Had an excellent game of Chain of Command today where I got to try out my makeshift Chinese KMT platoon. I researched the force predominantly using Kangzhan by Leland Ness and Bin Shin. Cannot recommend the book enough if you want an overview of Chinese forces in WW2.

The platoon consists of the following, with a Force Rating of +1.

2x Senior Leaders with SMG

2x Sections with:

-Junior Leader with SMG

-3 man LMG Team (6 dice LMG)

-11 Man rifle team

1x Section with:

-Junior Leader with SMG

-14 man rifle team

For support I brought and MMG and a T-26b. T-26’s were the most common tank available to the Chinese early to mid war. Late war the British gave them some M4A4’s. I look forward to adding one to my force eventually alongside some Anti-Tank Guns (PAK 36 early war, M3a1 late, nothing mid).

It’s huge, I know. It also features two LMG’s, which may honestly be reaching. One would be more reasonable, but depending on where you are in the conflict, I’d say 1.5 average LMG’s per platoon is “normal.” I leaned two for the sake of gameplay, obviously.

I found having such a large force (especially the 15 man section) encouraged me to move more and try to get into melee. It was somewhat unwieldy.

My opponent played Soviets. This wasn’t an historic conflict. He was playing a mounted platoon, though he chose to dismount at first and his only mounted charge failed disastrously due to crazy luck on my part (sincerely–it was a 1/1000 chance).

Either way, made for a great game. You’ll see from the photos that most of it happened in my South West corner. He got the jump on my lone MMG and I brought more forces in and stupidly charged him. I had expected to lose the melee, but leave him devestated and follow up with my MMG and another section to hold the corner. Instead, I rolled hot and obliterated his section.

He, uh, wasn’t pleased. Fair enough.

Either way, it felt historically accurate: the Chinese did something stupid that would throw away lives and only won due to dumb luck. There’s a reason the KMT currently run Taiwan and not China.

Anyway, here’s the shots. I thought I managed a fairly pretty board with my Iberian houses. If going a-historical, may as well use it as an excuse to use one of my underplayed settings.