Newby Questions

[Captain Kremmen]

Greetings game buddies,

I have my copy of WAW, read through it twice, checked the FAQ and have a few small queries that perhaps the exalted members of this forum could easily answer for me :lol:

Each SECTION has a leader, the only purpose of this gentleman is that all other figures in the unit have to remain within 6 inches of him. If your section has a team of 7 and a team of 3 I presume all 9 other men have to remain within 6 inches of the one leader?

Each PLATOON may have a command team, as far as I can see the only purpose of these gentlemen is to bring in artillery support. They do not appear to do anything else??

Artillery, whether on board mortars or off board heavy/light artillery. As far as I can tell no line of sight or spotter is required at all??

Artillery with lethal zones. See if I got this right. You aim at a specific individual target soldier. Your opponent then rolls a D10 for deviation and you move the target point accordingly. Then you roll a D10 and move it back again. The aim point is probably not over a specific soldier now (doesn't matter) Light artillery has a 4" (radius i think, not diameter) lethal zone, each and every infantry figure and vehicle partly within this has a roll against it (1D6 for light artillery)

Did I get that right? Do we assume artillery hits on vehicles always hit the rear aspect?

Advanced rules - I like my rules simple if possible and believe I will do without any of the advanced rules, except the supression one as this seems a great aid towards realism without much effort.

Reaction - It looks as though most infantry can fire in the reaction sub phase, as all the ATG's and tank guns I could find were slow, presumably tanks can't fire in the reaction sub phase. Presumably then an attacking tank could take a move action followed by a shoot action with no real risk to itself until the opponents turn. Is that correct?

Suppression - "may only move as a reaction". This can be read in two ways.
1) in the reaction sub phase you can only move you can not shoot
2) in your ordinary turn you can not move. Movement may ONLY be carried out as a reaction.
Any one know which it is?

Sure I will find a few more minor issues I can't figure out on my own! :?

 

[JayRaider]

Each SECTION has a leader, the only purpose of this gentleman is that all other figures in the unit have to remain within 6 inches of him. If your section has a team of 7 and a team of 3 I presume all 9 other men have to remain within 6 inches of the one leader?

No, team 2 would have a proxy leader nominated.

Each PLATOON may have a command team, as far as I can see the only purpose of these gentlemen is to bring in artillery support. They do not appear to do anything else??

Not exactly.
Checkout the ability of the Russian NKVD leader "Human Wave"

Artillery, whether on board mortars or off board heavy/light artillery. As far as I can tell no line of sight or spotter is required at all??

I think so Yes.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Have not got to the Russian lilsts yet

Don't understand the proxy leader?
Assuming start of game and no casualties the 7 man team has one leader and 6 men. The 3 man team has 1 sub leader and 2 men.

Are you saying that each TEAM only has to stay within 6 inches of their own TEAM leader. As such I guess there is in fact no such thing as a Section leader? (just 2 or more team leaders).

I will read the Russian list for Human Wave, do they do anything in a british or german army other than call in artillery?? If not do you have to waste points on them can you just skip them altogether??

Ta

Andy

 

[JayRaider]

Are you saying that each TEAM only has to stay within 6 inches of their own TEAM leader. As such I guess there is in fact no such thing as a Section leader? (just 2 or more team leaders).

Yes.

I will read the Russian list for Human Wave, do they do anything in a british or german army other than call in artillery?? If not do you have to waste points on them can you just skip them altogether??

I'm not sure about the British/German, i've been concentrating on the Russians which i'm gonna play
Yes, you don't have to pick a command squad.

Did I get that right? Do we assume artillery hits on vehicles always hit the rear aspect
I'm not sure about this one.

 

[JayRaider]

Reaction - It looks as though most infantry can fire in the reaction sub phase, as all the ATG's and tank guns I could find were slow, presumably tanks can't fire in the reaction sub phase. Presumably then an attacking tank could take a move action followed by a shoot action with no real risk to itself until the opponents turn. Is that correct?

Yes.

 

[JayRaider]

Suppression - "may only move as a reaction". This can be read in two ways.
1) in the reaction sub phase you can only move you can not shoot
2) in your ordinary turn you can not move. Movement may ONLY be carried out as a reaction.
Any one know which it is?

Its both.

 

[Laffe]

Assuming start of game and no casualties the 7 man team has one leader and 6 men. The 3 man team has 1 sub leader and 2 men.

Are you saying that each TEAM only has to stay within 6 inches of their own TEAM leader. As such I guess there is in fact no such thing as a Section leader? (just 2 or more team leaders).

Historically, each section has a leader, say a corporal. Historically, each section would have a second in command, call it a back-up, probably an experienced private. IF the section splits up, the second acts as a leader to the split-off team. Ruleswise, if you split the sections each team gets a leader of their own. (Otherwise there's no point in splitting the sections.)

I will read the Russian list for Human Wave, do they do anything in a british or german army other than call in artillery?? If not do you have to waste points on them can you just skip them altogether??

Well, they are there because they did exist IRL. The lists reflects real life organizations (well, sort of). Historically a platoon commander would determine where each section went, where to place the PIAT/Panzerschreck/heavy machine guns etc. IN THE LISTS, there is an advantage of buying the command sections because they usually comes with a support choice built in (a PIAT team for the brits for example) which does not count towards the limit for the number of support assets you may have. Using the brits as a further example, the command section comes with a PIAT team, and has the option of taking a second PIAT team if you want to. This leaves the three support assets free for you to take other stuff such as Vickers heavy machine guns.

 

[DM]

IF the section splits up, the second acts as a leader to the split-off team.

Not sure about other countries but this was fairly standard practice in the British Army, where the section would often split into a rifle group (led by the ssection leader - corporal) and a "gun group" (led by the section 2i/c - lance corporal), which is where the Bren gunner and his #2 would be. They would typically (in a section attack) find asuitable location from which to lay down covering fire whilst the riflemen made their attack, and would join up on completion.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Suppression - "may only move as a reaction". This can be read in two ways.
1) in the reaction sub phase you can only move you can not shoot
2) in your ordinary turn you can not move. Movement may ONLY be carried out as a reaction.
Any one know which it is?

Its both.

Well that is the one answer I did not expect!!

Thanks everyone for the replies.

Anyone know about which aspect of a vehicle counts as hit?

I am just double double checking about the team leaders. I don't split off the 2nd team as a seperate unit or anything I keep them together as one unit. Do I then have to keep all members of both teams within 6inches of the 1st team leader? I guess the advantage of this is the unit is larger so can take more casualties??

 

[weasel_fierce]

Im not sure why nobody thought a platoon commander should be important but here;s a simpe fix from the holy grail of miniatures (Stargrunt)

Permit a platoon commander to transfer one of his actions to a subordinate squad/section. Limit it to yelling distance (say 12 inches or so)


This neatly gives the lieutenant smething to do, letting him coordinate the men under his command

 

[hithero]

The Command group does not have much in the way of commanding under the rules and are basically just a smaller infantry group. We allow them to take command of a unit that is out of command. In BFe they used to be able to allocate a free action to any unit on the table, of course we don't really have the comms in WAW to do that.

 

[Laffe]

Not sure about other countries but this was fairly standard practice in the British Army, where the section would often split into a rifle group (led by the ssection leader - corporal) and a "gun group" (led by the section 2i/c - lance corporal), which is where the Bren gunner and his #2 would be.

Infantry tactics wasn't identical between the various countries. Everything in the German army tactics centered around the MG, it was even used to lead in assault (that's why you have so many models of german MG teams where the loader is being used as support). So it wasn't that common for germans to split squads into fire teams until they started kitting out squads with two MG's.

I am just double double checking about the team leaders. I don't split off the 2nd team as a seperate unit or anything I keep them together as one unit. Do I then have to keep all members of both teams within 6inches of the 1st team leader?

yes, everyone has to be within 6 inches of the section leader

I guess the advantage of this is the unit is larger so can take more casualties??

yes

 

[weasel_fierce]

On the topic of splitting up infantry squads, US tactics included this (unfortunately often causing the squad leader and the scouts to get pinned down somewhere ahead of their squads), British did, Soviets as far as I can tell did not, Germans had the idea, but late war, most troops arent operating in that fashion (Volksgrenadier tactics tended to view the 3 Gruppen as complete units, rather than splitting them up),
No idea on Japanese tactics, but they dont seem to have encouraged individual initiative very strongly.

How much these tactics were carried out in practice is of course questionable.
Also, after the first 2 days at the barracks, no squad is at full strength. British section and platoon leaders often reported combat strengths of 5-7 men, in which case splitting up doesn't seem very viable anymore