Drawing opportunity fire actions - disreputable or part of the game?

[Mowgli]

Gent: 

IF you had used a recon unit in the manner you described (e.g. "move back and forth to draw fire") in our recent MC game - I would have called that tactic out as gamey. It's one thing to move a recon unit until contact with enemy forces. It's quite another to once you make contact with the enemy, to deliberately move the recon unit back and forth to draw enemy fire. Defiantly frowned upon.

Also, I question your tactic of placing more troops in a single hex to counter recon probes. You saw what happened when you stacked inviting targets of 3 or more units in a single hex! WMD came a calling!   

Also, you must understand in our recent MC game, it was NOT the use of WP recon units as you described that would have been decisive. It was the short 8-turn scenario that was decisive. There were not enough turns for me to assault the town hex VPs with sufficient remaining turns to recover the combat losses NATO would have inflicted on my attacking WP troops.

Well WP assaults can work. But it's risky and it needs proper preparation. If you use recon units in the "frowned-upon" way, a concentrated assault is a very viable and potentially decisive option for WP in our scenario (Schweinfurt H2H). 

Here are some ideas, taken from my upcoming AAR, on how WP could have assaulted - It was in fact my major concern that you would strongly concentrate your forces (and artillery) to punch through my line, thereby cutting my units in the north off the city and the city off its supplies and causing all kinds of havoc. If you had massed a lot of artillery and troops at a single point and launched a surprise attack (it needs to punch through in a single turn!), then a decisive break through can be achieved, well within 8 turns. That's also the reason why I put three units into the hex - numbers matter a lot in assault combat. I didn't even dare to dig-in, as this would have reduced my combat power by 50% in case you attacked. As soon as I noticed that your troops were quite spread out (and also digging-in), I felt quite confident that my defensive line was in no danger and I could retreat my troops to the city safely. I didn't know, however, that you had so many WMD at your disposal, which were the main killers in our game.

Sure, the nuke attack cost me dearly, but to be honest I was more worried about the assault. The early commitment of your WMD also enabled me to use my WMD in return, which pretty much sealed the draw in this case. 

Warsaw Pact assault option explained (still work in progress):







Note I'm well aware that ZoCs hinder WP units from breaking through. For this reason, a heavy concentration of artillery is needed: To make sure that the NATO units get broken which makes them lose their ZoCs. In my tests, given a proper mass of troops and artillery, breaking two NATO units was a quite reliable outcome. When 3 soviet infantry bataillons - no terrain malus in the assault, max. stacking allowance - approach 2 NATO units that have been hit by 6 artillery barrages this turn, unopposed (opportuntiy fire already drawn) and assault in the same turn, things really get ugly for NATO. Once the 2 units are broken and pushed aside, tanks can race into the gap.