Soviet 1943 Motorized Rifle Battalion TO&E

[hauptgrate]

How much variance from the specified TO&E was allowed? I think it depended upon the battalion and/or regimental commander and how strict they were. In the US army, the vast majority of lower level commanders were not regular army west pointers, and might be more willing to go along with unathorized equipment and organizational changes. My reading about the German army indicated a far highter level of strictness. I'm not saying gamers should be able to simply make up their own organization, but minor variations should not be immediately discounted.
How to deal with the concept that fighting units were rarely at full strength? I have put together notebooks full of task force/kampfgruppe sized formations usually made up to 3 to seven companies. Players purchase these sheets with their points, and only then are the actual strengths of the companies determined. I have weighted the probablility of strength on nationality -- US units have a higher chance of high strength while late-war Germans are rarely full strength for example. Sooo...a player might be really psyched to purchase a kampfgruppe including a Tiger company (and spending premium points) only to find that instead of three he now has only two, or one, or even a small possibility of none! Partial strenght units also has an effect upon the enemy and upon game play. We play a semi-blind system using number counters for unspotted units. Before we had the partial-strength system, when one Tiger was spotted, you knew there were two others close by....but now there is no certainty.
Oh, thanks Tim for moving my earlier post to the right spot!

[jb]

How much variance from the specified TO&E was allowed? I think it depended upon the battalion and/or regimental commander and how strict they were...!

I beleive it really depended more on what was available,not how "strict" a commander might be. Availability should be the determining factor as to what a force composition is. One thing for sure is that from all readings things are more "less" than "more" of...

[Timothy OConnor]

How much variance from the specified TO&E was allowed? I think it depended upon the battalion and/or regimental commander and how strict they were...!

I beleive it really depended more on what was available,not how "strict" a commander might be. Availability should be the determining factor as to what a force composition is. One thing for sure is that from all readings things are more "less" than "more" of...

An extreme example is Hitler "commanding" nonexistent divisions at the end of the war.

Availability is probably the most important factor. Even excluding combat losses merely declaring that a given unit should be equiped in a certain way can't make it so if the hardware doesn't exist due to logistic or manufacturing problems. The German and Russian armies dealt with this problem on a routine basis and often altered TO&Es to reflect larger resource deficiencies at the strategic level (eg Russian altered its TO&Es to reflect lack of MGs early in the war and the Germans changed AFV TO&Es since manufacturing was often a problem). This reminds me of something a family friend once told my dad about living under communist dictatorship in eastern Europe: "They pretended to pay us and we pretended to work."

On the other hand, small unit commanders (especially in the American army) would take every opportunity to acquire extra equipment. I've read that US rifle squads tried to acquire extra BARs when possible (official TO&E was just 1 per squad). I've also read that in Iraq US troops like to replace their M249 SAWs with M240 GPMGs when possible (I have no idea if this rumor is true).

As to organization (as opposed to equipment) I suppose that real-time changes also depended upon availabilty as well as cultural issues. Forces with a high degree of initiative and a sense of cooperation seem more able to improvise effectively while those which lack creativity and encourage stovepiping suffer when there's a need to improvise. In the Yom Kippur War I've read a number of accounts of shattered Israeli small units quickly reorganizing on the fly to help one another and respond to emerging situations while their opponents had great difficulty changing plans on the fly.

The books "Not Mentioned in Dispatches" and "Ambush Alley" both examine this interesting issue of unit initiative and organizational improvisation. "Dispatches" is about the Falklands War and the battle for Darwin in which a British battalion CO was killed. Ambush Alley covers the battle to secure two bridges in Nasiriyah, Iraq during the initial invasion. Both do an amazing job demonstrating how fragile military organizations are, even those of highly trained, full time professional soldiers with access to the latest equipment. How much more difficult it must have been in WWII! (I was amazed at how poorly American communications equipment worked in an urban environment as described in Ambush Alley.)

[Timothy OConnor]

Hauptgrate,

I really like your idea for varying actual unit content! Some games allow for forces to come on the table later, but don't account for variable composition. The very tactical Campaign series of scenario books takes a stab at this too with a die roll.

It would be nice to see something like this in tourney gaming but I'm afraid that most gamers wouldn't like it. It's a bit like using a chart and a die roll to determine the composition of your chess pieces before a match! I think that would be very entertaining (and realistic from a historical perspective) but most would probably see it as unfair and wouldn't like the idea of buying and painting 3 Tigers for their tourney army only to have 1 Tiger actually fight.

[Mk 1]

I really like your idea for varying actual unit content! Some games allow for forces to come on the table later, but don't account for variable composition. The very tactical Campaign series of scenario books takes a stab at this too with a die roll.

It would be nice to see something like this in tourney gaming but I'm afraid that most gamers wouldn't like it. It's a bit like using a chart and a die roll to determine the composition of your chess pieces before a match! I think that would be very entertaining (and realistic from a historical perspective) but most would probably see it as unfair and wouldn't like the idea of buying and painting 3 Tigers for their tourney army only to have 1 Tiger actually fight.

It may well be that gamers would not like painting up 3 Tigers when they only get to use 1, but then again if the game is really fun and challenging, they'll probably get over it.

I've used something like this in the past when I have run games. I like it. But it is a bit time consuming, so it requires some care in implementation. And it needs to be done from a pretty solid grounding in the history of the timeframe, with gamers who care about the historical perspective, if you are going to get a positive response.

My approach has been to gather each player's forces according to proper TOEs, put them into a shoebox (or other container), and issue the boxes to the players along with instructions for force adjustments.

On simple lines, you might have this example for a German player in 1945:

Casualties: Your force has been decimated by continuous combat operations in the prior weeks and months. Throw 1D10 for each unit.
- Rifle units or transport vehicles that score 1 to 4 are removed from your force.
- Support weapons that score 1 or 2 are removed from your force.
- Command units that score 1 are removed from your force.
If you do not have the capacity to carry all your units, you may choose which units to leave behind (to leave out of the game).

This reflects the infantry's resiliance to casualties -- formations retained their firepower, but became more "brittle". As gunners were killed, riflemen would pick up the MGs or AT assets. As commanders were killed, responsible non-coms or soldiers received field promotions. Over time, a short-handed company would have fewer squads with more MGs and AT weapons per squad, eventually consolidating down to fewer platoons with fewer riflemen but still very high firepower due to the high ratio of support weapons per man.

Or for a more complex but also more interesting model, a 1942 Soviet player might get this instruction:

Shortfall of Availability: The full supply of equipment was not available for you when your unit was fitted-out. Throw 1D10 for each tank in your battalion.
- Each tank which throws a 1 is removed.
- Each tank that throws a 2 to 4 is replaced by a tank from the "B" list

If your tank is a T-34 medium, your B list replacement is a BT-7 fast tank. If your tank is a KV breakthrough tank, your B list replacement is a T-60 light tank.

Roadmarch Casualties: Your formation was struck by enemy aircraft on the approach to your jumping-off point. Throw 1D10 for each tank in your battalion.
- Each tank that throws a 1 is removed.
- Each tank that throws a 2 or 3 was delayed due to the need to repair tracks or engine. For each tank, throw 1D10 at the beginning of each turn until you throw 6 or more. It may then enter the board from your own side along the road you used to reach your starting position. Each such tank may move at normal march speed only to the forming-up position. It will be "out of command control" until it comes into contact range with a superior command element.

You can only imagine the chaos that this approach injects into the Soviet plans!

I prefer games where the sides are deliberately not balanced, where neither side knows the other side's forces, and where all units are hidden until spotted. I also like to inject scenario-specific rules that add a touch of complexity to the tasks that the commanders on each side need to deal with. These things add greatly to the tension that the players feel as they struggle with their lack of information about the enemy and issues that limit their own play. It forces them to think and act more like actual military commanders, rather than just having a choice between rules lawyering and minutia of line-of-site and range measurements on one side, versus a dice-rolling contest in the middle of a cloth bowling green on the other.

But some players don't like my approach. Unbalanced games can leave some players feeling singled-out for abuse, particularly when they have a sample of only one game in their experience with me. After 3 or 4 games, most will see that in my games anyone may get their turn to play from the disadvantaged position, and often can play well if they learn how to win the information fight, to feint and bluff, and to concentrate their force at the critical place and time.

When playing with new players (anyone unkown to me), I have found that it works much better if each side is commanded by someone who does know me and my style of game-mastering. Then the new players don't seem to feel their circumstances are quite so unfair, as there is someone on their side who shares their grief.

Anyways, that's how I like to run games. Your mileage may vary.

[Thunder]

I've played a few games with Mark's system and I realllly, liked them.

[Donald M. Scheef]

I would like to suggest using a "Dutch auction" approach to creating scenarios with unbalanced forces without anyone feeling that they were cheated by having an unfairly weak force.

This approach requires significant preliminary setup. Assume an established wargaming club with regular game meetings and relatively stable attendance. Also, assume a rules system that provides point values for various components of military organizations. I'm not sure it would work in a tournament setting because it requires participation of all the players some time before the start of the actual combat.

One individual acts as the Master, organizing the game and refereeing the actual conflict. This individual selects the general scenario (meeting engagement, ambush, set-piece battle, siege, etc.) the time scale and locale (e.g. 1942 North Africa - perhaps a specific map if terrain is significant) and the sides (German, Vichy or Italian on one side, UK, US or Free French on the other). The Master also determines the point value (or even the exact composition of one side).

The auction occurs about a week before the actual battle (this gives enough time to ensure the appropriate TOE, playing pieces, etc. are available). The bidding is based on the point value for the side not determined by the Master. This can be either a one-time sealed-bid process or "Dutch auction" in which the bidding starts high and goes down - the low bidder winning.

The low bidder automatically becomes the commander of the second force. He may build his forces from the available components up to the point value of his bid. He can't complain about being short-changed because he set the limit himself. Various bonuses can be provided for using historical TOE, etc if desired.

The second-low bidder automatically becomes the commander fo the first force. If the exact composition was not pre-determined, he uses the same process to develop the TOE for this force. This individual can't complain about being short-changed because the opposition gets less than what he was willing to take.

If a multi-player scenario, then subsequently higher bidders get first choice of subordinate commands. If they had really wanted to command, they would have bid lower. If they feel short-changed, they can just blame the commander (but not too much because they chose their side knowing what the balance would be.

Don Scheef

[hauptgrate]

Above is a whole variety of ways to alter force composition away from the "cookie cutter" TO&E lists. I have found over the years that methods such as these really add unique elements into game play -- even if some people complain about not getting the full strength Tiger unit! My responses to people who complain are twofold: firstly, I remind them that units were rarely full strength on the actual front lines, and recommend reading if they refuse to believe this, and secondly, I tell them to imagine what it was like for a real-world regimental or divisional commander who can't cry about equipment shortages but says "yessir" and does the best he can (or maybe dies trying). Battlefields are messy places, and not everything works as on the parade ground, and if one of the purposes of wargaming is to capture the "flavor" of a particular military time period, then players should have to confront the same sorts of dilemmas which their historical counterparts had to face. In my group, we also judge people on how well they did with what they had -- so an understrength force that manages to only lose a minor defeat is talked about more than and overwhelming force which delivers a crushing blow. Players should look into ideas such as those above as they can deliver some very challenging situations...