Soviet Corps, Army and Front HQs, and Troops
Soviet divisions were grouped into corps of two or more divisions. Corps were grouped into armies or one or more corps, and armies were organised into fronts. At corps, army and front level, progressively heavier levels of equipment were found. Fronts and Armies did not spread their heavy support equipment around, but concentrated it at points of attack.
Heavy and specialised units such as 203mm super heavy artillery battalions, bridging battalions and maskirovka units all appear at army or front level in NQM. Higher HQs rarely come into contact with the enemy, so their combat strength is not really that important. What is important is the amount of space that they occupy, so one can go to town with mini dioramas to give a distinctive feel to the HQ.
A Sample NQM Front HQ should contain models to represent :
Front Commander (C3) – eg West Front Gen Zhukov
“The situation around KHARKOV is most serious Comrade Chestikov.”
Front Command HQ :
Signals Bn (C3), Air Army HQ (C3), Front Artillery HQ (C3), Front Pioneer HQ (C1).
Front Administrative HQ :
Railhead and Front Supply Depot (L3), Repair workshop Bn Truck (L3), Traffic Control Bn 3 bases (@C1), Front Field Hospital (L3), Propaganda Truck/Commisars (C3).
NQM FSO Soviet Front HQ with Artillery and AA
Front Level Troops :
AA, artillery, Spetznatz, engineer, transport, field dressing stations, penal battalions.
Soviet Field Dressing Station by a bridgehead.
NQM FSO Soviet Cavalry Division
Similarly army and corps headquarters should be represented in scaled down form. Even producing fairly minimal markers for these headquarter starts to fill the real estate up in the rear areas in a most satisfactory manner.
Minimally-sized Corps HQ with attached AA
NQM FSO Soviet Army HQ with Artillery AA Armour and Engineers under Command
NQM FSO Soviet Rifle Corps HQ
Where it becomes difficult to try to understand the size of Soviet units, is that for some periods of the war, units were very much under strength, just as the Germans were towards the end of the war. So a unit might be called a Tank Brigade, Division , or Corps, and yet be only as strong as a western Tank Battalion. To gain a deeper understanding of the way that unit strengths fluctuated, it is well worth reading SJ Zaloga.
Here is a whole Rifle Corps laid out at NQM FSO scale:
NQM FSO Soviet Rifle Corps with attached Independent Tank Brigade
NQM FSO Soviet Tank Corps under Front Command
In the NQM Ostfront campaign, we usually assume that an NQM CSO Tank Brigade is 6 tanks strong at full strength, and 3 at half strength. We give a division 2 Tank Brigades, and usually assume that a Tank Corps is about the same strength as a Division. The more units that fight with on the table, the higher the orbat scale used . It is crude, but it seems to work.
A Soviet NQM CSO division comprising four under-strength battalions attacks a well-defended German position
An effective scale reduction at Corps Scale Orbat (CSO) might be a division of three to four battalions, with one or two regimental headquarters and divisional support of at least one mortar or divisional gun unit.
Here is an NQM FSO Front laid out in all its glory:
NQM FSO Soviet Front with supporting Air Army
Not Quite Mechanised 