[Sinister Forces/White Eagles] Early War SS Tactics?

[tanzerleader]

My copy of Sinister Forces is on its way and I am eager to get stuck into some of the SS scenarios and the other SS scenarios in White Eagles. Obviously the troops have low morale and firepower to reflect the quality of the early war troops.

Does anyone have any thoughts about what the best tactics are to win scenarios with these troops? Should one follow the historical precedent of reckless frontal assaults?

Any opinions welcome.

[vince hughes]

Does anyone have any thoughts about what the best tactics are to win scenarios with these troops? Should one follow the historical precedent of reckless frontal assaults?

Any opinions welcome.

No, definately not ! Even the survivors of those learnt credibly from those ideas

My next ftf is the Demyansk Pocket from that set. To be honest, I think Totenkopf are a little under cooked in some of the scenarios as Demyansk was really their awakening as a genuine fighting unit.

I think its always hard to give tactics advice as each scenario confronts the player with different situations that tactic A might not be suitable whereas tactic C might work.

I've only played a couple from SF but both have been very good. Our Demyansk coming up looks like a Soviet win as it depicts a confused 3rd SS trying to bug-out in the face of a surprise attack. Although no victory appears to be on the cards, the actual situation looks as if it will be entertaining to play through.

[Matt W]

What you can do is highly dependent on the quality of your leaders, especially their morale bonuses. The temptation is to consider the SS "German" and to be disappointed at their inability to perform as the 1941 Heer do. With a strong leader, however, these troops can perform credibly. So the tactics to pursue have to wait as your leaders are "flipped". Good luck!

[campsawyer]

Like the other posts, I believe people can only give general tactics rather than specific. I am working through the Borodino Fields mini-campaign with the Das Reich division. This is the early days of that division and the morale is sub-par and the units need to keep close to you good leaders. Not much chance for independent attacks and prepare for many recovery turns. Firepower is weaker so you need to plan for that too. But these are the early days of the Waffen-SS and they were still considered second-line troops, it wasn't until this time they were thrown into battle for fill the gaps in the front line Heer units. This is the point that these political troops became fighting units.

[larry marak]

Tanz, the best way to see where tactics need to evolve is to play out the early SS assaults as mindless frontal assaults. This will not only be enjoyable to your opponent, but you will be witnessing the why of history. Once you see the pattern that lead to repeated failure demonstrated, you can start retooling your play to whatever level of victory was possible for these politically motivated, but poorly trained troops. In some scenarios, allowing your opponent a minor victory is the best possible outcome for your troops. As Robert Steiger (?) said in the 60's film Battle of the Bulge, just staying in uniform is our victory.

[plloyd1010]

Best tactics? Just about any reasonable approach is better than what the early SS used. The SS has been called the most successful private army in history. True enough, just keep in mind how low that threshold really is. Most private armies were/are abject failures.

An interesting simulation might be to limit the number chain activations the SS can make. Like to only one a turn. That may create more of the command disharmony the SS had.