Digging infantry out of towns: a worked overrun example

[HeatDeath]

Being vividly aware of your opponent's strike range at all times is a vitally important, but separate tutorial. :D

[Knockman]

Great work on this. Fundamentally I think it dramatically shows a new player the difference between using Ramming or Overrun rules in your games.

[43Supporter]

And this is why there are real-world examples of "using an entire Air Force Bomber Group to eliminate *one* sniper in a town"....

[HeatDeath]

"Maxim #4: Close air support covers a multitude of sins."

[chicagoviking]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

But I still feel there's a certain value add in elaborating from "That's a dumb idea, don't do that" to "If you do that, you will die. Here is the precise, clinical description of how this will kill you, and how it will hurt the entire time you are dying."

There is a value in being explicit about the details. Thanks for writing this up!

[offsides]

IIRC, back when the Rangers were unofficially announced (specialist INF with -1 on CRT rolls against them like a ninja), there was some discussion of exactly how hard it would be to dig out a 3-squad ranger unit from a town hex. I believe it was generally determined that while rubbling the town hex was an absolute necessity to gettting them out, just ignoring them and going around was the real solution. :)

[offsides]

So this discussion led me to a question that was discussed previously but I'm not sure ever really reached a final conclusion, namely about if entrenchments can be built in a town hex (https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=164440). I 100% agree that they would not have any effect on INF in a non-rubbled town hex, but if you know that you have to hold a town hex, and that therefore the enemy is likely to turn it into rubble to dig out the INF, wouldn't it make sense to pre-dig entrenchments in the town hex for once it turned to rubble? While I certainly can see wanting to build entrenchments in a rubbled town hex for defensive purposes, I would think that a more likely scenario would be having them in place already, even if they provide no additional benefit unless and until the town hex is rubbled. Alternately, if you can't pre-build entrenchments in a town hex for when it gets rubbled, you can build revetments, for an additional +D1 even before it gets rubbled...

[GranitePenguin]

Originally Posted by offsides

So this discussion led me to a question that was discussed previously but I'm not sure ever really reached a final conclusion, namely about if entrenchments can be built in a town hex (https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=164440). I 100% agree that they would not have any effect on INF in a non-rubbled town hex, but if you know that you have to hold a town hex, and that therefore the enemy is likely to turn it into rubble to dig out the INF, wouldn't it make sense to pre-dig entrenchments in the town hex for once it turned to rubble? While I certainly can see wanting to build entrenchments in a rubbled town hex for defensive purposes, I would think that a more likely scenario would be having them in place already, even if they provide no additional benefit unless and until the town hex is rubbled. Alternately, if you can't pre-build entrenchments in a town hex for when it gets rubbled, you can build revetments, for an additional +D1 even before it gets rubbled...

Considering what an entrenchment is, I'm inclined to say being able to pre-dig them in towns or not isn't the question. They would probably be destroyed/filled/whatever when the town was rubbled if they existed.

[offsides]

Originally Posted by GranitePenguin

Considering what an entrenchment is, I'm inclined to say being able to pre-dig them in towns or not isn't the question. They would probably be destroyed/filled/whatever when the town was rubbled if they existed.

Based on my reading of the rules that state that you can't destroy entrenchments (unless you control the hex) but just attack the infantry instead, I think whether entrenchments survive rubbling or not is probably one of those fiddly things that gets sacrificed to the simplicity of the rules - when you rubble the hex, it's either because you attacked something in the hex and the hex took spillover fire, or you attacked the hex and the entrenched infantry took spillover fire. If you really wanted to you could make the rule that if entrenched INF are killed when the hex is rubbled, the entrenchment they were in is destroyed as well, but I don't know that that's really necessary. (After all, while it's possible for a large piece of debris to either fill or cover an entrenchment, more likely they will fall around them and just give more cover to it...)