I was looking through my old copy of West End Games ' Star Wars Miniatures Battles Companion which details the composition of units in the Star Wars Universe (pp 49-58). An Alliance Platoon consists of five squads of ten soldiers, including a commander and one or two specialists. The Imperial Platoon, on the other hand, consists of four squads and commanded by an Lieutenant and Sergeant Major. Each Imperial Squad Has eight soldiers including a commander and one or two specialists. Stormtroopers are organised along similar lines to the rest of the Imperial forces, but have their own independent command structures.

With this in mind, I was wondering why FFG had decided to create their own organisations for Legion , with squads being a maximum of 6 figures (four base, one extra card, plus one specialist, I may be incorrect with this?) and no difference between Rebel or Imperial. As I am not a competition player, and when I have enough figures I am going to make my Legion forces along the same lines as the WEG formations as it gives an organisational difference between the opposing sides. Does anyone else do this, or has anyone else even thought about this?

I tend to think of the 'squads' as being more like large fire teams than actual squads, so two 5 man teams make up a rebel squad. The Imperials are more problematic..

From another point of view, the chances of having a full number of troopers in a squad is probably quite low considering injuries, sickness, leave etc.

Both fair points.

If you use two four man fire teams for the imperial, problem solved, you just have to replace one of the normal troopers with a specialist, if you need them.

Do stormtroopers have leave? But that's a fair enough point about injuries and such, things in combat are pretty flexible IRL. I'm really talking about a hypothetical formation size, as not every squad would have exactly the same number of troopers out of action at anyone time.

I think the answer is simple. It's what they thought worked in the game to get balance and model count where they wanted it.

But I think five man squads being a fire team with several being led by a generic leader called a lieutenant works for me.

One big difference in my opinion between the two games is that WEG was making a miniatures game that tied into their RPG (if I recall correctly, they even provided ways to translate characters into their rule system). WEG were also given the freedom to flesh out Star Wars (creating the names for most if not all of the non-humans that were in the OT), thus allowing them to set the "standard squad size" to whatever suited their game design/RPG.

FFG on the other hand is being kept on a tight leash in regards to declaring things "canon." Legion is also completely separate from their RPG, so doesn't NEED to stick to canon in force organization.

It's tricky.

WEG frequently, perhaps always , published army lists for scenarios that were "wrong" according to their own hypothetical command structure. Pretty much everything IRL varies to some degree from how it's supposed to be, so I'd just chalk it up to that in-game, and to game balance out-of-game.

All good points, I'm long enough in the wargaming tooth to understand game balance, but I've never been very keen on it. I prefer lopsided encounters and 'how long can you hold on' kind of encounters than balanced points based competition kind of gaming. I am going to use WEG's lists for my forces, as I like the difference in force composition and unit sizes rather than the FFG style. Each to their own, I just wondered if others were doing the same and what other people's take was on it, and now I have my answer!

1 hour ago, Abwehrschlacht said:

All good points, I'm long enough in the wargaming tooth to understand game balance, but I've never been very keen on it. I prefer lopsided encounters and 'how long can you hold on' kind of encounters than balanced points based competition kind of gaming. I am going to use WEG's lists for my forces, as I like the difference in force composition and unit sizes rather than the FFG style. Each to their own, I just wondered if others were doing the same and what other people's take was on it, and now I have my answer!

Take a look at the gaming table in my Hoth Rebel painting thread if you like WEG that much!

One thing that always bugged me about WEG was, I have (still) no idea what was and wasn't legal according to the army lists. There was some very vague and contradictory stuff in those pages. Such was the 90's and gaming, hardly limited to them. The rules were very much a DIY part of the hobby like painting minis.

21 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Take a look at the gaming table in my Hoth Rebel painting thread if you like WEG that much!

One thing that always bugged me about WEG was, I have (still) no idea what was and wasn't legal according to the army lists. There was some very vague and contradictory stuff in those pages. Such was the 90's and gaming, hardly limited to them. The rules were very much a DIY part of the hobby like painting minis.

I just checked it out, I love the alien 'plants', great work!

I hear that about the legality of WEG, but I will just be using the SWMB as my source for the army orgs as I detailed above.

I did enjoy playing SWMB and we (relativity) recently replayed it with my 15mm Star Wars stuff ( http://stormofsteelwargaming.blogspot.com/2016/03/episode-iv-and-three-quarters.html)

It was still a good game, if a little bogged down with book keeping, something that Legion happily does away with. But that was the 90s gaming anyway, all pencils and charts!

You could just keep adding squads of stormtroopers until the proportions came out to six normal troops per two specialists. X squads with heavy weapon to Y squads without. It just won't be as straightforward as two squads of five rebels.