Reply To: Hammer of Democracy- Smoke use by infantry squads

[Ivan Sorensen]

Right, so I think “smoke” is something most games do kind of abstractly because it’s not that easy to piece together.
Even reading period infantry manuals, its not that clear.
(pun somewhat intended?)

Infantry smoke is limited in real life by: Range (as far as you can throw the grenade, which on a gaming table isnt far), the fact that it takes a while to build up, limited ammo (1 smoke grenade per soldier seems typical) and the fact they don’t really produce that much smoke per grenade.

I also noticed that soldiers accounts dont talk about smoke all that much, but I don’t know if that’s because they just take its use for granted and dont bother or because it wasn’t as useful as we tend to assume it must have been ?

With those limits in mind, I felt that relying on mortars for smoke for a big advance seemed more realistic, while infantry can use their smoke capacity defensively.
It also goes to emphasize the need for combined arms in the game.

Of course all of this may well be wrong!