From: Alan and Carmel Brain <aebrain@w...>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 11:38:24 +1000
Subject: Re: Recon, Scouts and Battle Phases
> Why? If you can't see a good player, you can still probably look at ..but you may be suprised nonetheless. Because he'll see other sites that are almost as good, and use those instead. Reminds me of a particularly good Convention game I had once. One where, for a change, I wasn't refereeing. Some 16 players involved, but instead of 1 on 1, the tables abutted each other, and forces were not confined to "their" table. I was near the left flank (playing US National Guard) vs 1st line USSR. The guy to my left had a Bundeswehr army, and was up against 1st line Indians. He got utterly wiped in the first day, and I was left with my flank hanging in mid-air, and with 1 company from a reinforced batallion facing (effectively) a complete Motorised Rifle Regiment backed up with over 100 tubes of artillery. Fortunately, the enemy artillery had to fire mainly on pre-planned targets. And I'd made sure that none of my forces were in the "best" positions, they were all in alternates nearby. As the Red Horde thundered up, and their pre-planned barrage lifted, my own came down in FPF just as my troops moved up into their fire positions. They ran into the hasty minefield I'd laid and stopped dead, waiting for the engineers. Bad Move. Then I opened up. With some 100 AFVs coming in, the first volley only took out about 10 (I only had 12 Tanks in position). But that included the Regt HQ, all 4 Batallion HQs and half the company HQs. (The vehicles weren't marked in any way, but the behaviour was unmistakable, and both sides were using accurate doctrine). The second volley took out all remaining company commanders and the enemy engineers. It was something of a Turkey-shoot. 1 Company of M60A3s and 2 of Infantry in M113s (with significant extra artillery and TOWs) managed to take out over 70 enemy AFVs with almost no losses. If they moved, their treads got blown. If they didn't, they got hit by flank shots. In the pursuit phase afterwards, I made sure that I had recon units out front, and to both flanks. Embarrasingly, the engineers I'd managed to infiltrate behind the enemy dropped a bridge to stop enemy reinforcements just as they got the orders to keep it intact for the friendlies coming through, but I'd found an alternate crossing point by then, so all was well. The recon units stumbled into two separate ambushes (forces in hidden setup), managing to extract themselves. One ambush was swamped by a hasty attack, the other bypassed. Both ambushes were by heliborne forces, originally tasked to go deep in exploitation after the attack, but now being used as delaying forces to cover the enemy's efforts to regroup. The third recon unit met no resistance, and most of my forces followed up that route, straight into the artillery parks, repair shops, Divisional HQ and airfields. My forte is *not* the pursuit phase, it's set-piece assaults and defences. But as a defender I tend to rely on very active and aggressive recon, infiltration,