Trench or Foxhole

[Mike Abberton]

I have been finding lately that foxholes are more trouble than they are worth. They seem to provide very little cover from direct HE fire, although they do seem to help quite a bit from rifle/mg fire.

My biggest problem with them is that they increase the visibility of your troops quite a bit. You can spot the foxholes a lot sooner than you can spot the troops in them, particularly after they fire once. Next turn, your opponent can sight some HE fire on the foxhole and move/pin the troops pretty easy. For ambush troops (flamethrowers, panzershreck/bazooka, tank hunters, etc.) I'll often intentionally not place them in a foxhole.

Some times when this doesn't hurt as bad are foxholes deep in the woods where they are not likely to take direct HE fire. Also, if you have a bunch of "fall back" foxholes you can place, you can also sprinkle the area with dummy holes in the front line and only man 1/3 of them. That way it makes area targeting individual foxholes less effective.

Trenches are even easier to spot, obviously, but they provide an excellent amount of cover, even to direct HE fire (especially the small stuff - 75mm and smaller). Repeated direct 105s and 155s will pin and eventually rout the troops in the trench, but doing so sucks up an awful lot of precious heavy caliber ammo. Troops in trenches need to be dug out with lots of HE and/or MG suppression and close infantry assaults.

Not sure how much better trenches behind sandbags/walls would be, but I expect that foxholes would benefit from a stone wall/sandbags in front of them. It should reduce the direct HE fire threat some.


Hope that helps.
Mike