"WW2 infantry in your scenarios " Topic

I enjoy WW2 wargames but it is inevitable that it is designed as a tank v tank. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that infantry still did the lion's share of the fighting. When you plan scenarios, how do you account for the inclusion of infantry in your games? Especially in the desert, Russian steppes,and non urban situations?

My favourite gaming is ww2 between squad and platoon sized, which is mostly infantry fighting.

Tanks are an occasional supporting element.

I disagree with your opening statement.

I play Chain of Command with Infantry platoon supported by Close Support tanks(s), anti-tank guns, mortars, etc. African Desert, Europe, each can be played with infantry and tanks by crafting terrain with obstacles and folds that provide concealment and protection.

I'll say that games of the 70s tended to be tank-fests, both board games like Panzerleader/blitz and stuff like the WRG rules (have fun moving your infantry half an inch per turn) while current systems like Chain of Command or Crossfire tend to be much more infantry focused.

So might also just be a factor of when a given game was produced.

Exceptions of course. FFT is all about the tanks while Squad Leader was an infantry game (for a little bit, anyways)

I'm with Weasel. Few of the scenarios I set up have long lines of sight.

I play mainly IABSM, and most scenarios we've played are based around an infantry company, tanks and artillery are there but the infantry is an important part of your force.

It appears that rules tend to be split. Some are infantry oriented, others armor. Since both were present in WWII battles, game designers should focus on how to do both well in one game.

A lot of it is psychological. I've seen a lot of games where the forces are primarily infantry with a few tanks in support. But the games still tend boil down to killing the other guy's tanks (or AT assets) and whoever loses their tanks first will often concede even though they still have plenty of infantry left.

All my scenarios have at least some infantry. I usually lay historical scenarios, so it could hardly be otherwise.

Scott – that's actually a big problem with scenario design, and very hard to solve.

If you stick a tank in a platoon fight, it'll be a tank scenario, because there's so few things that can deal with it.

I'm another IABSM/CoC guy, so I plan on infantry first with some tanks, but IABSM can be for tank companies too.

Oddly, just last night I was reading my newly acquired copy of Britton Publishing's Bourguebus Ridge scenario book, which covers an action which had some historical all-tank or tank vs. ATG scenarios, and I was commenting on how weirdly unique they were in my experience with scenarios. Some of the tank vs. ATG scenarios didn't really excite me, but to be fair the authors noted they're better as solo games.

I agree with Bliss. My scenarios are inspired by actual events. Therefore; there tends to be a lot of infantry. There will be exceptions, such as when I run a convention game to introduce the rules to new players. Then I will assign infantry and armor to each player, so that they get a taste of both

Mike

Lots of infantry in my scenarios, tanks tend to be in small numbers if present at all. I am just fascinated by the dynamics of section, platoon and company level infantry combat.

Scott – that's actually a big problem with scenario design, and very hard to solve.

If you stick a tank in a platoon fight, it'll be a tank scenario, because there's so few things that can deal with it.

Which shows that it's a game system problem. Tanks in WW2 were very vulnerable to infantry and ant-tank weapons unless they were accompanied by infantry. What most games do not do a good job of is portraying Combined Arms. The best way to test a game system is if you repeat historic results with historic tactics. If you can't (for example successfully fight in the bocage using the tactics developed) then there is something wrong with the system.

I rarely see all tank battles in my club or at cons, with a few notable exceptions. Most games I see are at least 50% infantry.

Well, I agree with the OP AND all the responses! ;)

My fights are infantry with some vehicle support (notwithstanding the Panzer Aces campaign I just started, which is solely tanks), but I agree with the OP in that it's very hard to work infantry into the open desert and Russian steppes. Less so the Russian steppes, but that seems to be more of one side assaults a fortified line, not much in the way of maneuver for the defenders.

I'd love to find some infantry-heavy scenarios for the Desert War in 1941-42 North Africa.

V/R,
Jack

Many have commented on how the statement "inevitably … designed as tank vs. tank" may not be true depending on the rules you play.

And they are correct.

But I also see a strong correlation on scale. The smaller scales tend towards tank battles, the larger scales towards infantry actions.

It is just not practical to put a company of 17 Shermans on a table to mix it up with a battery of 12 StuGs at 54mm scale. Your extra-large table still only provides 400 yards of range.

And once you put down 30 tanks per side for your 6mm game, it's hard to make an infantry force of less than 100 stands that will be relevant to the outcome … and if you bite the bullet and put 100 infantry stands down no one will want to play your moves-as-slow-as-a-glacier game.

As a 6mm gamer I have long sought rules that played effectively for combined arms combat. They are not common. The rules I prefer now, ODGW's Mein Panzer, are the best I've found so far. I've had several combined arms battles where infantry was a major (and interesting) factor.

Some observations of what makes it work:

1) Squad-based infantry rules. Anything smaller (fire-team or half-squad basing) fails, in my experience. 10 tanks to a Russian tank company, but 42 infantry stands to a Russian rifle company -- can you guess why fire-team basing won't work?

2) Close terrain. Doesn't mean you can't have room for maneuver. You very much can. But you also need some close terrain. I usually build a map with one or two areas of close terrain, and lots of maneuver room around it (with terrain features, but at less density). Guess where the infantry will be effective? Guess where they won't?

3) Some thought to the scenario. If you just say "take a force of XXX points" you are likely to see two all-tank forces battling it out. If you want to allow the players some ability to build their own force you can tell them to build their force around a company of infantry (or tanks), with up to 2 platoons of AFVs (or infantry) and one battery of AT guns (or artillery) attached. Make the defender take the infantry company. Allow the attacker to chose an infantry or a tank company.

Here are some photos of example games* where the action was decidedly of a combined-arms nature:

The crossroads village of Hir Moussa in the Ousseltia Valley in Tunisia. A woefully under-equipped French Armee d'Afrique force tries to keep the Italians out as they await reinforcements from the US 1st Armored Division.

The battle was called when the CO of a US TD battalion made contact with the French company commander. Despite an overwhelming advantage in armor the Italians had not yet broken in to the village itself.

The bridges at Somme Biche. A French screening force seeks to deny crossings to the Italian spearhead in an alpine valley in 1940.

Who knew that the little Italian L3 tankettes would be so devastatingly effective in clearing the French infantry out of the village? But still, they could not force their way across the bridges.

On the road to Leningrad, 1941. I took a Russian Rifle company, with a platoon of T-26s and a 2-gun section of 45mm ATGs. My objective was to prevent the enemy from doing whatever he wanted to do, but I did not know which side he would enter from nor which side he wanted to exit from. Challenging!

Pz 1's use their speed and the low hills to try a flanking attack. They run face-first into T-26s!

Meanwhile the StuGs make the mistake of driving into the village ahead of the Landsers. We get a chance to test out the infantry close-assault rules!

This is the kind of gaming I've spent years trying to find. I don't see it at gaming cons very often. But I do get to create it occasionally, when I use a good ruleset and follow the guidelines I posted above.

Your mileage may vary.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

*Note: Apologies if some folks feel I post my game pics too often. I so enjoy seeing others' game pictures, but I don't have so many game pics available to do new ones every time.

Our club rules (by TMPs Herkybird) include a straightforward reaction system.

The way we use this to stop AFVs becoming overpowering is to run them not under the player's direct control, but by reaction rolls.

Sure, you have a tank attached. But you don't have complete Command, Control & Communication with it.
Conversely, if the player is running AFV's, their accompanying infantry is run by reaction rolls.
Works a treat.

I've always liked the splitting of commands, give the infantry to one player and the armour to another………makes for more friction as sack player becomes more protective of their commands……..
My favorite rules are Arc of Fire……….along with the historical scenario books from Skirmish Campaigns.

Funny thing – I used to play a lot of WRG back in the day. N Africa and Russian Front games certainly tended to be AFV dominated. But our NW Europe scenarios were distinctly infantry oriented. I built several 6 x 12ft layer-cut topo representations of northern French ground, including streams, towns, forests, fields, ditches, crest-lines, etc., taken from WW1-era topo maps. We played a number of games based upon an infantry company or battalion with artillery support (once bought an entire 4.2 chemical mortar battalion – great buy point-wise in the WRG rules), reinforced by a platoon or so of Shermans, MkIVs or Stugs and maybe a section of light recon vehicles. Great games that never saw a Tiger tank on the table.

The presence of tanks and AFVs on the table (or not) is usually a function of the players rather than the rules … or at least it should be.

B

I have more infantry than armour so, natch, my scenarios are mostly infantry-centred.

Maneuover Group requires both tanks and infantry. However you need realistic terrain. Maximum battle range is about 500 to 1500 yds for ideal tank batyles and a lot less for infantry. You need areas of dense terrain for infantry, dunes, woods, wadis etc. Many rules over power machine guns. If infantry are prepared just to hide and not do anything tanks with machine guns are powerless. It is s a stalemate if the tanks have no infantry. If this does not happen in your rules they are incorrect. Tanks need infantry to take ground. On there own in dense terrain of any type the best they get is stalemate and worst if the infantry have PIAT's or panzerfoust they lose as the infantry can sneak up on a buttoned up tank and kill it. If not buttoned up in dense terrain the crew is vulnerable to small arms fire. Again if your rules don't do this get a decent set.

Use Google maps to get a really good impression of what the terrain you are modelling looks like. Most wargames, particularly those with points systems stray very far from credible terrain.

There is an inevitable issue that real tank battles are over very quickly and infantry battles take much longer. Get round this by restricting the key terrain to sizes where the infantry actions can be over relatively quickly.

I play FOW and it's still mostly infantry since I try to follow accounts of historical battles. Most of my forces are designed around infantry companies with, at most, tank platoons in support.

Yes, a few tanks command a lot of attention because they are a problem (unless you have suitable ATGs on the table). But because we play infantry-centered games, it still goes on if the tanks are eliminated.

When I started WWII (many, many moon ago) it was 6mm in North Africa so a lot of tanks

More recently we are using 20mm with our youngest son and are doing Northwest Europe, 1944-45; the Allied force consists of three Canadian infantry battalions including their Bren gun carrier (9) and a solitary Sherman; the Germans have two infantry battalions and two StuGs so not very many tanks at all

Didn't have any tanks in my East Africa game tonight…

I just played in five WWII scenarios at Historicon. Crete and Burma – no tanks, Normandy and East Front Winter 42/43 – one side had tanks. Only at Kursk did we have both sides with tanks.

I think that the problem with tanks in WWII is that infantry did not have the best weaponry to deal with tanks. think of 1942 no panzershreck/faust/bazooka. Antitank rifles werent terribly effective. The infantry had to close assault a tank to take it out. In infantry divisions they did not have the numbers of antitank guns to defend against an armored division. This is probably why tank v tank games boil down to who has the last tank surviving. I think the other problem is that some games make spotting units from a buttoned up tank too easy.

Depends. When I play some scenario set in the Western Desert tanks and ATs dominate the game, with infantry usually playing just a support role. However, in scenarios set in South-East Asia or in Northern Europe, terrain is commonly too closed for any of us choosing to field too many tanks. I remember a game set in Burma where I made the mistake of fielding a tank heavy force. It was frustrating because my Japanese opponent had just one single AT gun, but as I was constrained to use the roads in the map, he made short work of my tanks and then my (scarce) infantry couldn't dislodge him from his defensive positions. I was soundly beaten thanks to good tactics by my opponent and that I have chosen a less than ideal force to play the scenario.

(Disclaimer: in my game group we use a house variant of FoW-or used, because it has past a lot of time since my last game!-; commonly, someone who won't play that day proposes a scenario, gives us a more or less detailed briefing and we chose our forces, sometimes using FoW books, sometimes our own house booklets).

The best games I have run are the games with very few tanks..often, my 1945 games have the Germans struggling with an ATG, and a pair of assault guns against a Soviet Juggernaught..and about half the time, they manage to hold on..

But the Soviet armor isn't often around to see it..as it's the Soviet infantry and artillery that clears the way. Now that I have some Britannia SU-76 to paint up..I am thinking of less T-34s, and more of the SU's…

We play a great deal of WWII games in both 20mm and 28mm miniatures. In our skirmish games, we use mostly a few squads of infantry with a tank or armored car or two at times. For our rules, we use Iron Ivan's "Disposable Heroes" and we have used them for close to 10 years. The games have a very WWII gritty feel and we enjoy the smooth mechanics and naturalistic feel of the game flow. If you want to go another direction at an infantry squad level, I recommend "Nuts!"

I play no games where the infantry does not far outnumber the armor, and I completely disagree with the OP's assertion that WW II games are designed for mainly tanks.

I think a lot of it comes down to the scale you want to play. 6mm and 10mm gives a great and realistic feel for tank battles. The only way to really use infantry is to truck them in behind the armor and drop them off to assault the objective. Battles in 6mm with 1" = 25m enables a lot of room for maneuver too.

The larger the scale the less units you can realistically have on the table and tank battles are realistic in an urban or hedgerow type environment unless you don't mind the "tank park" effect.

We've done a number of 28mm tank and infantry in a town. Typically the attacking infantry hunker down and a tank rolls up and blows away the infantry in the building.

Being former infantry myself I always like including them, especially when they knock out tanks. I think what you want to stay away from is having the infantry spend 75% of the game slogging across the board before getting into combat.

Like Uscha said you need to get the terrain right.

Wolfhag

I'm another disagree that WW II are all about the tanks. Of course that could be just what the OP has encountered and that is a demonstration of either poor scenario design or lack of using historical basis.

For the most part I seek out playing scenarios for WW II that are based on an actual encounter. However since I have moved to Texas the main WW II games here are Flames of War and Bolt Action which are both point based games, i.e. , bring so many points from your force list and we have a through down. In most cases armor will be prominent especially in Flames of War. This is more a factor that it is cheaper and more time efficient in Flames of War to go with Tank Companies as your first army. You soon learn that tanks do win battles without the other combined arms of war, especially infantry.

Bolt Action you have to bring a good bit of infantry in order to play unless you are playing their game Tank War and even then you will need those infantry units and anti-tank guns to make a difference.

Well WWW2 games should not be about tanks unless you are thinking Western Desert.

Action All Fronts rules (I wrote them) were designed for infantry combat. The way this is done is to limit the role of AFV and artillery. So a company of infantry is needed if you want to pick an AFV (although an AFV of 200 points or less only counts as half a choice – a rifle squad would typically cost 100 pts).

So use the right rules and there will be no problem. But massed tanks should be able to overrun an infantry position. A few tanks the infantry can deal with.

The Fireball Forward games our gaming group runs are mostly historical, company-level games that tend to be infantry- rather than tank-heavy.

Like many others here, I disagree with the premis.

Personally, I play FoW for company sized games, and CD for larger games. Unless we are doing a specific scenario for tanks, AFV's are usually pretty scarce on the table top for us.

That said, the key here, as noted by Condotta and Striker, are lines of sight on the table top. While I normally like to game things such as Stalingrad, or Normandy or the Bulge where you have plenty of ruined buildings or hedgerows to get in the way and break things up, you focussed on the steppes and desert.

I don't know much about the desert, but there are plenty of accounts (both German and Soviet) of hostile troops seemingly magicially rising out of the ground. The problem with the steppe, is that although it looks flat but it isn't, and it is very difficult (and potentially expensive) to model terrain that you can realistically hide your 6/15mm soldiers in while the other guy simply walks up to your toys on a flat table.

We get around it by placing lengths of string on the table and they indicate a depression that, whatever rules you are using, equals cover for the troops behind it. (Red string covers the Red army going from east to west, yellow string covers the German army going west to east.)

It takes a while to get past the suspension of disbelief stage, but if you do that, (not to mention having gaming companions that can mostly refrain from taking shots at troops stading on the table doing nothing) it is a way of making a flat table top more amenable to the tactical problems of the steppe.

Hope this is some help.

In our upcoming game "Rush of Battle", only infantry have the Grunts trait which allows an element to secure an objective. Even then, only line infantry have that trait. Crew served weapons and specialists such observers do not.

A nearby enemy tank can contest an objective but only a Grunts element can take and hold ground.

In RoB infantry are the stars, other arms support their ability to take and hold ground.