The Commander Series Forum

Hi,

After reading a lot of your great AAR's and posts I kinda like the idea of mounting vehicle platoons as 1:1. I'm lucky that I havn't based anything yet but I need some more metal then...

My first plan was three vehicles to a platoon, but it seems that W. Germany used four as the magic number.

I have the pc game WinSPMBT with a lot of newly updated OOB's and have used that for inspiration. Its this too crazy, I mean I could go with 3 models per base?

As of 1981:
- JPz ATGM Pl is 5 x (Jaguar or RakJagdPz)
- Panzer Pl is 4 main battle tanks
- PzGr Platoon is 3xinf and 3xAPC
- Brig Recon Pl is 8 x (Luchs)
- Recon Troop is 2 x (Luchs)
- SPA Battery is 6 x (M109 or M110)
- SPA Section is 3 x (M109 or M110)
- SPAA Platoon is 4 x (Gepard)

I'd do the Gepard in 2's as a section.

IanS

I agree with ian about the Gepards and I'd base the Brigade recon platoon as 2x 4 vehicle bases that way you can still tell the 'fighting' Luchs's from the Recon ones!

Remember that 4 vehicles is a full-strength platoon. You could easily justify basing 3 due to battle-losses and breakdowns.

Also - speaking from long experience with 3mm scale, here - you can go overboard basing too many models in too small a space.

In RL, tanks operate at a routine separation distance of 100 meters. Even when closed up on the parade field, they typically do not move out neck-and-neck (bumper-to-bumper?) as there's just too much of a chance of a disaster occurring if someone turns at the wrong time.

I'd say that, at a minimum, you want to base each tank in a lateral space that's equal to its length. For me, this means each 3mm scale tank gets about 12mm width on the base. I find this looks acceptable with two tanks, but with three, it looks far too crowded. With 3 tanks, I'd probably go with 15mm per tank.

So let's say you do 4 tanks per base in 6mm. I'd say that you're looking at 25mm frontage per tank, or 10mm-wide bases! Now maybe you can drop that down a bit by using two rows of tanks - you're still going to need something on the order of a 7.5cm wide and deep base.

Seriously, my advice is to take a look at basing two models per base. It gives an effective feeling of mass without breaking the pocketbook or looking too crowded.

The Battalion level recce is Ilitis/Wolf based IIRC (for both Pz and Pz Gr)

The Recce platoons from the Aufklarer Bn combine into 3 veh Patrols including Luchs, Fuch and Leopard (outside of the heavy companies). The RASIT variant can be spread across the area but I don't think you would need to model them though.