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!

[Aolain]

I mainly play MC, but they are similar systems.

I never, ever, assault unless all defending units are disrupted. If I can throw an engineer in with the assault all the better...but to be honest, I rarely do because engineers are not swarming all over the board.

I do not like to assault with pure tanks against infantry in the woods.

The ideal situation is to surround the disrupted defender and pile the assault on; thereby maximizing his casualties.

That is about it for me!

[Kool Kat]

Gents: 

I wrote an article on "PzC Tips and Tactics":  

https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=70089

References assault tactics.

[Mr Grumpy]

Great post that deserves a more detailed reply than I have time to give.

Assaulting in PzC is something of a "black art" often judged on gut instinct honed from the experiences of multiple games and even then you will sometimes experience an assault result that will leave you scratching your head, this is a good thing as otherwise the game mechanics can become very predictable like the prospective assault odds that SSG gives you and like the good old CRT in boardgames, so prepare for your "crutch" to be kicked away! 

To save time I am assuming you have read and fully understand the mechanics of assaulting as laid out in the manual, so I will not comment on any of that.

So as far as armour is concerned it carries a penalty for assaulting unsupported by sufficient infantry into ANY non clear hex, (trench's and IP's have no effect in this case) and it is OK to use armour to assault in non clear hex's provided there is the correct amount of infantry to avoid penalties.

Not all engineers will enhance an assault, be sure to check their assault value before throwing them in, some titles include "assault engineers" who have a huge assault value while at the other extreme bridge engineers have almost no assault value (no surprise there).

Disrupting all of the units in the opposing stack halves their assault value and makes a successful assault a certainty on the assumption the units you assault with are not low quality and/or heavily fatigued.

Sometimes it seems a good idea to assault with as few units as possible to ensure success while leaving the maximum units to exploit, but even a successful assault may add a huge chunk of fatigue to the assaulting units which may make them unable to continue to attack without being rested.

Although assaulting with your opponents units disrupted is the holy grail of PzC there are situations where you can assault either small units (less than 100 men/10 vehicles) or assault larger units that are not disrupted with such overwhelming force that the assault can be successful or may fail but pile a huge chuck of fatigue onto the defending units making them more likely to disrupt in future turns or just where it lowers their quality to a level where they are unable to resist any subsequent assault. Because you cant see the fatigue with FOW on that is where the experience and black art comes into it, also judging the power of a units defensive fire can give an experienced player an indication of the quality an fatigue of a defending unit.

So understand the mechanics and then try assaulting with different types, quality and number of units to gain the experience of what does or does not seem to work. 

[nhill40]

This is awesome, guys! Really, thank you - this is a big help!

I'm thinking I received some very superficial advice at some point along the lines of "don't assault entrenched infantry with armor", but I'm coming to learn that advice is coming from a much more subtle/nuanced place than I originally recognized.

Here are my thoughts - feel free to correct/elaborate as necessary.

Let's say there is an entrenched enemy infantry position. At my disposal, I have both infantry and armor. There would be nothing inherently "bad" about using both infantry and armor in my assault - in fact, including armor is in all likelihood going to increase the likelihood of a successful assault (i.e., increased likelihood of displacing enemy forces with fewer losses than if the assault was conducted without armor). But, of course, it's not that simple (otherwise these games would just be simple mathematical exercises!) Depending on circumstances, in this situation it may be wiser to perform a pure infantry assault, risking greater losses but leaving the armor fresh to exploit yet-to-be-realized opportunities (like catching enemy infantry in the open, cutting off supply lines, destroying support units, etc).

Put more generally, my thoughts shape up like this. The two main factors that armor bring to the battlefield in droves are mobility and firepower. By choosing to use armor against static/entrenched infantry positions, you are willingly taking your armor's mobility factor off the table. Including armor in my hypothetical assault above *would* be leveraging my armor's firepower, but there are other ways to bring firepower into an assault against a static position (i.e. artillery).

[Kool Kat]

Let's say there is an entrenched enemy infantry position.  At my disposal, I have both infantry and armor.  There would be nothing inherently "bad" about using both infantry and armor in my assault - in fact, including armor is in all likelihood going to increase the likelihood of a successful assault (i.e., increased likelihood of displacing enemy forces with fewer losses than if the assault was conducted without armor).  

Gent: 

Be cautious about lumping all armor into a collective "bucket." 

Armor is not treated equally! You need to check armor units' assault and defense factors prior to assault attempts. For example, in Budapest '45, an Axis player cannot utilize Hungarian armor as you prescribe in your scenario match ups. Armor assault and defense factors are low making any assault attempts problematic at best. Instead, Hungarian armor is best used as recon or in supportive roles with infantry - never as a brute force to overwhelm entrenched infantry.

In my play, I would never commit armor against entrenched infantry until enemy positions had been softened up with artillery bombardments and in extreme cases air strikes. Even then, I would send in the ground pounders first... and save my valuable armor to exploit openings or outflank enemy positions. 

Many times, using your armor and other mobile units to outflank entrenched infantry positions will force your opponent to give ground and retreat without having to close and assault directly with your units.