Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I'm looking for someone to help me with a fluff explanation of where veterans fit in the command structure. Are they still technically part of an infantry platoon? Are they under direct command of the man in charge on the scene? Are they special forces soldiers under command of a special branch?

I would say it depends on your regiment really.

Your whole regiment could be comprised of all veterans as they are all survivors of now smaller, withered down regiments.

They could be their own platoon given to each company commander to use to his own will, or they could be given their own company so that the regimental commander has direct control of the veterans.

it really depends on what you want to do.


My System defense force is comprised of only volunteer veterans from returning imperial guard regiments, or skilled individuals from the home planet's defense force. These men volunteer to join the 1st AVG (Arkan Volunteer Group) and are accepted or denied by the senior officers.

Veterans dont make sense as a separate unit. Veteran or not they would be mixed together to share the experience and so on.

I pretend that Veterans are light or assault infantry depending their gear.

But as said above it depends on the regiment. Nothing in the guard is absolute and its always regiment dependent no matter the question.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Veterans dont make sense as a separate unit. Veteran or not they would be mixed together to share the experience and so on.

I pretend that Veterans are light or assault infantry depending their gear.

But as said above it depends on the regiment. Nothing in the guard is absolute and its always regiment dependent no matter the question.

Thats why my regiment exists as a System Defense force.

You can pretty much get around most of the restrictions of command and the sort by making a pdf or sdf that does not have to adhere to munitorum and adminstratum orginization.

Yea true, but im the kind of guard player that says there is nothing about the guard that you cant change and still be fluffy. If cave men with clubs can be used as a guard regiment im fairly sure whatever you have in your guard can be fluffy.

I think one way to consider it is that Company Command has a platoon to directly oversee as well as supervising the other platoons. Veteran Squads serve in the first platoon directly under the Company Commander.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Veterans dont make sense as a separate unit. Veteran or not they would be mixed together to share the experience and so on.

I pretend that Veterans are light or assault infantry depending their gear.

But as said above it depends on the regiment. Nothing in the guard is absolute and its always regiment dependent no matter the question.

It makes sense to keep them separate. You wouldn't want to waste an experienced squad by having them do jobs your regular troopers can do. Also, by concentrating your vets into a single unit or platoon, you have an elite unit that can be used for more serious missions that regular troopers couldn't handle.

Also, if there's one thing history has shown, is that trying to just mix veterans in with rookies usually doesn't work. The veterans usually just view the new recruits as a "waste of time" and leave them to their fate. Just read up on some combat stories from US GI's in Vietnam and WWII sometime, its rough stuff. On the other hand, placing a veteran NCO or officer can make a difference, its just that you can't just chuck some vets into a new infantry platoon and expect everything to work out.

As for how the IG probably handle it, I'd imagine each regiment does it their own way. Some may keep veterans near commanders as a personal guard, others might keep them as a 'spec ops' lite unit. Some may just leave them in whatever units they were in and just assign replacements to fill in gaps. Others may not be treated any different than the new recruits, being viewed as more meat for the grinder. Really you could go any way for it.

Normally unit casualties are replaced by fresh recruits. Veterans are always mixed in with the recruits. Shares experience and keeps ranks full. When 2 vets die, they dont magically grow new vets to replace them. The next group of reinforcements fill the gaps. Find me a nation or armed group that does it differently.

Agreed on second part each regiment is different as I said before.

"Veteran" isn't a rank. It's just a veteran Guardsmen. In fluff, veteran squads/platoons/companies/entire regiments can exist in any setting. There's no formalized structure.

Veterans may be grouped up for higher risk jobs though, or placed where the fight is most dangerous, they are the more experienced and reliable troops.
But yes a veteran NCO makes sense, a hardened and experienced leader to make best use of the fresher troops and lead them with more skill than a lesser NCO.

I'm under the impression that veterans are ad hoc formations made out of people who've seen some gak and are all the better at making war for it. They're then concentrated into individual squads as needed by the commander to do jobs you can't trust regular troopers to do and the grenediers/Stormicus Trooperus are too busy.

Swastakowey wrote: Find me a nation or armed group that does it differently.

Right, but they way they do that mixing is different, army to army. George Marshal was a genius, but his one serious failing was the way he arranged for recruits to be introduced to veteran units.

Anyways, the old 4th ed unit talked about this, back in the day when you could also take remnant squads. Vets and remnants were basically the same except for slot occupied, BS, and some wargear. My 4th ed codex is packed at the moment, but the gist in the fluff was that the imperium doesn't really care all that much. All it demands is that that huge mass of troops goes over there right now and captures that objective. Given that they expect six million casualties in the operation, it would be too much to constantly be reorganizing things.

The imperium raises regiments, but it's sort of up to the people on the ground to maintain them. Hence things like mixed regiments and veteran squads.

Right. In the older fluff, Veterans squad were the remains of entire platoons or even regiments that had been grounded down to a few. They were then just slapped into a new army.

 Red_Starrise wrote:
So I'm looking for someone to help me with a fluff explanation of where veterans fit in the command structure. Are they still technically part of an infantry platoon? Are they under direct command of the man in charge on the scene? Are they special forces soldiers under command of a special branch?

Depends on how you run them. When I ran all-vet armies I basically just envisioned them as a platoon, with the individual vet squads being squad elements and the CCS being the platoon command, just with better equipped and experienced troops. For a more mix-n-match army, there's a number of ways you could do it, you could look at them as a specialist split platoon or auxiliary attachments or any number of things.

Vaktathi wrote:When I ran all-vet armies I basically just envisioned them as a platoon, with the individual vet squads being squad elements and the CCS being the platoon command

Yeah, or this. Usually you're not going to be running more than 3 vet squads anyways.

Also, if you're going to be running an "elite" army, then there's no reason that they're necessarily going to use the same force organization system as regular ground-pounders. America's Delta Force, for example, has different rules that apply to it.

And, of course, this is the imperium. Nothing is standardized. Your particular home world may have a very long tradition of blah, blah, blah that makes it so this is how a typical sub-section of it would look.

And also there is plenty of talk of mix n' matching in the fluff. Perhaps the fight you're playing is at the join between two parts of the line, one of veterans and another of platoons. Or perhaps the chaos of fighting brought the two together, or perhaps they were stationed to defend the same place at the same time. There's no reason that a particular army has to be made of elements from only one unit. In fact, guard fluff has long discouraged this.

Depends on how many stripes that Vet wears on his/her shoulder. If they're a Sergeant? They lead other platoons of troops, regardless of whether they're vets or FNGs.

Corporals? They lead squads... regardless of whether they're vets or FNGs.

Lieutenants? They outrank the Sergeants... and lead platoons.

Captain? They lead companies.

First Sergeants? They also lead companies, and are the right-hand-men/women of the Company Commander.

And so on up the line. The IG itself doesn't care whether you are a vet or a fresh recruit... once you've been assigned to your Regiment, it's up to the CO where he/she places you.

Depends on the regiment . Some have the whole regiment of veterans some are just all recruits

I'm under the impression that the imperial guard makes zero distinction between a "veteran" squad and a guardsmen squad. Veteran squads as found in the codex would certainly be a part of a platoon, company, battalion and so forth. I doubt they would be simply free flowing units outside the command structure. The codex already has a platoon formation for a troops choice, and so they made the veteran squad option to satisfy the actuality that not only do platoons go out on patrolling missions, but squads are also given mission to fulfill in a combat zone.

That or veteran squads are seconded to platoons and company's for a mission specific role much like today's US Army Rangers or Marine Force Recon. Though I'd like to note that these units have their own command structure and are parts of platoons and company's at least themselves with their own PLs PSGs and COs.

I always imagined it as being purely based on rank in terms of command structure, and individual squads are just told by anyone of higher rank 'go do this', they don't necessarily have to have a strict structure.

 Ignatius wrote:
I'm under the impression that the imperial guard makes zero distinction between a "veteran" squad and a guardsmen squad. Veteran squads as found in the codex would certainly be a part of a platoon, company, battalion and so forth. I doubt they would be simply free flowing units outside the command structure. The codex already has a platoon formation for a troops choice, and so they made the veteran squad option to satisfy the actuality that not only do platoons go out on patrolling missions, but squads are also given mission to fulfill in a combat zone.

That or veteran squads are seconded to platoons and company's for a mission specific role much like today's US Army Rangers or Marine Force Recon. Though I'd like to note that these units have their own command structure and are parts of platoons and company's at least themselves with their own PLs PSGs and COs.

I always saw the Tempestus Scions/stormtroopers as filling the role of the Rangers/Recon Marines/SEALs etc. that got seconded, as they can be fielded in their own platoons but generally get assigned where needed.

If I may offer my opinion. For this post i will refer to US military units, i apologize to 40k players who are outside of the US, but I would love to learn more about your country's military units, so please share.

I think that regular AM infantry platoons are troops that are just trained through a basic military training, and a type of tech school/ A School to learn thier specific trade (Infantry, Crew weapon, driver, tanker, etc..).

MT or Storm Troopers, are more like your high-speed spec-op jobs, due to the fact that even the enlisted stormtroopers have to attend the Schola Progenium, similar as to how TACP, PJ, Rangers, or Sappers have thier own unique school house you must earn to attend, and graduate from to be a part of the unit. Specialized training for a specialized job, by few numbered specialists.

Vets can be two things, either a full infantry platoon that was green but survived a rough mission and took 75-80 percent losses, and are tough forged-by-war veterans and are not reinforced with new "green" guardsmen, or they used to be part of a regular infantry platoon but after a few missions their skills were delevoped and recognized by the regiment commander and they are given a specialized role, not to be confused with going to a special school house, these guys learn from conflict, aka school of hard knocks, an example would be DM (dedicated marksmen), scouts, or minor demolition/breaching operation (not to be confused with full trained Sappers).

Either way all AM units (execpt maybe the Jungle Fighters, Chem Dogs, Last Chancers, etc..) due follow a strict Chain of Command, a vet squad isn't immune or outside of the company chain of command, they have just earned the trust of thier company commander and do not need to be mico managed by a junior grade officer like a "green" platoon of infantry straight from basic training.

Sorry if it was too lengthy, hope this helps.

-Austin

For my regiment's fluff, I do First platoon(and the first Platoon Command squad is my second CCS) per Company as a Veterans Platoon.

So in larger Games(2 Primaries in 6th, or now with 2 CADs) I could Have 1 CCS with 4 Platoons of regular Infantry(with maybe a Squad or 2 of Grenadier veterans with Plasma guns), then 1 CCS with 5 Veterans squads.

In the fluff the remnants or particularly skilled guardsmen from the Standard Platoon squads that are not Sgt or Corporal material get moved to the veterans platoon to replace losses there.

The Plasma Grenadiers are something like Kasrkin, Schola trainees that have not yet become full Stormtroopers; they are usually transported in Valkyries

They're normal infantry squads but due to their superior experience/training/whatever, they can operate more independently and thus don't get lumped into a platoon like regulars do. Fluffwise they're still part of a platoon, just like how tanks or stormtroopers are still part of a platoon. It's just not a tabletop unit.

Unless you want them to be something else. Your army, your fluff, go hog wild.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Veterans dont make sense as a separate unit. Veteran or not they would be mixed together to share the experience and so on.

I pretend that Veterans are light or assault infantry depending their gear.

But as said above it depends on the regiment. Nothing in the guard is absolute and its always regiment dependent no matter the question.

Not necessarily. Different armies have used different doctrines on reinforcement. For example the Wehrmacht preferred to form recruits into new units and keep veteran units together, or amalgate them with other veterans, only sporadically reinforcing en masse. Napoléon siphoned off veterans from other units into his guards in order to maintain them as the best of the best.