Assault planning questions

[nhill40]

Hello, I'm back for another round of noob questions.  :)

As an aside, a couple things have interrupted my learning process.  First and foremost, real life responsibilities are complete fun killers!  Secondly, I also took the time to sort of evaluate both PzC and TOAW in parallel, which got time consuming.  In the end, I found myself having a preference for PzC - although TOAW has some very cool features and I am sure many 1000's of players have sunk countless happy hours into it, once I started diving a bit more into how more expert-level players approach the game, I was very surprised to see how prone certain scenarios are to very ahistorical or perhaps "gamey" tactics.  That was a big turn off for me, so I am back around to pester the PzC community with more dumb questions.

So, my question today centers around what I will call (for lack of a better term) "matchups".  As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm not completely new to operational wargaming, but the lion's share of my experience has been in SSG's "Decisive Battles" series.  Those are great games, but one of the things they do very well (perhaps too well) is give you prospective combat odds on a silver platter...which is a great convenience tool, but in playing through some PzC/TOAW scenarios, I've learned it is also a tremendous "crutch" that limited my understanding of operational warfare in many ways.  In response to this realization, I've done a fair amount of "book learning" and have come to the realization that the heart of operational warfare is using maneuver to bring the enemy forces to battle on the most advantageous terms possible (and, of course, all within the context of overall strategic objectives).

What I was hoping to get into in this thread is some of the specifics of what "the most advantageous terms possible" really look like - or, as I put it, "matchups".

In PzC, a lot of this seems to me to come down being savvy about tank vs infantry.  In my experience, a lot of laypeople automatically assume the tank to be the ultimate battlefield "trump card".  Of course, in reality, it's more complicated than that - tanks are highly mobile and possess great firepower, but they are also simultaneously highly vulnerable and (when placed in the wrong circumstances) nearly blind.

The mental gap I am trying to close is leveraging my tactical understanding of combined arms warfare (which, thanks in part to many hours of experience playing the "Close Combat" along with multiple "tactical shooters", I think is actually pretty solid) to make sure I am employing sound decision making at the operational level.

I'm curious what kinds of heuristics people apply when evaluating assaults.  Obviously, it's not all set in stone (these games would not be compelling if that were the case), but I believe there are certainly guiding principles that can be applied.

Just some thoughts - I would appreciate any corrections/elaborations anyone has to offer!

- As a general rule, conducting an assault with armor + infantry is preferred to armor alone.  In what situations (if any) does armor fare well alone?  Catching un-entrenched enemy infantry in the open seems to be an obvious one, but are there others?

- Throwing armor against infantry in prepared positions, urban, and/or forested areas would be considered a waste.  Would you advocate _never_ using armor in that situation, or is it more like it's ok to use armor to attack those kinds of positions, but make sure you have plenty of accompanying infantry?

- Very general question, as an assault planner, what are the "matchups" that make you salivate vs what are the ones that make you cringe?

- Again, applying my tactical level understanding, I would think that including engineering units in an assault against prepared enemy positions would be a nice bonus.  Is that the case?  What other situations might it be wise to include engineers in an assault?

- "Disruption" seems to be a great equalizer.  Ideally, you would like any enemy unit you are attacking to have been "pre-disrupted" by a combination of artillery bombardment, direct fire, and isolation.  How big of a factor do you consider disruption though?  Is this like "enemy force is disrupted; throw out the rulebook" or is it more along the lines of "this may level the playing field a bit"?

- What other resources are good to learn more about this stuff?  The learning of the real world concepts is probably 80% of the fun for me, so I would definitely be enthusiastic about any good resources to learn more.  As I've alluded to, I think I actually have a pretty firm grip on small unit tactics, unit/weapon capabilities, etc - it's just a matter of training my brain to deal with these at a slightly more abstract level than I'm used to!

Thanks in advance!