Chain of Command Platoon Boards

I often find players new to Chain of Command have a little trouble getting to grips with the force composition of a platoon when first learning the game. To help them I've worked up a set of boards that will allow the figures to be grouped into their various weapons teams and sections in a way that's easy to visualise. If nothing else it helps to speed up a game when everything is neatly arranged like this. I also have a longer and more detailed post on Force Lists and Supports if you are having trouble working out how best to build a force for Chain of Command.

These boards are designed around my basing method. First up, I play in 20mm. Individual soldiers like riflemen are based on 20mm round bases. Weapons teams are generally on 40mmx40mm bases and include two core crew members. Where a third or more crew member are required these are single figures on 20mm round bases. This is a bit of a compromise that allows for some casualty figures to be removed and yet the larger base means the weapons teams are easier to distinguish from individuals like riflemen. Junior Leaders are on 25mm diameter round bases and Senior Leaders on 20mmx40mm rectangles (you can read more about by basing and other markers in the post Getting Started with Chain of Command).

Since first creating these my basing conventions have changed slightly, although this makes no difference to how I'd go about making the boards. I found certain bases too large and taking up too big a footprint on the table and so I went about changing how I base leaders and weapons teams. 

I wrote a longer post about that journey which you can read here.

The platoon boards are made of two A4 pieces of 5mm foam core board. The top piece has holes cut into it to accomodate the various figures on their bases. This is then stuck onto a bottom piece that has a sheet of paper stuck to it with text related to the figures that will be placed there. There is a similar printed sheet for the top piece. I designed these in PowerPoint. The picture below shows the top sheet for the standard German platoon in Chain of Command. I have used spray adhesive to stick the printed paper to the foam core and then cut holes using a sharp blade.

I definitely need a better blade for doing this and/or improve my cutting skills. Nonetheless I'll soldier on to explain how it comes together. So next is the bottom half with the printed sheet attached.

Then, not rocket science to see we stick one on top of the other to get this:

And then populated with the full platoon to look like this:

So my cutting skills aside, I'm pretty happy with the way this has worked out. In preparation for the Kampfgruppe Von Luck pint sized campaign I created a board for the British Airborne Platoon. I was a little more creative here, using a pale cream paper and including the Pegasus emblem of the Paras, which you can see below. 

I've created one of these for all my platoons and they obviously vary in design according to the unit structure but also the way the figures are based. For example the one below needed to accomodate quite a few prone figures on bases larger than the 20mm rounds for the standing figures. 

Generally these work perfectly for a platoon of three squads or sections but it does make it a bit of a squash when you have to fit in a fourth squad, as I had to do with the Russian Guards platoon of 1943.

I have used these when introducing new players and they work very well on two fronts. The most important being players can quickly see their force composition and how it relates to Chain of Command's unit activation and deployment. Secondly it keeps all the figures tidily organised.

You can see more of the various forces I've put together for Chain of Command on this page Second World War in 20mm.