Infantry Advance

Setup

I've read a few posts by JasonC talking about how to advance infantry across open areas. They were well written and sounded sensible, but I wanted to test out some of the techniques he described. I created a scenario on a long, thin map. My end of the map is covered in forest. The far end has a small hill. I gave the Germans an MG42 HMG and a Rifle Platoon to keep them company. They will sit in three trenches. I will play as the Soviets and have a Regimental SMG Company. I will be attacking with a total of 267 points vs. 194 axis points. I didn't place any flags so that the battle will be decided only by casualties.

Action

I spread the three platoons out across the width of the map. On the first turn I advanced one squad from each platoon. I sent them 50m and then ordered them to hide. The next turn I ordered another squad from each platoon to go 50m and hide. Next I moved the last squad from each platoon and its HQ. Then I started over again with the first squad. The idea is to move the men in a burst and then let them rest. Eventually, some will get pinned or scared and be unable to move. I will let them rest and recover while moving someone else. The machine gun will probably fire on the moving units which lets the other guys recover. In this manner I hope to exhaust the enemy's ammunition at long range. I will restrict my men's fire with cover arcs so that they won't fire until close. At that point the enemy should be low on ammo as my men are just opening fire.

I expected the German troops to stay back in their trenches on the hill overlooking the battlefield, but all the infantry squads came forward instead. I ran into them about halfway down the battlefield. My men generally held fire but were shot at from a distance. Quickly, men got pinned and my orderly one squad from each platoon march broke down. From then on I simply looked for men that were "ready" or "rested" and "ok" and moved them. Anyone who was less than ok or looking at all tired was just ordered to stay put (right out in the open) and hide. If they had a sneak order I cancelled it first. As I got closer sometimes only one or two guys could move.

When they got within range I stopped ordering hides. That way they would open fire during or after their advance. As I closed in on each successive enemy infantry unit they would be low but my men would have plenty of ammo. I eliminated one enemy squad and three others eventually broke and ran off the map.

Of course, I had my problems with that too. In the process of working my way through the enemy infantry I had five squads and one platoon HQ run off. That can partly be attributed to the narrowness of the map. On a larger field they would have had farther to run and could potentially calm down before they got there. After all that getting shot at plenty of my remaining men were rattled. I just kept moving them with the same plan, letting them rest as long they needed to recover before moving them again.

As I approached the trench with the machine gun I was surprised to find I wasn't getting shot at. Eventually he fired, letting me know he was still there. Apparently the plan had worked and he was pretty low on ammo or he would have been cutting my men to ribbons at that range. A little later someone else fired from the trench and it turned out to be the platoon HQ for the infantry I had fought. I eventually got a few men close enough to order them right into the trench. Kpt. Krylov went for the machine gun and on turn 28 began throwing grenades at him. A turn later Lt. Ruymetov moved in with grenades too (my valiant officers leading the way). That was too much for the low-ammo Germans and the gunner and platoon HQ surrendered that turn.

Result

Because I lost so many men it was considered a draw. But I consider it a victory for JasonC's technique. I was able to move infantry across completely open terrain overwatched by an HMG, through intervening infantry and take out the gun in its trench with most of my men still alive (even if they did run away).