Wednesday 28 March 2012

306 Tactical Rifle Platoons Revisited

Hullo All,

This post is about my beloved infantry: how they are organised and how I (endeavour to) use them. Their genesis was in the old 4th Ed codex, where they were organised into two companies - one rifle company and one support company, and the hyperlink there goes into some interesting detail on it too. Now though, (not unlike the British Army!) they've been merged and downsized, and are consequently organised into what I call one 'tactical company' of three 'tactical platoons':
And here's a photo of the company:

The idea is essentially that in isolation each platoon can stand alone, with enough firepower to last til reinforcements arrive, and collectively they complement each other to make up a strong light infantry company (of about 1500pts) of individual units that are all entirely disposable! In fact, of the 24 units which comprise the company strength, only one of them (the lascannon squad) is worth over 100pts.

Here's the breakdown of platoons - in each case, a structure map and photos of each platoon, starting with 1 Platoon:



2 Platoon:



...and 3 Platoon:



And here's the company from the rear:

- Drax.

7 comments:

  1. Wow! Damn good stuff as ever. I like going into all that depth on organisation too, makes your army feel part of something rather than just a disparate bunch of random Guardsmen. Also those officer/commissar conversions look sweet. Great stuff, keep it coming!

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  2. Absolutely beautiful, Drax! Inspiring stuff - In fact I think I need to go see what's left to paint on the 7th. They look great all laid out like that as well - that's a proper guard army right there! Keep up the great work!

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  3. Fantastic work as always :)

    I'm a sucker for army pictures, and these ones have got tons of army written all over them!

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  4. I love seeing posts like this. Thanks! Do you get a lot of tactical use from the double grenade launcher special weapon teams?

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  5. Thanks, all - glad you like it. There's a lot to be said for MS Powerpoint!

    >Ian: yes. people tend to ignore them, so the're 50pts' worth of sneaking up on an objective or 50pts' worth of counterattack guarding an asset. I never 'blob' my squads, so by-and-large opponents will be stranded once they've assaulted through an infantry squad, and the assault wepons make them useful in counter attack.

    The special weapons squad with the 2 meltas and a demo charge is useful in exactly the same ways, with the addition of being tank hunters (who always miss with their meltas!) rather than anti-personnel. Either way, and demo charge is always going to be fun for a guardsman to use!

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  6. ...even more useful are the platoon commanders with 3 grenade launchers and a flamer. Love those guys.

    Love grenade launchers.

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  7. I'm considering a similar reorganization, with 2 HWS and 1 SWS per platoon.
    -AF

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Thanks for taking the time to comment!