Monday, May 19, 2014

Modern Rapid Fire Soviet M-TOE & Conversion

I love the scale represented by Rapid Fire and it appears you can "have your cake and eat it, too" with the game taking the feel of a wargame, but enabling larger battles to be fought. 

The other day I dug out my old copy of FM 100-60 "Armor and Mechanized Based Opposing Force" (a cold war and modern wargamer's MUST HAVE) and started crunching numbers to assemble "proper" Modern Soviet Units for Rapid Fire and World War III Battles. (linked to here)


I started looking at the battalion charts, the building blocks of my Soviet division.  You can easily get your figure strength by taking a look at the squad numbers, multiplying them for platoons and companies and arriving at your estimated figure strength.  (The HQs units are always a little tough to compute - using the numbers of small arms in a Company gets you a 70% solution).

So I start with the squad MTOE (modified table of organization & equipment).  That gives me the basic numbers of personnel per squad.
8 Motor Rifle Troops per squad
Then you do the multiplication for Platoon / Company.
 3 squads per platoon, and 3 platoons for the company, then do a rough approximation for the Company HQs (which also includes a BMP!!  Dont forget!)

Rapid Fire Figures = 15 real troops. 28 troops per Mech Platoon, times 3 platoons is 84 troops per company, plus 6 at each Company HQs rounds up to 90.  90 / 15 is a nice, even 6.  So each Company is going to be 6 figures and 2 BMPs (vehicles = 5 real vehicles, 10 BMPs per Company so each Company will have 2).  If you count the ATGM section, you could get away with rounding up to 7 figures per Company.

There you have it!  The tank units are much easier.  This is a way for me to easily compute ground strength for my Rapid Fire units.  If I had alot of time on my hands, and who does lately, I'd make a handy excel spreadsheet that would do the work for you...  Maybe when I retire.  One day. 

2 comments:

  1. Really like what you've done here. A while since I played Rapid Fire. You making me want to do something in 20mm with my cold war stuff..

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    Replies
    1. Duc,
      That's my next big project - Rapid Fire TOEs for Moderns!

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