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Could anyone tell me how many platoons are in a company and how many companies are in a regiment?

Also, who leads a regiment? Is it a Company commander or what?

Well, if the Codex is anything to go by (its not the whole picture) then 2-5 platoons make a company.

Beyond that, every regiment is different. Some can be as small as 3-5 line companies plus support platoons and companies, while some in the fluff would number in the dozens, if not hundreds of companies.

Realistically, you can't go wrong with 2-10 platoons per company, and 3-10 companies for the regiment, plus whatever support and auxilia you want to add.

The Regimental Commander will be a myriad of ranks or positions. Some might be lead by a Lieutenant-Colonel, or full Colonel, or Commander, or whatever title they so choose.

To put in modern, real world terms, a platoon will by lead by a Lieutenant or Captain, a company lead by a Major, and the Regiment lead by Lieutenant-Colonel or Colonel. Roughly speaking.

Either way, the composition of regiments in the 40k world is hardly nailed down, and varies by world and type of regiment (armoured, arty, foot, so on), so you have a lot of freedom.

To put in modern, real world terms, a platoon will by lead by a Lieutenant or Captain, a company lead by a Major, and the Regiment lead by Lieutenant-Colonel or Colonel. Roughly speaking.

Close but not exactly, at least not in 'merica.

Platoon - 1LT or 2LT
Company - CPT
(Majors are usually on staff)
Battalion - LTC
Brigade - COL

ect (and depnding on what division or corps you fall under it can change)

You would also want to look at the "span of control". A single commander can only really maintain positive control over 3-5 people. that is why there are (in most cases) 3-5 platoons per company, 3-5 companies per BN etc. (and going the other way, 3-5 squads in a platoon, 2-3 teams in a squad, 3-4 guys on a team) Once you are in charge of a huge amount of people without intermediate leaders you lose visability on your guys.

So if they are following a close approximation of modern (western) armies, then in the case of the larger units, there would need to be intermediate commanders.

This is also dependent on what kind of regiment we're talking about.

Broadly speaking, Imperial Guard regiments are designed along providing roughly similar levels of strength, thus a "militia" quality regiment of low-level conscripts or feral world soldiers will be quite large; tens of thousands if not more, whereas an amoured regiment will only have a few thousands members, where a platoon consists of 3 tanks, and a company 10. It really isn't consistent, and very few regiments are specifically laid out in organization. I have the 4th edition Guard codex handy, and it displays a "section" of the Cadian 8th, with 2-6 platoons representing a company, with at least 12 companies in the regiment, with more listed as being elsewhere.

As for titles, while the current codex doesn't really elaborate on it, the "Company Commander," "Platoon Commander" business are just default administrative titles used across all regiments for purposes of book keeping, but are in actual fact Captains, Hetmans, Marshals, Chiefs, and so on, dependent upon the culture and tradition of their home world. Cadians use, for the most part, the British nomenclature for their ranks, whereas the Death Korps use their own set of titles divorced from a historical example with some of their own creation, alongside the usual Captain, Colonel, etc.

taurising wrote:

To put in modern, real world terms, a platoon will by lead by a Lieutenant or Captain, a company lead by a Major, and the Regiment lead by Lieutenant-Colonel or Colonel. Roughly speaking.

Close but not exactly, at least not in 'merica.

Platoon - 1LT or 2LT
Company - CPT
(Majors are usually on staff)
Battalion - LTC
Brigade - COL

Blacksails is right as far as Canada is concerned.

....well I'm not saying our way is better, but......... (they didnt have a winky face, trying to be cheeky)

anyway, I learned something new today. I think the naming conventions used in 40k are more closely related to our friends in the Great White North (or the UK, which makes a lot of sense), so thier model may be a closer representation to what the AM use.

And according to most of the novels and supplements leman russ companies are nade up of 10 russes, 1 command russ and 3 squads of 3. An armored regiment is then made up of 10 of those russ companies so 100 russes. Each regiment usually has support elements like air assets for support, super heavies, hydra anti air units and usually some mechanized infantry. So usually companies will include some support units attached. All the info provided is straight from the novel gun heads...great book if you love leman russes.

taurising wrote:
....well I'm not saying our way is better, but......... (they didnt have a winky face, trying to be cheeky)

anyway, I learned something new today. I think the naming conventions used in 40k are more closely related to our friends in the Great White North (or the UK, which makes a lot of sense), so thier model may be a closer representation to what the AM use.

Truth. The IG war machine *tends* to much more closely mirror WW2 Allied makeup in battle. If you simply replaced the term "Squad" with "Section" in any Cadian depiction, you'd be looking at a more or less befitting British Commonwealth organization system.

However, this only holds true when in pitched battles using Guard regiments from numerous worlds or from worlds that are lucky enough to have the ability to produce well-rounded regiments. For example, Cadians are easy to fit into the system already discussed above. They have the ability to outfit all of their regiments as such, with a "tactical" mixture of tanks, heavy weapons, arty, air support, and (very importantly) officers in most every regiment.

Cut to the runner-up poster boys, the Catachans. If half the stories of their homeworld's hostility were true, they could never afford to shove as many men into generalized platoons and have as many platoons in a regiment as the Cadians would, let alone with the mechanized support each regiment of Cadians *could* field. Instead, their regiments *tend* to be much smaller and filled with Veteran squads as well as lighter support than Cadians.

I guess the moral of the story to my post is, when talking about the IG, the term "Regiment" is similar to the term "dozen" in relation to donuts. You say you want a dozen maple bars? That's going to be vastly different in price, size, sweetness, calories, etc than a dozen chocolate old-fashioned donuts with sprinkles. You really can't compare the two.

Same goes with IG in almost every case. A regiment of Catachans usually ain't gonna equal a regiment of Kriegers or Steel Legion. Stuff gets especially weird when you start thinking about the old regiments mentioned in 2nd and 3rd edition IG codices. Don't get me started on Drookian Fenguard, the Tangars, or the Amerigo Secundus.

What I've been wondering is on what level are the different elements separated. There are armoured regiments composed entirely of tanks, so are other regiments made up entirely of infantry, and they just loan tanks from armoured regiments. How about veterans and cavalry? Are there entire cavalry regiments, or are there just cavalry companies or platoons in infantry regiments (and why there are no cavalry platoon or company command groups)? Where do the veterans fit in the organisation?

Veterans should be an upgrade to regular Platoon squads, really.

 Crimson wrote:
What I've been wondering is on what level are the different elements separated. There are armoured regiments composed entirely of tanks, so are other regiments made up entirely of infantry, and they just loan tanks from armoured regiments. How about veterans and cavalry? Are there entire cavalry regiments, or are there just cavalry companies or platoons in infantry regiments (and why there are no cavalry platoon or company command groups)? Where do the veterans fit in the organisation?

Yes and no to everything. Again, every world is able to give different things, but generally with the vast scale of the IG you'll expect to see whole specialized regiments being smashed together i.e. 3 infantry, 2 armoured, 2 artillery, 1 cavalry, etc to make one huge army. Said regiments will probably become intertwined over time, but they'll technically be *separate* regiments still.

For example, very few regiments from the (whatever the space-Mongolian planet is) can be expected to have any armour whatsoever, but they WILL pump out legitimately complete regiments of cavalry units.

However, on the small scale, there will always be a little mixing and matching. Most every infantry regiment is going to have their own small contingent of tanks and artillery, which ARE their own and will simply be replaced by the departmento munitorum when they're lost, meaning that even when there are no "armoured regiments" on the planet, there will still be many tanks abound. Back to the Space Mongolian example, it doesn't matter what 'type' of regiment they're founding. There's bound to be some cavalry, even in the artillery and armored regiments.

Simply put, the reason you don't see the cavalry companies or platoons in-game is because they're so rare and, frankly, would have such a high mortality rate that they'd be dropped to squad status after just a few charges. The main thing though goes to the fact that EVERY planet without fail should be able to provide an infantry regiment when requested. Many of them are also able to produce tanks, so you see a lot of those as well, even full companies coming from dedicated forge worlds.

Cavalry, on the other hand? For all we know, horses could be an endangered species, and the amount of time it'd take to train a warrior to be a cavalier effective in the 40th millenium means you're pretty much just looking at worlds where it's a societal thing. Like the Mongols, Kriegers, and Praetorians.

Veterans are a complete wildcard. *Usually* they are what is left of an entire platoon after protracted fighting has whittled them down to the hardest of the bunch, and from what I understand a lot of the times the "platoon" is simply left alone even when replacements could be brought in.

The explanation for Veteran "armies" on the tabletop is that this group has been (or had in the past) fighting for so long without reinforcements that their entire COMPANY has been reduced to these 50 or so men, and they actually ARE all that's left. Maybe they're cut off from command, maybe they refused replacements, whatever the reason they are simply the remnants of old platoons.