SCOUTING

[Mike Abberton]

One thing to keep in mind about spotting and recon, particularly when you are the attacker, is that it is not always (or even often) necessary to recon 4-5 km (16-20 hexes) behind the lines to satisfy the objectives of your advance.

In fact, in the capacity of most small to medium sized scenarios it is counter-productive. If you race your recon vehicles way behind the lines, you sacrifice all benefit of the recon units, because when they die, all you really know is that there is/was enemy units with LOS to the hex they died in, and maybe who did the killing.

So, if you have no forces to bring to bear on the units that killed your recon, you can't maintain LOS, you're still going to take the first shot when you move into that area for real, and you give your opponent one or more turns to rearrange units at his will. As seductive as the possibility of stumbling on an artillery HQ park and wreaking havoc is, it is not that effective a use of your recon. It took me a long time to realize this.

Now, most of the time I keep my recon relatively close, typically within range of fire from the follow-on forces, and that goes for dedicated recon elements or other units (infantry or armored) pressed into recon duty. The combat units hopefully advance from cover to cover, while the recon units peak over hills, and find good LOS positions to view from. Exactly how close depends a little on the firepower of the follow-up forces. Working with heavily armored forces with good range (and the visibility to use it), they might be 5-10 hexes out. Working with infantry, probabably a lot closer, 1-4 hexes.

I do have to admit that in effect I am still reconning by death. It's very difficult to keep recon units alive in CS on offense at least, and of course they attract a lot of attention from the other guy. But I think the trick is keeping the delay between your recon dying and your followup as small as possible.

EXCEPTIONS: The ever-present exception to the rule might be flanking moves/guarding the flanks. On defense, I often send recon units (especially the US Jeep Scouts who are way too fragile to use offensively, imo) down roads I don't intend to use to guard the flanks.

On offense, I might send recon units out away from the main body if there appears to be a possible way to sneak in, but even then I would usually send at least a token force with them to make any attack. The last thing I want to do is alert an enemy of an open flank with recon units, when I can't exploit it. If it's gonna take me 4 turns to move units to exploit that flank, that's 4 turns the other guy has to plug it.

Anyway, my thoughts on recon.