Leto's View - To assault a Soviet. QB DAR vs Colonel Talvela ***

[Copper]

After a week of Dave retreating to his thinking cave in the himalayas, a turn appears. Whether or not he has solved the problem of defending his flags from my German sturmtroopers or solved the Caramilk secret, I have no idea.

His defenses based completely (from what I have observed thus far) on the SMG/LMG unit has definately allowed for some analysis and introspective on the usage of these troops. For one, I have purposely kept my troopers out of the woods where close combat would be very hazardous to their health. The German sturmtrooper with the very powerful MP44 has shown its superiority over the SMG trooper. At ranges of 50-100m, the German Sturmtrooper definately has the advantage. The reasons for this are due to the powerful fire effects they have at range, and the 36 ammo load over the 20 ammo load (that Soviet SMG's chew through extremely quickly at range fights.

Turn 28 overturns another interesting discovery. For some reason, Dave has moved an artillery spotter into the fire zone, and the Sturmtroopers have keyed in on him with a vengeance. Thankfully, no arty has dropped yet, and as I have said previously, due to my massed advance tactics, arty could be devestating.



As you can see, my Imperial Sturmtroopers are holding their own at range. Why Dave has opted to try and keep them at bay with SMG troops at ranges between 50-90m is beyond me. I would have pulled back into the depth of the woods and made my stand there, safe from ranged attacks of both my riflemen and HE. Now he stands to lose his entire flank as his men run out of ammo and are broken one by one. I only need about 5 turns to make it to the East flag, so 7 turns to deal with SMG troops defending the gap between the woods and my attack position is a good period of time to do it in.

The added bonus of winging his arty spotter before he can drop a can of corn on my Sturmtroopers heads is also a huge sigh of relief.

Things are looking better.

THE BOOK ON DEFENDING WITH SMG TROOPS:
1) Keep them on short LOS attack covered arcs of between 20-30m, depending on your terrain.
2) LOS to your SMG troops by the enemy should be within that covered arc... they work best when they can pop up and fight within that 20-30m range.
3) NEVER, and I repeat NEVER expose yourself on a ridge or woodline and duel with better ranged attack troops, mortar fire or HE!!



Cheers!

Leto