"Depiction of engineering teams 1/144" Topic
11 Posts
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UshCha | 08 Feb 2020 9:00 a.m. PST |
OK so perhaps with more money than sense here but you have an option. As some of you may be aware our Rules Maneouvre Group can take on easily a wider range of scenarios than most games at a price of thought. In a recent game the engineers needed to get to work building light weight assult bridges and the like. Now we just dumped an ordinary foot element pretending to be engineers, but we were acutely aware that this could be confusing (to us the players. We could have dumped a a bit of paper instead or marked the marker but it did occour to us that some sort of engineering team marker would allow fast identification of the element and be a bit of fun. So we want a generic team, our figures are generic anyway (real scale figures and need to be 3D printed). So to cover cold war and even WW2 what would a reasonable 5 man team be depicted with? 4 men working and 1 watching? 1 with shovel, 1 2 carrying a box, one cartying another box. All five working? Go mad, dream the daft, it might inspire others. PS drinking Tea is out. It is far to British to be Generic. Finaly would anybody be interested in such a team(s). |
Legion 4 | 08 Feb 2020 9:07 a.m. PST |
Your description for a 5 man Tm doing different tasks would be fine. 1 watching? 1 with shovel, 1 2 carrying a box, one cartying another box. Yes … Maybe one with a Mine Detector ? Here are some futuristic CEs I got from CinC's SEM Line. You can see troops carrying boxes/cases, some with Teller mines, Bangalores, etc. This may be a good example to base your CEs on.
Of course ignore the robots. However as we see more and more robot/robotic devices are being used now and even more so in the future. E.g. the little tracked robot with arm. We use something like that even now. |
Thresher01 | 08 Feb 2020 9:58 a.m. PST |
Men digging and shanding with shovels, picks, at least one pose just standing around, "supervising" (the latter probably should be 80% of the pack, given modern, "real world" examples), some carrying boxes or large boulders, etc., etc.. For the guys digging, "picking", you can have multiple poses, e.g. tools down at dirt level, some swinging downwards in front of their heads (vertical axis), some with picks behind their heads as if winding up for a big swing, etc.. I'd love to see some carrying and setting dynamite bundles or satchel charges too, for when they feel the need to blow things up, instead of build them, e.g. in the Ardennes forests, etc.. Standing and prone figs for that would be useful. |
79thPA | 08 Feb 2020 10:57 a.m. PST |
Go the railroad route and get some 1/144 construction crews or railroad workers. You can also get 1/144 aircraft ground crews or tank crews. Add a pile of crates or wire reels to the base. |
Mark 1 | 08 Feb 2020 11:36 a.m. PST |
For my engineers I use more figures and stands than are warranted by unit compositions, because combat engineers did such a wide variety of tasks. Somehow having one guy doing each of several roles on a single stand just doesn't do it for me. My basing (in 6mm) is either 3 or 4 figures on a stand to represent a squad-sized unit (8 – 12 men). 4 figures = regular infantry squad. 3 figures = special purpose squad-sized group. I use 2 figures per stand to represent a team-sized unit (half squad, fireteam, section, whatever). For engineers I do a variety of 3-man squad stands. 2 men with mine detectors and one rifleman for mine-clearing operations. I do 2 riflemen and one ammo porter (taken from LMG teams, where I apply the gunner to a rifle squad stand, and keep the ammo bearer for other uses), for general combat and demolition work. And I do 2 kneeling figures (from gun crews) and one rifleman, for construction or other labor uses. Usually if I have any flame-thrower figures I put them on 2 man stands with a rifleman to represent a half-squad sized team of flame operator and escort(s). Two such team stands would replace one squad stand. Normally a platoon would be 3 stands + a command team. But for an engineering platoon I wind up with 8 to 10 stands, although I'll only deploy 3 or 4 at a time. -Mark (aka: Mk 1) |
Legion 4 | 08 Feb 2020 4:14 p.m. PST |
E.g. my CE Plt w/5 CE Tms –
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Martin Rapier | 09 Feb 2020 2:05 a.m. PST |
Apart from specialist figures with flamethrowers, mine eetectirs and bangalore torpedoes etc, my engineers are normally converted from infantry or gunner figures. Anyone crouching or carrying some sort of box will do, some poses can have the rifles cut off and replaced with stuff they are carrying. For the avoidance of doubt, I do also mark the bases with a discreet E. |
UshCha | 09 Feb 2020 3:45 a.m. PST |
Martin, that defeats the whole object, eliminating the need for an "E" was the objective. 79th PA. Good call but they will make even my "realistic" scale figures look massive. They use detail which is really not up to the rough and tumble of weekly play. Interesting nobody mentioned light assult bridgeing. Me, I'm dissapinted that engineers never had the M202 Flash my favorite "Arnie" weapon. |
Legion 4 | 09 Feb 2020 7:32 a.m. PST |
Not all CE ops require assault bridging equipment obviously. We rarely saw any. And not all CEs were bridging specialists. In '78 as an ROTC Cadet I was attached to a CE Training Co. For about 2 weeks. A lot obstacle construction and demo … Plus some night river crossing training in RB-15 rubber boats. That is another CE mission. When a Co Cdr in '88 we had CEs load us up on their RBs and take us across a river. Another mission we were tasked to provide security for a CE Bridging unit. Building a pontoon bridge across a river. They took all night … But once it was up the Bns' vehicles rolled across, no problem. The M202 was never that well accepted by the US ARMY. We saw it fired once in training, in '79. But it was not long after that it was removed from the inventory, IIRC.
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UshCha | 09 Feb 2020 12:56 p.m. PST |
One thing engineers sometimes have but I have never come up with an artistic solution is "Rivers" with Boats. Now I should come clean here, in the UK a "River" can be quite small probably 30 yds across, in the UK counts as a river. Now trying to put a boat on such a river and reconcile it with the ground scale is hard. We manage, just about with roads, but typically they are in reality much smaller and even Large AFV's are not that big. I suspect our war game roads would start too look odd with very Large Lorries on them. In the UK the largest weight is 44 tones and about 54ft long (114mm long at 1/144 scale). My roads look a bit contrived even with just 10 on lorries. Now making the model river wider is not an option its ground scale size would become unreasonable. So have you found a good artistic compromise? 1/300 or even smaller boats, does it look "better enough" to warrant the effort as opposed to a simple marker? Legion 4, Typically we only depict engineering actually going on that takes an hour or two. We can get 10 to 12 bounds in comfortably in an evening at about company level so about 2 hrs worth of action. Longer than that its a multi evening game. |
Legion 4 | 09 Feb 2020 5:04 p.m. PST |
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