"TOEs & OOBs for Russian Civil War" Topic

Recently I visited the RCW group on Yahoo finding that all the files uploaded on it were deleted.

I'd like to open a thread where you can post OOBs and TOEs for the fighting armies of the RCW (White, Red, Nationalist and Interventionist forces).

Have you tried Pygmy Wars?

pygmy-wars.50megs.com

The quietness here is part of the problem Sergio. You suggest a thread to post OOBs etc, but then its crickets.

Do you have any, or do you expect others to do the actual work?

OOBs for the RCW are rare in English, and a lot of work to get out of Russian, Polish etc. (TOEs are a waste of time IMO, being largely irrelevant to the war anyway.)

Hi Sergio,

As Mark says they are a lot of work to get and tend to be a bit vague.

this is off a russian website talking about the German Legion in Mezotne in 1919 Total 4480-6140 bayonets, sabers 220-320, 47 – 69 guns, machine guns, 145 – 192

in the scale used by something like Red Actions! this is quite a difference..!

I wonder if it's time to get the RCW stuff out for a game!!

regards

Freddy

Actually many websites give numbers of "bayonets", "sabers" and "guns". I'm looking for links, even in russian language.

My idea was to open a thread, as a reference for this board,to post all the info on the organization of RCW armies.

It's not hard to find OOBs, the Russians in particular are prolific with this stuff:
link
lib.rin.ru/doc/i/56033p1.html
litrus.net/book/read/77690?p=1
link
link
link

What's hard is making any sense of them to people who who can't understand either the Russian or the history. I'm not sure posting links in Russian is much use really.

(Russian and Polish Wikipedia are absolute mines of information of this sort.)

Ok for the OOBs, but what about the TOEs?

TOEs are meaningless button-counting, IMNSHO.

Units were very rarely at full strength (although they might be over strength, just to put an extra spanner in).

For example, the Poles at the Battle of Warsaw PDF link had infantry divisions ranging in size from 3,000 to 10,000 men. They might have a cavalry regiment attached, or they might not. The ratio of MGs and guns varied wildly.

It's actually worse when you look "under the hood", because the same battalion might have a well-equipped veteran company fighting alongside a hastily recruited company with a shortage of effective weapons. And the OOB of the Poles shows a huge amount of the army broken into battle groups and hastily amalgamations anyway.

And the 1920 Poles were well organised by the standards of the RCW! The other armies were generally much worse. You can't even rely on cavalry having horses in some armies.

The only thing TOEs provide reliably is the basic structure -- triangular or rectangular -- and the level at which assets were attached -- whether integral cavalry was divisional or brigade, for example. And I wouldn't trust them even then!

If you want to wargame with a unit, my suggestion is you pick one of known composition and field it. If you want a "typical" unit, then such things did not exist.

For my own purposes I sorted out the basic structure of the main armies link Then I stopped, because I don't like counting buttons.

Any theoretical TOE? From regulations, perhaps?

What level of TOE are you trying to drill down to?

Company level will be lovely but I know it's some kind of dream…

I think that you'll be lucky to find anything lower than regiment and maybe not even that!

Any theoretical TOE? From regulations, perhaps?

Company level TOEs are available for Soviets (they're in the Osprey, which uses the fairly definitive Soviet Encyclopedia of the RCW) and for the new AFSR units (on the RCW Yahoo group from Tom Hillman). For others use the old Tsarist TOE.

The Poles aren't hard to find particularly. My site includes an article that spells out the Polish cavalry one.

But what is the point of theoretical regulations, if no-one ever met them?

Why would you want to wargame with TOEs that you know to be totally wrong? (It would be like gaming with 1945 Germans using their theoretical regulations.)

I saw that all TOEs and OOBs on RCW Yahoo Group are missing, even the discussions. Someone save them?

Yes, of course.

I have every post of military relevance from the start until the group more or less fell apart. Mostly sorted into theme in Word documents, although the last few I never got round to sorting out.

And, is it possible to have those Word documents, please? :)

Sure. PM me.

I sent you an e-mail using your account from Pygmy Wars contact page. Thank you in advance even from here.