Infantry squads

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panzergator
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by panzergator »

Very detailed painting. Admirable stuff!
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regia-marina
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by regia-marina »

pmskaar-
You have just set the standard for painting infantry. Very nice work. If my infantry project turns out have as nice as yours I'll be happy.

redleg
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by redleg »

Seriously Pete? Did you paint the chin strap on that dude's helmet!

Your infantry are just as amazing as your tanks!
Redleg's Website: micropope.webstarts.com

Cav Dog
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Cav Dog »

I think he uses a microscope...

Definitely the gold standard.

Here are some of my recent attempts:
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Tactics are the opinion of the senior officer present.

pmskaar
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by pmskaar »

Thanks very much, Panzergator, Regia-Marina, Redleg, and Cav Dog!

Cav Dog, your American infantry has some different skin tones. Very nice work! That is really good and accurate. I painted the Modern American Combat Command with the various MWRAPs about 10 years ago. It came with some infantry figures and I tried to give some variety in skin tones on those guys as well.

Pete

Guroburov
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Guroburov »

Camo on the helmets and different skintones? That's incredible. I'm lucky if they get boots.

chrisswim
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by chrisswim »

Some flocking of infantry.

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Chris

Beagle
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Beagle »

They look so coooold, lol. Nicely done Chris.

Gazza
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Gazza »

OK I was bored and had a bit of time on my hands, so I added a line to the spreadsheet to work out how much space my infantry and support weapons would take up if I lined them all up side by side.

Rounded to 2 decimal places the answer is 106.46 feet (or 32.80 metres).
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Assuming my maths was right, of course!

For the record:
FG stands are 25mm wide
Grp stands are 20mm wide
HG, LMG, SFMG, HMG, Mtr stands are 15mm wide
ATR, BAZ, PIAT, PzFst, PzShk stands are 10mm wide

<Edit 1> Maybe I should do it by nation too.
<Edit 2>I changed 'per 300mm' to 'per 1000mm' (makes more sense). The final result changed to 32.37 metres.

redleg
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by redleg »

That's the kind of nerd stuff I like to see Gazza. I love to see inventories and TO&Es and all manner of miscellaneous data in spreadsheets and powerpoint slides! I haven't done this one before though! Very nice! The nerdiest I have gotten lately is to do an SOI for my ACR - call sigs and frequencies for the whole regiment.
Redleg's Website: micropope.webstarts.com

Extra Crispy
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Extra Crispy »

For WW2 I have 525 stands of foot of various types. For Team Yankee I only have about 300. That is basically any non-vehicle stand, so includes artillery, AT guns, FOOs, etc. I have it broken down by country but I haven't gone so far as to inventory it by type/unit etc.

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Mark Severin
Owner, Scale Creep Miniatures
Author DeepFriedHappyMice.com

Mk 1
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Mk 1 »

Like Pete, I base my infantry 4 figures to a stand to represent squads (8 to 12 men), and 2 to a stand to represent teams (2 to 6 men, generally support weapons crews but could be HQs, vehicle crews, etc.).

I used to base 4 for a fire team. But I made a very deliberate decision to move away from fire-team based rules about 15 - 18 years ago, and to play squad-based rules for infantry. Using fire-team (or half-squad) basing a WW2 Russian infantry company came out to about 43 stands, if I recall correctly. So a player needed 4 X more time to measure and move an infantry company than a tank company.

The produced one of two results:
1) Games that were all armor, or had only a token amount of infantry.
2) Combined arms games in which the tank battle was humming along, and then the infantry got out of their transports the games came to a screeching halt as the number of stands mushroomed beyond control, and after 1 or maybe 2 more turns the game was called because half the players had wandered off to find food, grow beards, or write novels rather than waiting for the other team to finish moving their infantry.

I really want my games to have a historical feel to them. I know wargaming will never achieve too much realism (thank God for that -- I don't need the blood all over my garage), but I do want to expand my understanding of how and why some things worked, and other things didn't in combat. And infantry needs to be there for me to get that sense.

My gaming now focuses on about 20 to 25 stands per player (maybe up to 30 for players who have good experience with the rules we are using). With squad-based stands that means about a company per player plus some attachments (an attached platoon, or a battery of supporting weapons, etc.)

To the original question -- I don't know how many stands I have. But I have:
WW2 Russians:
- A full battalion of infantry (rifle regiment)
- An SMG company (both combat stands and positions for riding tanks)
- A cavalry company (mounted only -- need to dig into the infantry stands if I want them to fight dismounted)
- A platoon of combat engineers

WW2 French:
- A company of infantry for metropolitan France
- A company of colonial infantry (Armee d'Afrique) for North Africa
- A 2-platoon company of motorcycle troops (as appeared in some of the recon TOEs)

WW2 Romanians:
- A company of infantry (including extras to implement the 4-squad platoons of 1942/43)

WW2 Americans
- 2 companies of infantry (but one of them, based on another vendor's infantry figures from the 1980s, is really not in my "current forces" anymore
- A mech cav / armored recon platoon (dismounts in team basing -- as each armored car or 2 jeep team would typically only dismount 5 soldiers)
- A platoon of combat engineers
(An armored infantry company is on the workbench at this time. Still some ways to go on them.)

WW2 Italians
- A company of infantry
- A platoon of combat engineers
- A battalion-level recon platoon

Cold War Soviets
- A full battalion of Motor Rifle infantry (with extras/alternates to field either a BTR or BMP -mounted force)
- A company of VShD Airmobile Assault troops

Cold War Americans
- A company of Mech infantry (from the days of the M113 -- no Bradleys in my force)

Cold War French
- A company of Mech infantry

My cold war forces have not been out of the box for probably 20+ years now. Not even sure where the "box" is at this point. But they are out there somewhere...

Now a few pics to round it out:

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A 4-squad Romanian infantry platoon (with 60mm mortar team in support) dug in and waiting for the Russians.

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Another view of a Romanian platoon. Depending on scenario, each platoon can deploy a tank-hunter team (two figures), in this case shown carrying a Tellermine.

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My Romanians don't get a full platoon of combat engineers, but I did manage to kit-bash up a couple of flame-thrower teams (using Italian M35 flame throwers that were provided to Romania in some quantities).

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If they want artillery support (I have 100mm and 75mm gun batteries for them), whey will need forward observers. Here is an arty observation team, and a separate comms team. One limitation of Romanian infantry was the almost complete lack of radios. So my Romanians get field telephone teams with a phone operator and a line man. These have very limited mobility, so command and control units may move away from and/or back to their comms links.

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The full Romanian company on parade.

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US Mech Cav platoon dismounted for combat. I have M3 scout cars for them to ride in North Africa, and M8 armored cars for them to ride in Europe.

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My Italian infantry company as I built them in about 2005. This was the first unit I created after joining this forum. First unit with GHQ individual infantry figures. First time I painted helmets and guns. And first time I flocked the bases.

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Here are my Italians after a recent refurb. I had to add a few more LMG teams (odd TOE of the Italian infantry -- each platoon had two squads, each squad had a ~10-man rifle section and two 4-man LMG sections. With NCOs it came to 19 or 20 men to a squad. Hmmm ... how to base THAT? So I did an all-rifles squad and 2 LMG teams, and each platoon gets two of these sets.

I guess that's enough for one post. Came out bloody long, I'm afraid. Maybe I should switch to decaf...

-Mark
-Mark 1
Difficile est, saturam non scribere.
"It is hard NOT to write satire." - Decimus Iunius Juvenalis, 1st Century AD

Gazza
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Gazza »

Very nice Mark!

Not sure how up to date this is. I cobbled it together from abbreviated documents of my armies - I don't always update them when I add something. i really should get around to checking :oops:

Anyways...

A brief overview of my infantry elements - it doesn't include the odd command or infantry element in other units such as artillery battalions.

WW2 AMERICAN

Armoured Infantry Battalion (H&R - got an Adler Battalion too, but it's not painted yet - suffered casualties when moving house)
45x infantry elements, 24x 30 cal, 12x 50 cal, 3x 57mm ATG

Motorised Infantry Battalion
54x infantry elements, 12x 30 cal, 6x 50 cal, 6x 81mm Mortar, 9x LM team, 3x 57mm ATG

Armoured Engineer Company
14x infantry elements

Recce Battalion
9x infantry elements

Paratroop Company
14x infantry elements

Paratroop Support Company
2x infantry elements, 4x 81mm Mortar, 8x LMG Team, 6x BAZ Team

Glider Support Company
1x infantry element, 6x 81mm Mortar, 6x 30 cal, 3x 50 cal, 8x BAZ Teams, 3x 57mm ATG

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WW2 BRITISH

Motor Rifle Battalion (H&R - got an Adler Battalion too, but it's not finished yet)
46× infantry element, 6× 3” mortar, 8× SFMG, 12× 6pdr

Motorised Infantry Battalion
52× infantry elements, 6× 3” mortar, 4× 6pdr

Infantry Brigade Support Company
2x infantry elements, 6x 4.2” Mortar, 8x SFMG

Engineer Company
14x infantry elements

Paratroop Company
14x infantry elements

Armoured Car Regiment (3 of 4 squadrons)
12× infantry elements

Carrier Platoons (8 of)
4x infantry element

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WW2 FRENCH

2 Infantry Battalions
63x infantry elements, 6x 60mm Mortar, 2x 25mm A/T Gun, 4x 81mm Mortar, 16x SFMG

Regimental Support Company
3x infantry element, 8x 81mm Mortar

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WW2 GERMAN

Recce Battalion (Panzer Division)
83x infantry elements

Panzer Grenadier Regiment
158× infantry elements, 2× recce infantry elements on/off Kettenkrads, 12× Pak 36(r), Pak 38 or Pak 40, 42× SFMG, 12× 81mm Mortar, 12× 12cm Mortar, OP Team

Plus 1 dug-in Battalion (Infantry squads and SFMGs).
Plus Adler Battalion of Infantry in smocks with Stg44s

Fusilier Battalion
31x infantry elements mounted on/off horses, 13x infantry elements with/without cycles, 6x 81mm Gr34, 9x SFMG carried on pack horses

11x Pzfst Teams
40x Pzshk Teams
1 Dismounted Panzer Crew Company (22 Half Groups)

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WW2 SOVIETS

Infantry SMG Battalion
37x infantry elements, 12x HMG, 15x SFMG, 9x 50mm Mortar, 9x 82mm Mortar, 4x 57mm ATG, 4x HMG on AA Mounts, 9x ATR Teams

2 Motor SMG Battalions (1 H&R, 1 Adler)
33x infantry elements, 4x SFMG, 6x 82mm mortars, 6x ATR Teams, 4x 57mm M43 A/T guns

Motorised Battalion
48x infantry elements, 6x SFMG, 6x 82mm mortars, 18x ATR team, 4x 45mm M42

Engineer Company
10× SMG/ENG FG

Naval Infantry Company (currently being painted)
10× SMG FG, 2× SFMG

redleg
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by redleg »

Great looking infantry Mark! Just curious - what differentiates the infantry for metropolitan France from other infantry?

Very impressive collections both Mark and Gazza! We need more pics of them!
Redleg's Website: micropope.webstarts.com

Gazza
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Re: Infantry squads

Post by Gazza »

redleg wrote:
Fri Oct 01, 2021 6:27 pm
We need more pics of them!
As my WW2 Americans are on hand - They're all old H&R figures. They're at home for sprucing up and are at various stages.
Apologies but I can't zoom in too close with my phone - it doesn't have the macro capabilities of my actual camera.

US Infantry - pre sprucing up
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US Armored Infantry - mid spuce up
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US Engineers - sprucing up complete - maybe need another coat of matt varnish on ground work.
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