Real World Tactics don't work (in airsoft), and here's why

I'm doing nothing of the sort Dave....

I know exactly what Barrie is saying and you yourslef were part of the authentic ten man section attack at huskey that rolled up the germans rapidly....

I know what hes saying, i'm refuting it by saying, actually if its done well it does work, you've seen this yourself *many* times.

It does however require *practice*.

By the end of the war the US infantry were beginning to operate on what could be termed a 'fireteam' principle quite a bit. Extra BARs meant that each of the two teams contained an equal distribution of firepower and operated as such. Though as I understand this was also a rather organic development and a similar thing occurs in the British and German infantry too, in all cases it isn't official doctrine, taught or named.

The term should be avoided, 'fireteam' urgh, however the 'team' was around at the time and it does make sense to my head that we should use the 'smallest brick to build our forces from'.

You could easily rationalise it that these groups of 3/4 players are teams, elements of a squad who work together making a whole.

To go back to Barrie's original example the roles of supporting fire and manoeuvre were undertaken by teams within a squad as well as by two squads with one supporting the other, so it is no less 'realistic' to have two 4/3 men 'teams' forming part of a squad.

It was quite common for the brits to re-organise the platoon to weight one or more sections as well.

The hallams used to have two sections of eight men with two brens in and then a large 'assault' group of riflemen for the manourve element in Normandy.

One rare account is of a brit platoon where the platoon sgt worked out exactly which of his men actually *wanted* to fight and made an smg and bren heavy assault group out of those guys and got the other 15 to hang around at the back and support with rifle fire as he felt it pointless to make them go forwards when they'd just do nothing

...and you yourslef were part of the authentic ten man section attack at huskey that rolled up the germans rapidly....

LOL, I co-organised Husky and at no point were 'authentic' squads organised - chaps turn up with the weapons they have and on the day people are organised to do a task as best they can with the resources they have. At the end of the day that IS realistic, I suppose, but at no point was anything text book. Group of Brits, problem to resolve, get on with it. Maybe there were ten people and maybe that is 'authentic' but just coincidental and that's as far as it goes!

...and you yourslef were part of the authentic ten man section attack at huskey that rolled up the germans rapidly....

LOL, I co-organised Husky and at no point were 'authentic' squads organised - chaps turn up with the weapons they have and on the day people are organised to do a task as best they can with the resources they have. At the end of the day that IS realistic, I suppose, but at no point was anything text book. Group of Brits, problem to resolve, get on with it. Maybe there were ten people and maybe that is 'authentic' but just coincidental and that's as far as it goes!

No dave, if you recall, i got the lads into a rifle group and bren group...

Then i took them up the hill for you and pushed the germans off it.

They *were* in a ten man section, they put in a text book section attack and it worked.

And again, pretty much historically how assault glider troops worked. They'd land, they'd rarely have full platoons because of landing casualties so the sgts re-orgnased them into cohesive units and off they went.

Really? So it wasn't the Americans arriving in the nick of time and wiping out jerry from their rear from the other side of the hill? Historically accurate of course, where would we be without them.

Hey we fought hard to get on that hill

Really? So it wasn't the Americans arriving in the nick of time and wiping out jerry from their rear from the other side of the hill? Historically accurate of course, where would we be without them.

Dave your memory really is going mate.

No we 'landed' we formed up as a section, we section attacked the hill.

We went to the top, you formed an o group and asked us to advance along this *reallY obvious route and ignored suggestions we coudl use dead ground to get there without telegraphing our intent.

We then patrolled as a section up to the bunkers halfway between the pond and the hill top, contacted and met up with the americans some time after that... i can dig out the pictures for you if you're a bit hazy?

The only time section patrolling and attacks went to ratsht is when we had to wait 15 to 20 minutes for guys to get back to us and they kept turning up in dribs and rabs... fluid and adhoc or perhaps random and chaotic... its all a matter of perspective

We may be talking about different hills here, i seem to recall taffys site has one or two, I'm referring to the big bugger that was heavily ferned and the foot of which lay at the bottom of the camp site.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

^ That is the line being drawn underneath that

So anyway, moving forwards... perhaps over the years we have taylored real world tactics to Airsoft without knowing about it. Perhaps training how to do it properly has given us better understanding of how it should be done, and given us the ability to think on our feet "Oh bugger this, lets try this" approach.

I'm Matty Springer, remember, shoot at the enemy, not eachother

*Cue music

other wise are you not just having a SIHK (skirmish in historical kit).

I'd like to know what Ranj's thoughts are on this.

Well, it nearly says Sikh doesn't it?!

I agree which is why on open days I always end up tabbing miles out of my way to try and flank enemy positions and break the standard two walls of endless Hi cap attrition which is so common lol however such proper squad tactics can work on occasion such as at the St Lo game which I have to say was probably the most realistic and therefore one of the most immersive, enjoyable and realistic games I have ever been too.

On the flip side, I found myself surrounded and outgunned at St. Lo. I think it entirely depends on how you play it, how the battle pans out.

At Dragoon we attempted to use squads both on the German and US side, funnily enough, neither team was able to break into the last 1/3 of the attack, even with co-ordinated squads.

Sorry for being late to the party.
I am going to wade into this and agree and disagree with the intial statement.
Small unit tactics for Section attacks will not work in airsoft but not wholly because of a problem with the short range of weapons. In Barrie's example we see one Section attacking another. With the small numbers of players usually available this is a very likely scenario. In Real World tactics if you are the attacking force you just don't do this unless you are Japanese in WWII and have been told to die for your emperor because that is what will happen. Against a Section in defence for British WWII and later tactics this would be a Platoon objective with mortar or artillery fire support if available.
However in airsoft we have some advantages, we are not going to be machine gunned into small pieces of dog food when we get it wrong. We get to go back and try it again. We can and do make attacks far more easily than in the real world. Ranges are so short for defenders as well that they cannot dominate ground by fire realistically. Just about every site I have played is of a size that it could be defended by one well sited MG in a sustained fire role.
The best real world tactic to adopt and use is the buddy or pair. You work as you own team in defence or attack. You cover each other during moves and are close enough that you are not out of range to put down effective fire. Once you have this working the rest builds up 2 pairs working together are a fire team and 4 a section. If you have support weapons available they same applies they need to work with someone to be effective. If you are to experience immersive games this is the way to go not as some elite lone wolf. We are not at risk in airsoft. If you want to get just a sense of what a generation had to suffer try to keep your buddy alive and unhit for a full game and see how you start to really care about how you take that hill.

Good initial post Barrie! Shame it's wandered off a bit since then .

The only way you can get people into fixed groups and keep them there, is through intense training. The same applies to fire and manouvure, suppressing fire and all of that as well. The reason real soldiers are so good at it is because they're trained to do it and it's their day job. You'll never get that with airsofters or reenactors. The range of our toy guns is a major factor too, the advantages of rifles and support weapons are almost totally negated by the smg's, whereas, in battle, the MG is king of small unit infantry tactics.

I have to agree with Ramsay on this.

But more importantly for me. I don't actually care whether it works or not. The fun for me is getting a realistically sized unit together and using the undoubtedly flawed unit tactics of the time.

We know that things are done better now, or maybe better when you look at it as an airsoft game you can come up with something even more effective. But if I wanted to think that way I'd have stuck with modern open-day airsoft.

What I really want to do is use as close as possible to period tactics and see if I can make them work!

I think Barrie's point, I may be taking liberties here and if so I apologise to Barrie if so, is that in our games a realistic sized 'unit' of the time makes the use of the realistic tactics of the time impossible, or at least incorrect.

I too wish to to have realistic units and tactics, but I also agree (again on the assumption that this was Barrie's point) that these two cannot work together. Given the choice between the two I would rather experience period tactics, than be in a period sized 'unit' that cannot use these tactics.

I don't know that the only way to keep people in fixed groups is through training, but I think part of the difficulty is creating a large unit, and then hoping it will function with elements within it that will adopt these roles, as Heidi mentions we are far from trained soldiers who know what to do when the poo hits the fan, even fake plastic poo.

My opinion, when it comes shortly, does already take Barrie's point regarding the effectiveness of having two 6/8 men 'units' working as he described, as read, and that what is desired from such large 'units' is the implementation of period tactics within themselves.

My opinion on how I see this debate is thus;

Having smaller 'units' enables players to know 'what they are meant to be doing' more - and I think we need that - so that rather than a 'unit' encountering the enemy, and then dividing itself into sub-divisions to take on the roles of these period tactics, this 'group of players' is itself composed of two or three smaller 'units' which know who they are with, are preferably friends and people who know each other, and can be given tasks as this single 'unit'. Thus having 'Abel' fire, while 'baker' moves is a simpler task as people are immediately aware who is doing what. This makes the implementation of period tactics easier given that we are not soldiers who train together to work as a clockwork unit whilst maintaining the feel of being part of an army, with it's roles and command structure.

Does this mean that we are functioning with unrealistic sized 'units'? Well I do not think so, and the reason I do not is the same reason the word unit has been written as 'unit' throughout. What are we considering a unit? It describes any group from a team to a battalion doesn't it? In our case it is a defined group, what the organisers define as a group and what they (or another in command) order's as a group for the purposes of the game we are playing.

So I think the 'unit' is best seen as a 'team', of which 2-3 make a section/squad. In this the section/squad is 8-12 (or even 6-9) men, which is not unrealistic (in fact it is rather accurate). It enables us to experience playing with period tactics on the scale of players we have much more effectively, and therefore enjoyable and accurately

Once again madam speaker, I thank you.

Operation Jedburgh will force players to operate in small groups in a realistic manner. If they don't stick together or, work together, they will be in deep doo-doo(this applies to both sides)! Coordination and planning will be vital, as there will not be any breaks or regen points for the vast majority of it. As far as I'm aware, this is the first WW2 airsoft battle in the UK to do this and I'm looking forward immensely to seeing people gel as a unit and really get into it, looking to complete their missions rather than looking for trigger time.

We saw how the bonds forged at Churchills Revenge helped the German players. Hopefully, Jedburgh will bring more allied players together in the same way and future games will see the benefits for all players and organisers.

I always seem to turn up too late to these arguments, even when I start them.

I think Barrie's point, I may be taking liberties here and if so I apologise to Barrie if so, is that in our games a realistic sized 'unit' of the time makes the use of the realistic tactics of the time impossible...

Yes, I was just trying to demonstrate that it is actually physically impossible for a unit of realistic numbers and frontage to operate the fire and manouevre tactics we all try so hard to emulate.

It's not a problem with people not wanting to work in a squad, we all do.

Gadge's counter-argument is that empirical evidence suggests it does and has worked in previous games. Whilst Gadge already knows I think being in his rifle section has been the best experience of airsoft I've had, I'm afraid I don't remember Huskey being quite so text-book (Anne and I re-spawned about 3 times at the bottom of that first hill). I would suggest looking at my first diagram, swap "Baker" for "Bren team", and then consider how the bren team can possibly suppress the germans on the far left flank, in dense woodland. I don't think they can. That's the sum of the point I'm making.

However, I don't see why what I'm suggesting is mutually exclusive with operating in period units. We just need a tiny bit of tweaking. Taking the british rifle section, we can still have the right number of soldiers and NCOs. We still have a bren team. All we need to do is divide the rifle team up into two "bits" of say 3 or 4 each. Instead of the whole rifle team moving at once, each "bit" moves in bounds, covering the other.

Ramsay's point that we shouldn't be attacking unless we have massive numerical advantage is valid and I agree but it is more relevant on a game organiser level. That is, games should be set up to make sure the attackers have a big advantage. How they press the attack and the tactics employed is what I'm going on about.

Yith is exhibiting classic symptoms of a "scrub" - someone doomed to lose all the time because they play by self-imposed, artificial rules, see here for a laugh - http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing- ... art-1.html - but be aware, they take themselves very seriously. For the record, I'm a scrub too, I will always put the experience above winning. I just don't think my suggested tweak is such a massive departure from the period method that it would be very apparent, especially once the action starts. Also, bear in mind, my proposal is pretty much what happens in-game anyway.

Thanks for all the responses, it was an interesting discussion. I've tried to answer the thrust of the posts disagreeing with me (in error).

i felt the squad tatics (if it was intended) worked well at the borzin loop game

russians were either sent out in 3 to 5 man teams, and fought and died as a group, or were used en masse, as a whole block of troops
it felt very period and atmospheric
the germans seemed to be in small orginizaed sections

however on large sites with long distance regens, its hard to fight and die as a block, 3 or 4 guys get wiped out and 1 or 2 guys go to ground, the sections become fragmented quickly and it all goes to ratcrap

the lack of range and size of area, as in barries post , is a problem

defenders either have to be buched together tightly, which is a grenade target, or accept that only half the squad can engage effectively at any one target.

most games have balanced numbers, usually 20 per side but as pointed out by others attacks usually have a MINIMUM of three to one odds, always more if availible,

using a very close regen, and a large amount of regens per player (say 7 to 10) would allow players to die and attack again quickly, to simulate more troops, the attack could then be over larger frontage say 4 section of 4 men, each with 7 to 10 regens = 120 to 160 "men" and a dedicated support group of 4 with only a medic each .
this would allow 20 defenders with 1 medic each = 40 "men" a good defence battle, and the attackers a good chance of pulling it off

hope my rambleings have made sense

late post sorry