoon to a full 4 vehicles.

I do generally think that troops are going to be ever lighter and faster to deploy. So smaller, lighter vehicles optimized for rapid deployment, with the maximum combat capability in the smallest possible deployed force.

I figure each vehicle will have a drone or three for recon. Maybe even multiple types of drones, some flying (recon and spotting) and some on the ground (EOD). I'll get back to you as to whether the drones would be armed.

But unless you have some super-cheap starlift, moving lots of vehicles is obscenely expensive.

In this 'verse, bodies are far more important than gadgets. Every colony world worth the name has completely integrated, almost fully automatized factories that can be tooled up to produce whatever's needed. The Empire thus only sends the minimal amount of armor necessary to establish a bridgehead and capture some of these factories. Once down, the invaders recruit and build locally. Brainpower, manpower and training are far more important than overly complex vehicles.

IF the colonies have that capability, then you'd better believe that is what I'd plan on doing.

But I would come in loaded with as much firepower as humanly possible to take and hold that beachhead to begin with.

@davesimpson: I use Adobe Illustrator. And thanks for the compliment! I particularly liked the way their logo came out. I have to fix the run-on sentences in the unit description, too. And the additions you suggest are very good ones, and eminently doable at 3mm scale. I left the supply and maintenance elements out of this TOE, but it might be interesting to show the whole shebang, even if all I'll be modeling is combat effectives.

As far as space transport, the period of my background this unit is from predates large-scale interstellar transportation – the only really reachable stars are Altair, Barnard's Star, Alpha Centauri and Sirius and Procyon, at the outer limit. Wolf 359, Sigma Draconis, and the other local stars have no viable planets orbiting them, only gas giants, so sending ground troops there is unnecessary. And in any case, these are the "Far Colonies," only very sparsely populated, mainly with small research outposts, and with a total population, among all of them, of less than, say, a hundred thousand. Think of the Far Colonies as being like Antarctica – none of them are particularly nice to live on, and getting to them is very difficult.

Most of the transport happens in the Solar System. Earth is the key battleground of the First Upheaval; the Moon is, too, but the St. Vincents can't go there because there's no atmosphere for their hovertanks. They see limited action on Mars, and extensive deployment on Titan. But the main conflicts are between the SEU, Mitteleuropa, The United States of Western Europe, the Russian Confederation and the Eastern European Coalition – it's meant very clearly to be a First World War analogue, but longer and more involved, and culminating in a Unification movement spearheaded by ENSPUN (the English-Speaking Union) and the Pan-African Conglomerate, which found the Federated Territories when the war ends.

I kind of gloss over how they get from place to place, though, and maybe I shouldn't. I assume that colonies are mostly point-centralized and highly concentrated, but generally self-sufficient, and so "Light" brigades like this one are more useful for interplanetary operations as they can more easily live off the resources of their garrison locations. Ensuring transport and secure supply lines is the job of the Navy.

So, revisions planned on the first TOE draft:
1) 1x Infantry or MP Company for HQ and Signals security
2) 1x Combat Engineer Company
3) Upgrade the Artillery battery to a full Battalion (although I'll probably only model a single battery for the tabletop)
4) Aerospace Support? Maybe a flight of Atmo-Interceptors for SSTO or TransAt support.
5) Maybe plan out their support tail and space transport assets.

Rear Area Security like the Bde HQ and such is done by MPs many times. You'd only put an Infantry Company to do that if the threat to the rear area was high. I've very rarely seen it done … Our Separate Mech Inf Bde assigned to the 18th ABN Corps, the (now disbanded) 197th Mech, had 2 Mech Inf Bns, 1 Armor Bn, 1 FA Bn, 1 CE Co., 1 CAV Trp, 1 MP Plt and a CBT SPT Bn. As far as Infantry Firepower, a Mech Squad had 2 Fire Tms, each Tm with an M203 GL, an M249 SAW … One Fire Tm had the M60 MG, and the other an M47 Dragon MAW. Plus a .50 cal on the Track …

Hmmm… what about, instead of transporting entire battalions of vehicles, sending in troops with pods full of nanobots instead? The troops would have enough firepower to secure an LZ, and then the nanites would be dropped in and assemble the vehicles from component atoms available on-site. The challenge might be keeping the LZ secure for the 24 hours it takes to "grow" the vehicles.

Or, the transport ships themselves could be made in such a way as to serve as the components for the vehicles (or the nanite fodder needed to grow them). The fusion engines for each vehicle would be transported, but the ships themselves, once they touch down, would undergo a rapid, automated disassembly-reassembly process that would convert them into armored vehicles.

Interesting, but at that point, why not just use nanites to rebuild the citizens of the enemy planet into loyal adherents of your own ideology? Once you get to nanotechnology that can build things from nothing, you kind of defeat the purpose of having mechanized combat in any kind of modern or speculative fashion.

Well, if you had nano. Technology at that level, Javelin, why bother with tanks at all? You'd have a situation like that outlined in The Eylau Sequence : combat at dust mote level. The Eylau Sequence is pretty cool, too, but I assume most of us want to play our sci-fi battles with heavy metal. Tanks and mecha and such.

Okay, so here's my revised TOE for the St. Vincent Brigade. I'm starting to get into this, now.

I like it! I'd still give them three batteries, but two is absolutelhy fine, especially if they are big, 8 tube batteries.

A question: what do the faded out units represent? Attachments?

Not to be pedantic, but your unit is more of a Regiment or more accurately a Regimental Combat Tm … A Brigade IMO, would need another Inf or Tank Bn … just FYI … no big deal …

@davesimpson: I chose two batteries mainly to assign one to each of the two maneuver battalions. They're six-vehicle MLRS batteries in three firing sections. They fire "Aculeus" tactical missiles, which have better power delivery than tube artillery, and the battery has integrated fire control that keys to the UAV flight via the Signals Company. Two full batteries of Aculeus missile launchers is meant to be a lot of fire support.

Also, yes, the shaded out icons are for special detachments that are assigned as needed from Brigade Command assets. They don't have a set location in the formation but are shown where they usually end up. They don't have their own command structure as independent companies or anything, they're just special assets that are mixed and matched from an operational pool at the brigade level.

@Legion4: not at all. However, regimental structures are so variable now that I set on a Brigade as being easier to follow as a way of laying out my force. The St. Vincent Brigade is much smaller than any combat brigade we have today, and probably smaller than most regiments, which is why it's classified as a "Light Brigade." Its commanding officer is probably a Brigadier General. On the other hand, consider that the two Cybertanks make up the Third Battalion. And also, technically, I've used the wrong NATO icon for the brigade overall, since it's combined arms, and I show it as mechanized infantry. Ah, well, the little things.

Anyhow, I'll probably lay out the main maneuver elements soon. I'm already thinking up an OPFOR, probably from Mitteleuropa, maybe ENSPUN or the Russian Confederation, and almost certainly a heavier force of ground tanks and reinforced or armored infantry, with air support. Can't let things be too easy on the poor St. Vincent Brigade.

And as a a matter of fact, this might make interesting "War Atlas" material. I've always wanted to write a false-history/future-history military atlas with all the bits worked out. I know they say you aren't supposed to just do world-building in literature, but that might be interesting to try, a history of a science fiction war, just presented as though it were a REAL history.

Or is that just crazy?

Interesting, but at that point, why not just use nanites to rebuild the citizens of the enemy planet into loyal adherents of your own ideology? Once you get to nanotechnology that can build things from nothing, you kind of defeat the purpose of having mechanized combat in any kind of modern or speculative fashion.

Not necessarily, depending on the fluff you're working within. There's a pretty wide gulf between nanites that are just tiny self-propelled Legos and nanites capable of rewiring the synapses in a human brain without detection, to the point of fundamentally altering the psyche of the victim. Plus, if it was that kind of environment, the enemy would have all sorts of anti-nanites patrolling people's bodies, looking for just such an attack.

I also don't agree that having this kind of a situation would invalidate the need for mechanized combat. It's just 3D printing by other means. There is still the contest of arms to be waged.

No, I was just thinking about the challenge of materiel and transport. Certainly, nanites would be present on the battlefield in both offensive and defensive capacities, and the ad hoc construction of vehicles, facilities, and whatnot could be just one of their purposes.

If you want some more background fluff, you can say that the St. Vinnies used to have three tube batteries, which were replaced with two MRLS batteries with a higher payload throw weight. This may have browned off the Vinnies' commander because, OK, he has more firepower but now he doesn't have a reserve battery for when things get tight.

A sort of "dialing it up to eleven" effect that is commonly encountered in TO&E reorganizations.

What's the Vinnies' color scheme, by the way?

Since sci-fi allows us to do whatever we want and 3mm are small, I'd make it bright colors. I use the Steve Jackson excuse that:

a) The units have smart paint which allows them to camouflage themselves however they want. We're just seeing them in their parade colors, and…

b) What we're really seeing on the tabletop is a hologram tank depiction of the battle, where everything is done up in parade colors for ease of recognition.

Legion 4, there really are no hard and fast rules about what is a brigade and what is a regiment, especially in Europe (which is where the Vinnies come from).

A "regiment" these days tends to indicate a cohesive unit with historical back-story and is, more often than not, what the U.S. would call a battalion.

Brigades tend to be more ad hoc and mixed in formation and, yes, by today's standards, the Vinnies are more properly a brigade. In fact, they're a pretty good match to today's U.S. heavy brigade combat teams, minus one battalion.

However… If warfare starts moving, as it is, to smaller, more contained units, "brigades" might become more fixed structures such as today's divisions. In such an environment, the older form of the regiment might be reactivated to indicate a multi-battalion, cohesive fighting unit with a given history. It's better for morale to say that one is a member of the St. Regiment than to say one is a member of the third brigade combat team. But "regiment" or "brigade" could equally fit here.

Javelin, a miniatures game already exists for the type of situation you describe: the Eylau Sequence.

It is the only miniatures game where the scale is 20:1. :)

Can you really call it a miniatures game when the playing pieces are BIGGER than what they represent in the real world?

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One of the interesting ideas I snagged from the Colonial Marines Tech Manual is a shift from a base-3 organization to a base-2. Two-man fire-team, two fireteams to a squad, two squads to a section**, two sections to a platoon.

Yeah, it doesn't give you much of a reserve, but the buddy teams mentality seems to work and makes cross-attaching pretty simple.

**For the Brits, in US use a section is an element comprised of multiple squads but is not as large as a platoon. For example, the Mortar section in a Stryker company is two tubes, a mortar platoon is actually four tubes.

MrA – Understand, but generally a Rgt is smaller then a Bde. But again it's no big deal. But you are correct, the 3d Bn of Cybertanks would give you more of a Bde structure. All the Bdes (three, IIRC) I've been in were commanded by a full Col., again no big deal. And you may be correct, since you have 2 Tank Bns, one standard, one cyber and only one Mech Bn, the Bde icon should be an Armor symbol. @@ davesimpson – generally there are some standard organizations/TO&Es for Bdes, Rgts, etc. … Even in Europe … I served in (West)Germany as well the ROK and in both cases, unitsw were generally organized similarly … Knowing what you allies' units generally had as well as your enemy was a good idea as a combat leader. I'm familiar with many TO&Es. And yes, in modern US Bde organizations, most IN and AR Bns use a Rgtl designation. But they are no Rgts actually so to speak. For example, when I was with the 101 ('80-'83) in the 3rd Bde. The Bde consisted of – 1/503 IN, 2/503 IN, 3/187 IN … When I was in the 197th Mech Bde/18th AB XXX, the Bde was 1/58 Mech, 3/7 Mech, 2/69 AR. Remember TO&E vs. OOB are generally different … TO&E is what I'm supposed to have. And OOB is actually what is on-hand on the ground. As a Rifle Plt Ldr I deployed only 17 out of 36-40 authorized. As a Mech Co Cdr, I've only had one Mech Plt, a CE Sqd, an Anti-Armor Section(ITV) and had to put my Maint Section in the line as well …

And oh … as far as painting my minis … all my models are in Tac/Camo colors like these –

… save for TF Legion which is based on Drake's Hammer's Slammers books …

Legion, I love those tanks – are they latter-day GW epics or a clone?

Incidentally, my Cybertanks for the Vinnies arrived (fantastic nickname, davesimpson!) and I put in with Picoarmor for the conventional force. While I wait for it to arrive I'm putting together the bases, which will be 1mm sheet polystyrene with unit labels on the ends. After debating multi-basing, I'm going instead for 1:1 tank unit scaling, so the whole maneuver portion of the Brigade will be represented at clean, one-tank-equals-one-tank scale on the tabletop.

My ponderings now run to what battlefield to try to represent. I lean towards Europe as being more relatable, but my perverse side thinks the Titan Campaign might be more outlandish and cool. I never heard the end of it when I rolled out my Ice Planet for a Dirtside game, so I mean, no matter what, I know I'll be roundly ridiculed at the Club, so why skimp? I'm making up a set of TerrainMaker tiles and might order up some odd colors and go for an Off-World campaign. Not sure yet, though.

As for the Vinnies' color scheme, my favorite color is blue, so I lean towards that, although it's rather un-Italian so I might hold that one for the Mitteleuropa OPFOR. I, too, adhere to the Ogre Miniatures theory of parade colors for sci fi at this scale, especially given the size.

Thank MrA, Those were made/scratch-built by some other Epic gaming bros and gifted to me … They are part of my Death Korps of Krieg Panzer unit. The 3 in the rear are Heavy APCs, then one Super Heavy Tank/Titan/Mech Destroyer in the middle, flanked by 1 Plt of MBTs in the front and a Plt of Heavy MBT in the middle … I've got more H/APCs, H/MBTs and MBTs to paint up and add to the force. Here's some of my GW DKoK Infantry for this unit –

I'm working on another Inf unit of DKoK types from Exodus Wars too …

I'm really looking forward to seeing those Vinnie cybertanks. So far, I've only seen Germy 's (which are too cartoony for me) and Blanchette's E-100 kitbashes (which are OK, as far as they go, but I'd like to see something less ad-hoc).

I'm THIS close to renaming my new Soviet-style division the 16th Shock Division of the Revolutionary Army of Salvation.

That way we can have St. Vinnies and Sally's Army. ;)

What tones of blue do you think you'll do? The best painting tips I've had so far are to use a dark tone as the underbase, a medium tone heavy dry brush, then almost neon-intense bright tones to pick out edges and what-not.

By the way, I think that Terrain Maker will be really killer bee at this scale! I'd go with Europe, first, though.

I wish I had space for terrain maker but I'm doing dual-sided foamies with cloth and cork pin-down terrain, to maximize flexibility, storage and portability. One side of the foamies will be flocked with yellow and the other side with green. At half 6mm scale, four foamies together will give me the equivalent of a 6 foot by 6 foot play area.

Salvation is a great name for a colony world. The "Sallies" would be the militant wing of the Salvation Democratic Revolutionary Front, or SDRF. It'd have to be a terrible misnomer though – Salvation would be like a colony on some awful, inhospitable planet like Titan, Venus or Mercury.

I'm going with one of the Reaper tiads, I think, with a blue-grey with bright/insignia blue highlights and a white lateral stripe. Anything more than that will just break up the silhouette too much.

Funny thing is, though, the Sallies are using the T-225 "Boris" in a hover configuration – I'm basically following your advice and blacking out the treads – it looked so convincing when you did it. That's their MBT. In the background I'm working up (I'm a cartoonist, I can't help myself), the war called the First Upheaval is really confused and chaotic, with everyone fighting everyone during a resource and financial crisis on Earth. I don't put dates on anything, so it can be anything from near future to a "hard" far-future sci fi. But I justify the Southern European Union using Russian-style equipment due to them having had a pre-war trading relationship with the Russian Confederation. But when things get tight, it becomes a Hobbsean war of All Against All that lasts almost fifty years.

The 16th Shock Division would fit in very well with the late period of the First Upheaval, when even the semblance of national government authority was breaking down – a breakaway colony on Titan that rebels against the Russian Confederation or the Eastern European Coalition.

By the way, I recommend the following as EXCELLENT stand-ins for Cybertanks at 3mm scale. They skew large and have lots of guns, and really look the part at this scale. The Vinnies are using this one:
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But I also like the look of these:
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As a rule, IWM has been a pain in the butt to order from because they send via signature confirmation and get surly and defensive about it when that causes things to go awry – who's home to sign for packages at 1:00PM on a weekday? Whenever possible I bypass them and order via The War Store. Plus they're radically overpriced – and more than a few designs just look patently ridiculous, to wit: link (I mean, what IS that thing?). But the multi-gun styles of the tanks do make excellent "point" pieces out of scale, as megatanks for 3mm scale forces like this, and since you're unlikely to mass a huge number of them, one or two packs will set you right up without breaking your budget.

You know an interesting thought just occurred to me – I wonder what the visual effect would be if I used printed aerial photos as the "terrain" for the is game. Like the "battle table" in a headquarters, and the units representing the war room models.

Hmm. Is that weird? Do you think that would fly?

Actually, that weird-looking Hachiman would make a PERFECT base for an Ork Gargant, if anyone ever wanted to play Warhammer 40k Epic in 3mm…

I like the Ontos and Marksmen best as Ogre stand-ins, but that's because I like the multiple weapon Ogre idea rather than the super-mega weapon Bolo idea. I'd probably cut off the Marksman's main gun and substitute it for two smaller guns.

I think the Rommel is the best choice, however, if you're going for a heavy gun style cybertank.

The Heimdall Monitor is also cool! I'd use it as a mobile planetary defence cannon, I think.

I've used IWM's battle armor for mechas and they've worked fine. Also cheaper than DP-9's Fleet Scale stuff, by a long shot.

I also like the Marksman – I think it'll be the base for the Mitteleuropäisch cybertanks. That extre $8 USD startup fee is a bummer, though. The Joust will probably be a later grade of Southern European Union or United States of Western Europe design. I like the "One Big Gun" look because I skew partial to the BOLO hellbore weapon as a main cannon. The Rommel I chose is the stand-in for the Oscar class cybertank which mounts a 88cm MPLA cannon (magnetized-plasma linear accelerator) as its main gun, but doesn't have guided missiles to back it up, being an older design. Using the Heimdall as a superheavy surface-to-orbit energy weapon is a fabulous idea, by the way!

Happy Holidays to everyone!

I'm not convinced aerial photos would make a nice map to play on. Low-relief terrain, OK. That I'll buy. But aerial photos would make too jarring a contrast with minis in my book.

One thing you COULD do, however, is this: use an aerial photo as a template for a low-relief terrain mat.

1) Get a piece of canvas.
2) Get a photo to scale to your piece of canvas.
3) Draw the basic terrain features on the canvas with pencil.
4) Paint them in (firmly staking the canvas down at the corners to avoid shrinkage while drying).
5) Using flexible silicon glue, flock the map to give it texture, using various colors of fine flock for fields and thick, coarse flock clumps for forests.
6) For hills, leave the area unflocked. Make hills out of canvas-covered foam-core, duly painted and flocked. Place them on the unflocked areas.
7) For cities and villages, use scraps of plasticard and plastic model runners.
8) Simply paint the rivers right on the map.

Actually, I'm using it as a pattern to map out my GHQ skirmish boards. I did a few tests of the satellite photos and US Geodetic Survey maps, and you're right – they're too visually confusing to use that way except for a very high level of strategy. However, mapping specific areas, laying out a hex grid, and then simplifying that to a set of modular terrain pieces seems like it's making the process easier. The foam cutter is warming up even as we speak!

Be careful with the cutting on those things! It's very much a case of "measure thrice, cut once". The slopes need to match up perfectly or they look shabby.

I've been thinking of a new terrain system over the holidays… I like the EVA mats with the pinned down canvas terrain idea, but I don't think it's all that storable or portable. Better than modules, but still… So here's my new idea, working off the EVA mat thing:

1) Do a generic canvas terrain cloth with PVA caulking and flock, following the many excellent tutorials on the map. Mine will be 100cm by 60cm, giving, effectively, a 6x4 foot play area at 1/600 half scale.

2) Buy a 100cm x 60cm sheet of 5mm thick EVA foam. This is thick enough for pins to stick into, yet thin enough to wrap around a PVA pipe.

3) The EVA sheet gets laid on the table with EVA hills on it. The flocked terrain cloth goes over it. This is all clamped to the table with sections of cut PVA pipe.

4) Canvas terrain is now laid out and pinned down, a la Blanchette's foamie system.

5) To store, a 105cm long, 15cm wide PVA pipe is used, capped on both ends with removable caps. Small terrain bits (trees, pins, forest, buildings, etc.) are placed inside in ziplock baggies. Terrain cloths wrap around the pipe, followed by the EVA hill pieces, then the EVA sheets themselves. The whole ensemble is held together with velcro straps and then stuffed in a circular bag of some sort.

I'm thinking I might be able to find some small, round containers, even and store my miniatures in them, with foam sheeting to tamp them down in place. Then I can tape the containers shut and slide them into the PVA pipe along with the terrain.

It seems to me that this would be the perfect flexible, portable 3mm game system.

The main body of the Vinnies forces just arrived in the evening mail! This is exciting now. And you make a good point in re: foam cutting. But some care and planning and a slow, steady hand goes a long way.

Your plan sounds like a good one, too! I'm a bit committed with the GHQ system now, but it makes good sense as you describe it.

I'm concerned about forum pollution if I spin this thread off to talk about the terrain building and painting, but the TO&E for the Vinnies is well set now – probably better to get new threads in the proper forums for that. I'm starting to think vaguely about an OPFOR from Mitteleuropa, now. A heavy brigade, I think; ground vehicles, tank destroyers, permanent air support… Hmmm.

I like the visual aspect of adding the proper icons with a little "unit affiliation" design directly to the unit base, so these are the base labels for the whole brigade. I think it makes the thing look and feel more like a headquarters simulation, which I quite like. Standard units are to be based 1/2" x 1", the Command section is 1" x 1", and the cybertanks are 1 1/4" x 2". I'm considering whether or not to flock the bases, and probably will.

The NATO icons and colors determine the connections between HQs and their subordinate units. The Vinnes will have a "flexible" command structure, but generally deploy in full companies, so command HQ's are assigned to a given company with a color code. The units at the bottom are attached directly to the Brigade GHQ.

Possibly of interest: the vehicles themselves are as follows (the "E" of the "TO&E" I've been working on):

T228H MBT: The main hover battle tank, based on the Russian Confederation's design of the same name, purchased in friendlier times.
M/H174 IFV: Hover IFV, designed in Great Britain and built for the SEU by one of the great South African defense conglomerates that dominate the ENSPUN arms trade.
C7 "Sussurro" ("Whisper") Antitank Missile: Mounted on an armored tracked chassis, a native SEU design with high accuracy and intelligent guidance.
AA12 "Falco" ("Falcon") Surface-To-Air Missile: Derivative of the Sussurro, with an air guidance and LIDAR tracking package to combat low and mid-altitude aircraft.
M98 "Aculeus" Tactical Artillery Missile: An American tactical missile battery on an armored tracked chassis, capable of selective warhead dispersal including precision, saturation, cluster, FASCAM, DPICM, fuel-air and tactical nuclear explosives.
IM2 "Seta-IV" ("Silk-4") Infantry Guided Missile: A dual-purpose antitank/anti-aircraft missile which packs as a two-man carry, plus one ammo loader and two team guards.
AF74 "Aquila" ("Eagle"): Standard SEU recon and target-tracking UAV.
"Oscar" Class Cybertank: Older design, original to the SEU, but still dangerous, mounting a heavy MPLA (Magnetized-Plasma Linear Accelerator) cannon and secondary weapons, plus point-defense and antipersonnel weapons, mostly inboard under heavy composite armor.

I had to make up some of the symbols to make them readable at table distance, so they don't all adhere to proper NATO standards. Still, I think it works well overall.

Oh, man! Check THESE out!!! These are perfect 6mm tanks for making 3mm cybertanks, IMO:

And that fighter of theirs will make a kick-ass shuttle or dropship, too!

Well, for the Mitteleuropa force, you can always use my Sally's Army OoB as a base. It's roughly based on a Soviet Tank Division, but with base two at the regimental level instead of base three.

I'll try to gussy up an OoB like yours on pagemaker in the next few days.

with regards to the bases, I like your idea, although I'm torn re: labels myself. My 3mm WWII stuff has them. If yours end up looking good, I'll probably add them to mine.

One thing I've learned the hard way with basing 3mm micro armor: less really is more. These days, as you can see with the Sallies above, I go for a base color paint job with patches of contrasting flock, both flock and paint contrasting against the miniatures'paint job.

It is just too easy to lose the figs in the "noise" of flocking at this scale.

You took the words right out of my mouth! The super heavies in particular.

By the bye, the Sallies seem like a good candidate for the Russian Confederation or the Eastern European Coalition. A lot of the units I'm contemplating are going to morph into other kinds of forces as the "history" progresses. The Vinnies, for example, become a mercenary unit; the ENSPUN Third Colonial Rifles become the Third Federated Rifles, first a unit with the Federated Territories, then a mercenary unit of their own. So I could quite see the Sallies defecting and making common cause with some revolutionary colony when the First Upheaval starts spinning out of control.

OK, here's the Sallies' TOE!

It should be noted that although the Sallies were authorized 3 battalions in each of their line regiments, usually one of these was back at the depot, training replacement levies. On very few occasions were all 6 armor, 3 armored infantry and 3 armored artillery battalions present in the field.

I've been very influenced by the French Freign Legion structures, where fairly small, airportable, self contained "Demi Brigades" with light air and armour support can be deployed very rapidly by air. I can imagine these would be the first "professional" units deployed to planetary hot spots, sometimes backing up local militia.

Typical Demi Brigade structure is an infantry battalion of 3 companies plus the heavy company (AT, heavy mortars, light AA), each Company has 3 platoons plus a support platoon with light mortars and AT missiles. Attached is a Recce Co (jeeps and infantry), an Armoured Car Co (and French armoured cars are light but pack big guns so are more like wheeled light tanks), and Artilery batteries for bombardment, AA etc, plus attached helo gunship flight.

The other thing I've been looking at is the influence of robotics alongside troops

So my force has:3 Companies, each of 3 infantry platoons, each of 3 APCs and a missile carrying APC, where the missiles can be varied (eg frag or krak a la 40k).Each squad carries a LAW and has a LMGbot. Each Company has an HQ platoon with HQ APC, Multi Mortar APC, AA APC and Drone Control APC

Attached is:

- Tank Co of 3 Platoons of 3 French style ACs, light AFVs with big guns
- Recce Co with 2 platoons of Infantry in light vehicles plus reccebots, a platoon on hoverbikes, and a recce drone Platoon
- Artilley Co with 2 MLRS batteries and an AA battery
- Drone Squadron with 3 attack drone flights and a lift drone flight.

I've kept this structure for a Colonial regular HoverBrigade and a Legion Etraterrestriale Grav brigade.

On the local militia side Ive been influenced by the use of "Technicals" in modern Militia forces, often packing mid-weight weapons, as well as their use of older, simpler but very reliable/easy to maintain equipment (T34/55, WW2 and 50s-60s APCs, Twin and quad auto cannons used in anti infantry roles, barrel bombs dropped from older light transport planes etc. I've used Wheels to represent older simpler gear.

I'll put up some pix later, Done my Colonial Regular Demi Brigade and I'm doing a militia force now. I've sourced the tanks for my Legion EtraTerrestriale, but still deciding on it's APCs

Meant to put in that although I organise TO&E to the higher level, what hits the table is far smaller subset.

Fwiw the only permanent FFL formation is the "13th Demi Brigade" which is as follows:

- An HQ and a Support Company (Heavy Mortars, AA)
- Infantry Company (Troops, ATGW, lighter mortars)
- Recce Squadron of Armoured Cars plus men +jeeps + ATGW
- Sapper/Logistics etc Co

And there is often an attached Helo flight (or in Sci Fi terms, Drones).

This is about as big a force as you can field in a 15mm standard size table battle – a 28mm force is typically down one level again – an infantry platoon, backed up by a Recce squad and armoured troop

As you can see its essentially a "Demi Battalion" size force built of an Armoured Recce Squadron (Company), Infantry Co, HQ/HW Co and a Support Co, but its also the skeleton of a larger force as it has a full Battalion HQ & Support section.

Dear freecloud,

IIRC, Blanchette's New Vistula Legion is based on the FFL parachute regiment model – basically a very large battalion with supporting units that allow it to operate independently.

It has 4 APC-mounted infantry companies, a motorized mortar battery, a troop of armored cars and a recon troop as its base. It also has an attached helo flight (attack and transport choppers), a sapper platoon and a battlesuit platoon and a heavy artillery battery.

All the APCs are armed with ATGMs, but mortars and ATGMs are also provided in regimental stores for when motor transport can't be utilized. On those occasions, the drivers and gunners form missile teams.

Like you, I think this is a very good TO&E to model for a sci-fi force because of its exceptional star-mobility. Its light, relatively low-tech equipment can be maintained or even reproduced on almost any colony world. The troops should all be long service veterans and the companies should be overstength in order to provide some cushion against losses at the end of a loooooooooooooong supply tether.

@davesimpson yes standard French light battalionTO&E is 4 companies…..but looking at actual FFL deployments seems that 1 company often stays at home. Anyway, I went for 3 + HW in my Force.

Like that idea of a heavy Battlesuit unit. I think that may be more portable than vehicles for."parachute" equivalent force. Also use of simple, easier to maintain vehicles on colonial worlds etc often overlooked (iirc US Marines often stick with simile, reliable gear)

Oddy enough, I'm building a Space Marine force for the first time, and this thread has made me think of what it would look like if it was structured something like an "airdropped" Demi Brigade – ie no APCs or any complex weaponry.

40K is at "platoon +" level, but if we use the FFL model of:

- An HQ and a Support Company (Heavy Mortars, AA)
- Infantry Company (Troops, ATGW, lighter mortars)
- Recce Squadron with Armoured
- Sapper/Logistics etc Co

This might be translated at platoon level as:

- HQ (SM Captain + one off types)
- Heavy Weapons squad (1 Devastator team with AT weapons, 1 with Anti Infantry ones))
- Platoon, of 3 squads each with portable AT device (Plasma gun? Missile?). A SAW is moot as SM carry a rapid fire heavy weapon
- attached Armour – not tanks, but heavy armoured suits (ie Terminators) to deliver armoured assault capability plus medium weight weaponry
- Recce Team – Fast attack on bikes, probably the lowest maintenance machinery one can drop. Needs AT capability so one carries plasma gun.

Most likely "helo" support are simple devices that can opearte from forward fields – ie Landspeeders
- but light ground attack (ie Storm Talons) may be available from some form of early airbase setup.