"Fire Team & Squad Level Troop Basing?" Topic

I'm considering doing some platoon to company level games, and suspect as games get larger, individual troops will get a bit onerous and time consuming to move, keep track of, and do battle with.

Therefore, for some games where that is the case, I'd like to base troops as fire teams, and/or squads, as appropriate for WWII, and even the Cold War too, but we'll stick to WWII for now.

The obvious choice for many nations seems to be to break the squads down into two units, or sections (American lingo), so that they can fire and maneuver. However, I think I seem to recall at least some units actually breaking their squads down into three "sections", or fire teams, historically. I think they used a base of fire of 2 – 4 troopers, and then two maneuver teams of 2 and 4 each, or 4 and 4 each (in the case of a two man firing base), for a total of 10 troops.

Obviously, through squad attrition, that might change further.

So, I'm curious, is that right, e.g. the three units for US infantry/armored infantry/airborne troops, or should I just go with two sections per squad instead?

Also, how did the other nations do it, e.g. German infantry, panzergrenadiers, and paras, British infantry and paras, and Soviet infantry and tank rider troops?

For really large games, by doing this, I plan to go with a 1:2 ratio of figs to real troops, so a 4 or 5 man fire team/section stand will represent a full squad, instead. The downside with that is that the ability to use squad-level fire and maneuvering tactics will be lost, but they'll still be able to do that at the platoon level.

Thoughts, and breakdowns for the stands, say perhaps use a two-man LMG stand, and then two stands of 3 – 4 troops each for the German squads?

Did the Russians/Soviets break down their squads in this way, or just fight as a single squad level unit?

How do the British do it?

A British section was normally split into two groups
The Bren group of three men and a rifle group of the rest of the section (say 8). I would base the rifle group as two stands as some encouragement was given to move as two groups but I understand that it seldom happened. My section some time later than the war operated just as Bren and rifle groups.

x42

This is partly a function of how your rules work, but I usually play safe follow the old WRG 1925-50 basing guidlines which mean each section/squad gets three bases (usually one LMG/BAR and a couple of rifle groups).

I shall refer to squads as 'sections', British Army usage. A bunch blokes with rifles, the odd SMG and an LMG of some sort. Subunits being 'groups'.

Then they get grouped according ot how the specific rules work (so it might be anything from one, two or thee bases per section).

Russians never split their squads (still don't).

Germans, in theory had a gun group and rifle group, which makes two LMG panzergrenadier squads entertaining. Like the Russians, in practice they rarely split, although they often led with the LMG team.

British had a gun group and a rifle group, although again in practice they usually kept the sections together. Post WW2 when they were long service regulars, they did split up into bricks, multiples etc.

In all the cases where sections weren't split, the platoon CO fought the whole platoon as a single entity conducting F&M by section.

The US are mystery wrapped within an enignma. BAR group, rifle group and scout group? USMC style fireteams each with a BAR? What did the Armored Infantry with no BARS do?

I'm usually inclined them to fight them as sections, just like everyone else. Maybe super elite types get to split up – paras etc, however even the might Easy Company seemed to operate as distinct squads, let alone Charles MacDonalds 99th Div guys.

Mass conscript armies go around in big huddles following a few key NCOs or officers and their natural inclination is to go to ground, nothing like modern armies. Splitting sections up under those circumstances is risky, as there is a good chance that half the men will just vanish from active participation. The situation was even worse for the Russians who were short of competent junior leadership.

12mm Kalistra 5 men to base scale 1-2 works for me. You can also flip the scale from 1-10yards to between 1-50yards

Anything over that size never feels right because everything os over sized and not to scale.

I don't know your rules or casualty system but I would paint up some single and/or double stands to take up the slack. If not, print out some casualty 'chits'.