Core concepts: Infantry

+Erik McGrath

This time the focus is on the core unit of play: the infantryman. With his helmet and rifle the regular infantryman is the standard for all other effects in Boots on the Ground.

Stats

BotG uses d12s and when a test is called for you need to roll equal to or under the relevant stat. A soldier is currently composed of 4 stats: Combat, Discipline, Physical & Morale. The regular troops of most nationalities have a rating of 4 in all of these categories. This gives an unmodified base success chance of 1 in 3 whenever a roll is called for. 

Higher quality troops have higher statistics and lower quality ones are lower. Elites haves 5s while many leaders increase their Discipline ratings as well. The most common leader is the Corporal though and they have identical stats to the common trooper of their quality level with the leader trait. its a pretty major addition since it allows them to use the leadership rules without penalty. Most important of these is that they can automatically change the footing and maneuver options of soldiers within their command radius. Without a leader this would require a dice roll and as noted above that means only a 1 in 3 chance of them succeeding. 

Gear

The basic measure of firepower is the bolt-action rifle. For our purposes the Lee-Enfield No. 4, Karabiner 98k, Arisaka Type 99 and Mosin-Nagant M91/30 are equivalent. The M1 Garand with its greater rate of fire and semi-automatic action mainly negates several negative modifiers that bolt-action rifles suffer and creates larger areas of suppressive fire per rifleman. Other semi-auto rifles use the same rules. This simplification is maintained for all similar weapons throughout the rules.

Burst fire capable small arms share the modifier advantages of semi-auto rifles and create much more effective areas of suppression on their own. SMGs have much less range however. A rifle can reach out across the entire table but an SMG is only fully effective within 18" and has a maximum range of 36". The StG44 uses the rules for SMGs but has the range and penetration of a rifle. Due to the relatively low rates of fire of period fully automatic small arms and the training of their operators a regular soldier armed with one can also use them to make direct fire attacks as if they were semi-automatic. Untrained users such as partisans or conscripts may only use them for suppressive fire. 

Another important thing every soldier has is a helmet. While it is not going to stop a bullet and its not likely to actually negate a wound it contributes significantly to the survival chance of an incapacitated soldier. When a battle is decided by victory points it makes a difference what severity a wound was. After the battle every wounded man makes a Physical test. Success on the roll upgrades their wound by one level. Anyone without a helmet makes the roll using the Unlikely rule: they need to re-roll a successful test and the second roll stands. 

Support Weapons

The most common infantry support weapon by far in BotG is the machine gun. German units tend to have at least as many MGs as they have squads and the American Browning Automatic Rifle, while not a true LMG, shares many characteristics with one and thus uses several of the MG rules. Other nationalities have fewer MGs but they remain the most likely support weapon even then.

The main mechanic of any MG is its ability to create large, persistent zones of suppressive fire. A true MG can choose whether to create a long, rectangular zone or a square zone. BotG uses rectangular templates for most area effects due to the ease of making them at home and they are close enough to the correct shapes that their advantage in simplicity more than makes up for not being precisely correct. 

The type of MG (light, medium or heavy) determines the size of the zone it creates. Penetration is typically the same since most MGs use similar ammunition and their classification is mainly due to their rate of fire and the stability of their mounts. A notable exception is the Browning M2 due to its .50cal ammo having superior penetration versus other HMGs.