"Tactical Forge: Building the Rifle Platoon" Topic

Hi all,

I found this guy on Instagram and thought y'all might enjoy this. Ben, a former US Army infantrymen, uses wargaming miniatures, 28mm and 15mm, to go over the breakdown of a US style rifle platoon. He said that the 15mm bases are Team Yankee miniatures. I didn't catch what the 28mm are. He has a TON of content in which he goes over basic tactical concepts and US infantry doctrine. It's great stuff.

YouTube link

I haven't caught if he actually plays through. I wouldn't be surprised. A number of NCO's did the microarmor wargaming thing back in the '90's when I was in. Nothing more fun than gathering around the sand table after an exercise, breaking out the dice, and gaming out a breach drill with GHQ Microarmour.

When I was on a Mech Bde Staff. Our Bde Cdr wanted our entire Bde plus 1 Russian MRR & 1 Tank Bn from GHQ. So we could "wargame" our Bde at NTC, REFORGER, etc.

The Bde S2 Sec. got to glue them on thick cardboard in Plt strength[Infantry were represented by APCs/IFVs]. They painted the US OD and the Russians a Medium Brown. I got to order them thru Training Aids on Main Post. Even the GHQ top Honcho called me about this huge order from the US Army.

Pretty cool !

The master gunner in my platoon had quite the collection. He easily had a battalion of M-1s and a couple of companies of Brads. He also had some flyswatters, M109s, a swarm of M113s of various marks (ITVs and FIST) and a metric ton of Soviets. I've seen him put together, rather easily, a motor rifle battalion with a proper motor rifle tank company. For our first PKB table he showed us literally what to expect on the sand table. It was a whole MRB in the doctrinal formation we'd see on the gunnery table. Later we gamed out several actions including a pretty harsh breaching drill with his collection (he had his own homebrew rules). His collection, like you said, was just spray painted green and brown, but with no bases.

Neat ! That scale really is the best for fighting modern battles. The ranges are more realistic, etc.

I agree. I sometimes wish Battlefront went with 6mm for Team Yankee. Anyway, that was my introduction to miniature wargaming. I was familiar with wargaming in general through FASA's BattleTech, TSR's Dawn Patrol, and Avalon Hill games like Panzer Leader, Storm Over Arnhem, Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, and Squad Leader. However I'd never played a miniatures game before then and it made a real impression on me. I've been a miniatures wargamer ever since.

I just found a post Ben made about where his 28mm miniatures came from: Spectre Miniatures. Here's the link:

spectreminiatures.com