Post by nutty on Feb 24, 2019 5:49:55 GMT -5
Hello Everyone,
For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to think of a way to "organize" my guardsmen. So I figured I would post some of my thoughts and 'research' on the subject on the forum. Putting it in writing might help me make up my mind, but I look forward to finding out all of your thoughts on the matter.
Although I know it's all dependent on personal preference, and completely irrelevant to playing the game. I would like to pick the IGMB's collective brain on the topic of regimental organization.
Now, I've got a sizeable ammount of infantrymen painted to a tabletop standard and a few more squads awaiting paint or assembly. Lately I've been thinking about giving the tabletop ready ones a few finishing touches so I can finally call them 'done'. One of those touches would be some platoon/company markings, as I think it would be a nice way to add a bit of colour to my otherwise fairly drab looking guardsmen. I intend to go with a variation off the 3rd edition(?) system:
Only instead of using a different colour for each company/platoon (depending on how I organize them), I'm going to rotate the orientation of the circle (|), (/), (-), etc. Which will give me plenty of companies to organize my guys in.
However I seem to be getting stuck on how to 'build up' the platoons and companies. Although I normally quite like GW's approach of "there's hundreds of thousands of regiments each with their own [x], so do whatever you want.", I'm completely lost in regards to working this out.
The way this is tackled in the codices changes from edition to edition, and forgeworld also did a variation for a tallarn which is again sligthly different.
In the current (and I think also the 7th edition) codex the example platoon is described as follows:
Although I quite like that there are 6 troops choices (even if I'm not a fan of conscripts) the ammount of HWS and SWS seems really high to me, and the ammount of officers quite low. This is coming from a gameplay as well as a fluff perspective: fluffwise it is often prefered if guardsmen don't do a lot of critical thinking and simply follow orders, so I imagine that a single officer in charge of ~130 men would raise some red flags over at the departmento munitorum. A lot of the IG organization seems to be based on historical sources from WWI and/or WWII, and 1 officer for ever 30-50 men seems to have been common there. This also makes more sense on the tabletop, even if you field a company commander to lead the platoon you are going to have a severe lack of orders.
Then there is the issue where there are 8 SWS/HWS in the platoon. Such a concentration of valuable weaponry seems a bit off to me lorewise, there might be some of such extremely well supplied platoons but I doubt they are the standard.
This older variation from the Imperial Infantryman's uplifting primer seems a bit closer to the lore:
However I think it might predate Special Weapon Squads, since those are not mentioned (not a lot of background on SWSs in any edition it seems) but they could be included as 'attachments' or as seperate platoon similar to the HWS.
This seems to have been expanded upon by the folks over at FW for the Taros campaign:
Still no mention of SWSs but a far more detailed look at the organization. In both cases the standard seems to be 5 infantry squads, which translates poorly to the tabletop in the current edition. As you often need 3 or 6 squads to fill a detachment. So you would field either understrength platoons, or far more troops than the detachment requires (which doesn't have to be a bad thing).
And finally we have this version:
Which seems to be based on the old (2nd/3rd edition?) Platoon structure of 30 men plus a command squad, but leaves very little room for special or heavy weapon squads.
So how do you organize your guardsmen? Or how would you if you could be bothered to apply transfers or paint insignias?
For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to think of a way to "organize" my guardsmen. So I figured I would post some of my thoughts and 'research' on the subject on the forum. Putting it in writing might help me make up my mind, but I look forward to finding out all of your thoughts on the matter.
Although I know it's all dependent on personal preference, and completely irrelevant to playing the game. I would like to pick the IGMB's collective brain on the topic of regimental organization.
Now, I've got a sizeable ammount of infantrymen painted to a tabletop standard and a few more squads awaiting paint or assembly. Lately I've been thinking about giving the tabletop ready ones a few finishing touches so I can finally call them 'done'. One of those touches would be some platoon/company markings, as I think it would be a nice way to add a bit of colour to my otherwise fairly drab looking guardsmen. I intend to go with a variation off the 3rd edition(?) system:
Only instead of using a different colour for each company/platoon (depending on how I organize them), I'm going to rotate the orientation of the circle (|), (/), (-), etc. Which will give me plenty of companies to organize my guys in.
However I seem to be getting stuck on how to 'build up' the platoons and companies. Although I normally quite like GW's approach of "there's hundreds of thousands of regiments each with their own [x], so do whatever you want.", I'm completely lost in regards to working this out.
The way this is tackled in the codices changes from edition to edition, and forgeworld also did a variation for a tallarn which is again sligthly different.
In the current (and I think also the 7th edition) codex the example platoon is described as follows:
Although I quite like that there are 6 troops choices (even if I'm not a fan of conscripts) the ammount of HWS and SWS seems really high to me, and the ammount of officers quite low. This is coming from a gameplay as well as a fluff perspective: fluffwise it is often prefered if guardsmen don't do a lot of critical thinking and simply follow orders, so I imagine that a single officer in charge of ~130 men would raise some red flags over at the departmento munitorum. A lot of the IG organization seems to be based on historical sources from WWI and/or WWII, and 1 officer for ever 30-50 men seems to have been common there. This also makes more sense on the tabletop, even if you field a company commander to lead the platoon you are going to have a severe lack of orders.
Then there is the issue where there are 8 SWS/HWS in the platoon. Such a concentration of valuable weaponry seems a bit off to me lorewise, there might be some of such extremely well supplied platoons but I doubt they are the standard.
This older variation from the Imperial Infantryman's uplifting primer seems a bit closer to the lore:
However I think it might predate Special Weapon Squads, since those are not mentioned (not a lot of background on SWSs in any edition it seems) but they could be included as 'attachments' or as seperate platoon similar to the HWS.
This seems to have been expanded upon by the folks over at FW for the Taros campaign:
Still no mention of SWSs but a far more detailed look at the organization. In both cases the standard seems to be 5 infantry squads, which translates poorly to the tabletop in the current edition. As you often need 3 or 6 squads to fill a detachment. So you would field either understrength platoons, or far more troops than the detachment requires (which doesn't have to be a bad thing).
And finally we have this version:
Which seems to be based on the old (2nd/3rd edition?) Platoon structure of 30 men plus a command squad, but leaves very little room for special or heavy weapon squads.
So how do you organize your guardsmen? Or how would you if you could be bothered to apply transfers or paint insignias?
