FOW PRIMER: They Don’t Like It Up ‘Em
In Flames of War, troops are victorious and objectives are accomplished through a myriad of plans; usually, though, the culmination of any good plan is a successful Assault Step.
The Assault step is where most games of Flames of War are decided. I’m sure many of us can remember a game that was ended solely by shooting, whether due to misfortune on the part of the attacker or whether simply because we matched up against tanks with tanks! However, that’s the exception to the rule, and every player must be prepared to assault the enemy to win. Luckily, FoW Primer is here to help. Grab a beer if you like; this will be a long one.
Why Assault?
I suppose this is a valid question. Rather than just taking my word for it that games end in assaults, consider this: What other method does an attacker have for killing dug-in infantry? Only one: he can shoot them. Now, there are some forces with enough firepower to make this practical (Soviet assault-gun regiments come to mind), but for most of us, this is simply not an option, or a bad option. Without boring you with the mathematics, it takes a Trained Rifle/MG team 2 rounds of assault combat (happens in one turn as often as not) to kill a dug-in, gone-to-ground Veteran stand in assault, and 54 Shooting steps of stationary fire to kill one in shooting.
Assault is also the primary mechanic by which infantry make their presence known to tanks. While it’s possible to use things like Bazookas or PIATs to make an impression in the Shooting step, again the truth is that Flames of War rewards the risk-taker. A Veteran PIAT team will burn a Veteran StuG after 27 Shooting steps, or after 3 Assault rounds (again, thanks to British Bulldog, likely 1 turn).
Lastly, assault is good for making the other guy move his men. As we well know by now, Flames of War isn’t about destroying the other guy’s forces, and none of the above would be very compelling if all assault did was allow you to kill better. However, it also provides the only efficient method for removing infantry from an objective. Shooting them down below morale-check territory might work, but if they have morale rerolls through a special rule, it’s no guarantee. Assault rules mean that, even if you can’t kill them all, you can force them back 4″ or so per turn.
Why Not Assault?
There’s only one reason not to assault: if you’re not ready. There are a lot of ways in which you need to be ready that we’ll go over in this article; for now just keep in mind that a half-baked assault is often worse than no assault at all.
Assault Where?
Obviously, the best assault is the one that puts you on the objective and punts the opponent off of it. However, chances are he’s thought of that too, and so the most direct route may not be the best. When considering where the point of main effort should be in your plan (the Germans called it schwerpunkt, which, although a mouthful, is shorter than “point of main effort”), try to take into account two things. First, how does it help you win? Does it get you on an objective, near an objective, or attrit a critical platoon? Second, how likely are you to be able to pull it off? (Knowing that comes mostly with experience, but a little Maths of War goes a long way.) The delicate balancing act between these two is tough. In general, your opponent will deploy his strongest forces to defend objectives; if they look like more than you can reasonably take on, putting your assault in in a nearby forest and attempting to flank the position from there might be your best move.
Assault With Whom?
Probably, when you designed your force list (sadly outside the scope of FoW Primer), you chose a platoon or platoons specifically for their ability to “put it up ’em”, or assault efficiently. Popular choices for assaulting infantry are light tanks, cavalry, cheap medium tanks, assault-centric heavy tanks (this means KV-1, NOT Tiger) or other infantry; popular choices for assaulting tanks are any infantry with AT weapons. Good Morale ratings and large platoon size are also helpful; as we know from the rulebook, in Flames of War an assaulting platoon cannot call on help from its friends whereas an assaulted platoon can, so we want our assaulting platoon to be as large as possible.
So, chances are “who should I assault with” is a question you’ve already answered before the game starts. If it’s not, take a look at where you’ve decided to assault. Who’s there, and is it open terrain? Obviously, you want to match your assaulting platoon against the defenders in a way that’s advantageous to you. In general, sending tanks without Wide Tracks into rough going to assault brave infantry is not a first resort. On the other hand, I’d rather send tanks into Very Difficult terrain to engage an HMG platoon than risk my infantry hitting a wall of bullets as they tried the same thing. (See the tip on preliminary assaults below for an even better idea).
Assault Whom?
Whoever you must assault to win the game, first and foremost. However, targets of opportunity do happen and it’s wise to consider the fact that, no matter how wussy your armored car platoon may be, they can probably get the better of 4 mortars and an infantry stand. In general it’s wise to try and avoid assaulting direct-fire Gun teams whose LOS you haven’t eliminated with smoke, since a lot of the time they are very very adept at Defensive Fire (HMGs, LMGs, and antitank guns are all systems you really don’t want to be in front of if you’re their intended target type) and they’re easy enough to knock off in shooting if you’re patient.
Assault How?
Ah, the big question, and probably the most complicated one in Flames of War. FoW Primer is not a rules FAQ, and I can’t and won’t go over every possible rules situation involving multiple-platoon assaults from which one platoon breaks off and the other counterattacks etc. What we’re looking for here is a basic understanding of what makes a good assault in general.
Priority One: Reduce Defensive Fire to a Manageable Level
The first thing to know about a good assault is that it actually happens before the Assault step. Obviously the Shooting step is very important because that is where you do all of your smoking and most of your pinning, but the Movement step is just as crucial. This is because the Assault step itself, while it has its important decisions, is very rigidly described in the rulebook and units sort of “play themselves”. As an example, suppose you have moved your infantry up to assault an enemy position. In your Assault step, all of your infantry can make contact (after their 4″ move) with an enemy infantry team; however, two of them come within 2″ of a lone enemy tank in doing so, triggering not only extra Defensive Fire from the tank, but also a Tank Terror test for the assault to happen at all! Your only alternative at this point is to declare that those teams are giving Covering Fire, not move them at all, and forego their assistance for the remainder of the assault. If you had caught this in the Movement Step, you could have placed them so they were not within 4″ of the enemy teams near the tank.
That said, the past is in the past, and once you’re in the Assault Step you have to make the best of what you’ve set up. If your assault is jeopardized by bringing in additional platoons to the Defensive Fire (clever opponents will do this with Independent Teams), you have some options. If the team that’s jeopardizing you can make contact with the enemy, his options are very limited: give Covering Fire or suffer. If he can’t make direct contact with his 4″ move, he has more freedom and you can consider moving him towards an enemy team in the platoon that is in the other direction from the DF threat, even if that means he can’t “swing”, or roll dice in assault, this turn. At least he’ll be available for any counterattacks.
If you’re stuck staring down an unpinned platoon in the Assault Step (perhaps your artillery fell on its face), it’s generally a good idea to just cool it and wait, even if the enemy has flamethrowers. You still have an option, though – a platoon is pinned if it takes any hits in an assault, or if it’s involved in an assault against tanks. In this way you can use two of your platoons to complement each other – assault one stand of infantry with 4-5 tanks to pin the platoon, then break off send in your own infantry. Your opponent doesn’t have to let you do this, but if he Breaks Off away from the tanks to get out of the 6″ Shooting is Too Successful assault distance from your infantry, he’s out of his foxholes and pinned at no cost to you, which probably serves you just as well.
Priority Two: Achieve Local Superiority
When I make an assault, I always assume my opponent will pass the roll to counterattack. If he doesn’t, that’s great, but planning for the worst has taken me a long way. This means I want two things: I want more stands rolling more (or better) dice than he has, and I want to make the most out of the privilege of “swinging” first. This means I want as much of my platoon as possible to be engaged after the first Charge into Contact, but it also means I want a certain amount of his platoon engaged too – if I engage too much or too little of it, I’m setting myself up for a terrifying counterattack. If your Veteran platoon of 10 stands can get all 10 of them within striking distance of 2 enemy stands, this is not a win for you – you can kill 7 stands on average with those 10 dice, and you want to make going first count, so you should wait to assault until you can figure out a way to contact more enemy.
Coming from the “flank” of an enemy platoon is a good way to achieve this superiority. Now, infantry and turreted tanks in Flames of War have 360 degree Line of Sight, so you might be wondering what their “flanks” are. Simply put, during his last Movement step, your opponent oriented his platoons (or left them in existing positions) with some purpose in mind – shoot at Platoon A, deny Platoon B access to the objective, prepare to defend against an assault by Platoon C, etc. Anytime you can come at the “narrow sides” of such a formation (most people do not move their models in spheres, but rather in lines or boxes) you may or may not reduce the defensive fire you take (360 LOS, remember), but you definitely reduce the counterattack strength! If you can fight 3 stands, then 3 stands, then 3 stands, then 2 stands with all of yours, this is much better than fighting 11 stands with all of yours!
Priority Three: Accomplish your Goal
Most assaults are made to push an enemy back or kill him. This involves passing Counterattack tests longer than your opponent does, or just obliterating anything of his that could have Counterattacked! Sometimes this is not your goal though (see the Pinning Assault above); sometimes you just want to cause a hit or two (to a platoon commander, say) and end things. Don’t get cocky; assaults are the deadliest part of Flames of War and not sticking to your plan can be costly.
If your goal IS eliminating enemy stands, it’s always worth doing the simple math to figure out how many “swings” you can expect it to take to kill an enemy stand: Veterans 1.5, Trained 2, Conscript 3. Now, the best way to ensure you never waste a “swing” would be to engage a new enemy model with each of your own stands…but that might leave you open for an unpleasant counterattack. You also might want to double up for some other legitimate purpose, like avoiding the Tankodesantniki in a Tankovy company while trying to cause hits on the tanks. If you want to do this, your Movement Step choices will again be crucial, as the assault rules dictate you can’t deliberately go the other way from a stand you could have contacted. Keep this in mind throughout your counterattacks.
This should go without saying, but if the enemy is likely to break and your goal is to push him back, your best move is to get your assaulting teams as deep into his positions as possible, since they form the 4″ bubble from their final positions once the assault is won.
Priority Four: Survive the Experience
Obviously we all want to “bring our boys home” if we can, but the realities of assault make this difficult! Not only is it highly deadly, but platoons are usually Pinned afterwards and may be in exposed positions. I frequently bait opponents into relatively easy but unprofitable assaults only to fall back immediately and subject the assaulters to punishing fire in my turn (hopefully they will read this article and know better!). Don’t let this happen to you.
One common mistake is to send a platoon to make an assault that can do the job, but not to send another with them to hold the objective once they’ve spent themselves in combat. An even more common mistake is to send such a backup platoon, but to find that it’s too far behind the first platoon to be able to pick up seamlessly where it left off. To mitigate this, you should carefully read the Shooting Is Too Successful rule in the FoW rulebook. This can be used very effectively to (among other things) keep your backup right with your assaulters.
Independent Teams are a good way to ensure you don’t bleed points during an assault. Teams like 2iC and Observer teams for batteries that have already served their purpose or can observe some other way (AOPs are popular) should be joined to your assaulting platoon, up front and taking the first counterattack hits where possible, since they don’t count towards morale. This is especially effective in assault rather than shooting, because while teams like this are often poorly armed, a skill check is skill check.
Now would also be a good time to mention Company Command and Higher Command teams, as well. These teams, when joined to an assaulting platoon, provide Motivation re-rolls that might prove critical to your assault’s success. More importantly, they provide a Motivation re-roll to any Morale check that a platoon takes for being below half at the end of the step. Even MORE importantly, if that Morale check is failed, your Command team is gone too! So, it’s a big risk to even take one into an assault, but very worth it. That said, once you’ve joined an assaulting platoon (for any purpose), you’re there for the rest of the Step, so you might as well reroll anything and everything. One subtlety is that actually getting your Command team killed by the enemy in the assault itself does not have to be a concern; it can join the assaulting platoon before they Charge into Contact, declare it’s giving Covering Fire, and never move from where it started; this does not prevent it from providing rerolls for the remainder for the Step.
The last thing to consider when deciding how best to preserve your assault troops is the Consolidation move. It’s only four inches, and chances are you’re Pinned for the upcoming enemy turn unless things went swimmingly well. Deploy to maximize teams firing in DF against any expected counter-assault. Consolidate your Independent Teams into a configuration that will allow you to draw draw unpinned, fresh platoons into Defensive Fire when the pinned one is assaulted. Make your assaults with an eye for consolidating back into concealment if you can.
Summary
I know it’s been a long one; thanks for sticking with me. Assault only when you’re ready, in a position that either threatens the objective or attrits the enemy. Be thinking about your Assault step in the Movement step. Be thinking about your Assault step in the Movement step. Be thinking about your Assault step in the Movement step, for God’s sake! Don’t assault unpinned platoons, or multiple platoons capable of firing back. Bring backup, and use Shooting Is Too Successful to keep them close by. Make appetizer assaults on the edges of infantry and gun platoons with armor to pin them for the main course. Attack from flanks. Use your Command teams wisely, and Consolidate like your life depends on it, because your little mans’ do.
Good luck out there, Stormtroopers! We’d love to hear anything from stories of Flames of War games to suggestions for future topics (especially now that we’re close to having the basics covered), so get playing!
