Some of the skirmish wargame rules I've been playing, both the free and commercial ones, suggests some kind of 'Army Building' and how to make up units for the game (mostly limited to make balanced forces). Most of the rules and games I play however, does not. This is not a problem if you know what kind of units you want to bring to your tabletop battles, or you're into military history and know how to create those specific units for your game. I've found some websites that can help you create realistic Squad and Platoon level units for 20th and 21st century:
Battle Order
On the Battle Order website there is a lot of information on how to create different modern units on different levels for different countries and periods. Most of my skirmish games are based upon rifle Squads and at the Battle Order website there is a 'Graphic section' I have found most useful as it's describing number of members, what kind of weapons they are armed with for different countries and periods.
This is an example of what you can find at Battle Order, showing a WW2 Homeguard Rifle Squad with number of members, ranks and weapons:
FUBAR
The website for the free wargame rules FUBAR also consists some information on how to create WWII Squads and Platoons from different nations.
Tactical Forge
If you create 'realistic' skirmish units for your game it would be nice to operate them in your game in a realistic manner as well, even if you have no military experience on Squad or Platoon level. On YouTube I recently found a channel named Tactical Forge. It's a very interesting YouTube-channel which instructs real life Squad tactics by using miniatures. The playlist Micro Tactics is most useful regarding wargames.
I recommend you to pay these websites a visit and hope you find them as useful as I did. I'll add links to them in the menu to the right.
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Thanks for the links , most interesting.
ReplyDeleteAlan Tradgardland
Thank you. I hope you can find something useful there.
DeleteThese are excellent resources Roger. Thank you for posting them.
ReplyDeleteIf I may, Roger, establishments will be quite authentic for late 20th and 21st century conflicts. And on the commencement of a WW2 campaign, they might still exist. But everything is thrown into the air during an actual campaign, here it depends on the number of survivors, equipment available, actual skills, commanders fancy, etc. I came to this view studying original documents and returns for the American Revolutionary War, and have since confirmed the same in other periods I've 'skimmed' into. I'm just throwing this in as a second thought, as it is definitely still useful to have 'something' to base a unit on. Regards.
ReplyDeleteMichael (Wargaming with...)
Thank you, Michael. That's true, combat will wear on an army's resources and they'll might need to improvise, adapt and overcome. Even the well organized and well supplied German Wehrmacht needed to issue WW1 and captured rifles to infantry towards the end of the war.
DeleteThe squad tactics is another thing though, as soldiers will react and take actions they have drilled.