evolution of an armoured division

[95th Rifleman]

WW2 started in 1939 and ended in 1945, in that time the various militaries evolved and adapted to changing technology and strategy. The British armoured division alone changes 4 times during the war and the Germans went through numerous changes.

One thing that bugs me, a pet hate of mine, is the wayT2k presents (admittedly very good and rather detailed) TO&Es for combatants but they are rather fixed. he published material presents cold war TO&Es as they where back in the late 80's.

The Twilight war runs from late 1996 to mid 2000, in that time there would be some changes methinks. Does anyone else think on this or am I being too anal about it?

My players are remnants of a 7th armoured brigade battlegroup (we jiggled with canon to allow a British contingent to the clusterfornication that was the last NATO offensive) and we discussed this and came up with a few variations for the British.

One of the main variations was on tank squadrons. Rather than having 4 chally/chieften squadrons we reduced it to 3 squadrons with the fourth either disappearing or being replaced with a scimitar/scorpion squadron. The theory being that with attrition the CVR(t) vehicles would end up being less of a recce vehicle and be employed more and more as a light tank in combat roles.

Another variation was to remove the concept of battalion and regiment entirely towards the end of the twilight war. 7th armoured brigade became two battlegroups, with the situation being what it was the units lost their old regimental identities due to casualties and picking up reinforcements from wherever they could be found.

Each battlegroup roughly consisted of three mixed company commands consisting of a tank troop and two armoured infantry platoons. However two of the resulting six troops ended up being chieftens and one was a mixed force of scimitars/scorpions at the final offensive due to attrition.

Our group had allot of fun discussing a and creating the brigade, before we had the whole thing ripped apart in the final offensive.

Has anyone else thought along these lines?

[Legbreaker]

T2K, as far as I'm aware, doesn't provide much in the way of unit information beyond troop and tank/AFV numbers. How they're organised within the unit is left almost completely alone.
It's very likely that experience and the dictates of a low manpower, limited resource environment will require reorganisation - take the US 8th ID as an example.

None of that really matters that much though, as PCs are unlikely to ever need to know much beyond their immediate surroundings. If a pre-war UK Armoured Division now has no tanks, a quarter of the manpower and is foot and horse mobile, it really doesn't matter that much - all the PCs need to know is they're in the company of UK soldiers who walk or ride horses.

Only in the big picture does any of that really become interesting, let alone required knowledge. Only the Officers above Lt Colonel really need to worry about any of that, a rank most PCs are unlikely to meet, let alone be.

[Targan]

In the vehicle guides it has basic organisational tables for a variety of different types of units. That may be what this discussion is about.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Targan

In the vehicle guides it has basic organisational tables for a variety of different types of units.

Yes, of course. However, it also states those tables are pre-war.

[95th Rifleman]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

T2K, as far as I'm aware, doesn't provide much in the way of unit information beyond troop and tank/AFV numbers. How they're organised within the unit is left almost completely alone.
It's very likely that experience and the dictates of a low manpower, limited resource environment will require reorganisation - take the US 8th ID as an example.

None of that really matters that much though, as PCs are unlikely to ever need to know much beyond their immediate surroundings. If a pre-war UK Armoured Division now has no tanks, a quarter of the manpower and is foot and horse mobile, it really doesn't matter that much - all the PCs need to know is they're in the company of UK soldiers who walk or ride horses.

Only in the big picture does any of that really become interesting, let alone required knowledge. Only the Officers above Lt Colonel really need to worry about any of that, a rank most PCs are unlikely to meet, let alone be.

To a point, true

However it adds to the feel and atmosphere if such things are fleshed out properly.

If you want a cold, sterile game then I suppose such details can be left out. I prefer games that have real depth, real history and by having such detals fleshed out and ready they can be incorporated in many different ways into a game. Finding an overun HQ with such details lying around, it's a brief, perhaps useless detail of information. However it adds to the ambience, to the atmosphere as the PCs look at wat they once had, once where part of and the reality of what they have become becomes more manifest.

As a gm I prefer to have as much detail as possible prepared and ready to incorporate. I feel that I'm doing my group a great diservice if the game isn't as deailed as possible for them.

[Panther Al]

Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman

To a point, true

However it adds to the feel and atmosphere if such things are fleshed out properly.

If you want a cold, sterile game then I suppose such details can be left out. I prefer games that have real depth, real history and by having such detals fleshed out and ready they can be incorporated in many different ways into a game. Finding an overun HQ with such details lying around, it's a brief, perhaps useless detail of information. However it adds to the ambience, to the atmosphere as the PCs look at wat they once had, once where part of and the reality of what they have become becomes more manifest.

As a gm I prefer to have as much detail as possible prepared and ready to incorporate. I feel that I'm doing my group a great diservice if the game isn't as deailed as possible for them.

Agreed: IN all the games I have run, I have always used the rule of thumb that the units consolidated downwards as manpower and equipment was whittled down throughout the way. So while the 1st Cav might still for all intents and purposes be a full up division in 2000, I have the men and vehicles condensed into a few, but strong, units instead of leaving it where you have a single company with 20 guys and a tank: If anything has been learned from all the wars prior, is that when you penny packet troops, they die a lot faster. Taking that brigade, that has only a dozen tanks, and having it operate as a single company makes a lot more sense. And then I present it to the group of players this way - how over the years as the size of the unit has dropped, more and more other MOS's have been pushed into these ad hoc companies to bring them up to strength, and it gives a reason for why you have such a diverse selection of PC's in a single unit.

[Adm.Lee]

My players have never sweated this kind of detail. As a GM, I've usually assumed that each division has concentrated its tanks, artillery, and other AFVs as best it can. Each brigade would have an armored "battalion" of about company strength, a mechanized infantry battalion of about the same size, an oversized maintenance force, some motorized and horse cavalry, and 1-2 battalions of leg infantry.

Getting one's players to work through a brigade like that sounds like a good experience, I'm glad to hear of it.

[Raellus]

Considering what the game designers had to work with back then (no interweb), they didn't do a terrible job. I don't think any of them were military historians or former servicemen either. If they had added a lot of detail to their OOBs and TOEs, we'd probably still be ripping on it big time. You've seen some of the heated debates that have gone on here about fleet/naval TF composition, and others have found fault with where the designers placed some of the ground force units. The more detail the designers provided, the more faults many folks here would find with it. It's probably best that they kept it loose and open to GM interpretation. Set it up how you like and run with it.