It came upon me during a game recently....
Being a poor Russian...with lots of troops and way too few officers....approaching the well defended trenches full of Germans...
And there was this German 75mm IG in a trench....pathetic thing on it's own...but...it has a range of 11....
Which, it turns out, has a some very useful facilities which are obvious in hind-sight, but I had not considered fully:
1) It keeps ANY Russians (infantry, trucks, etc.), who DO NOT have an officer adjacent to activate a Combat move, from moving toward the germans/trenches/gun...
in fact if they have no officer they can only move parallel to the gun...at 11 hexes..that's a lot of the board russians MUST maintain unit cohesion(around officers)
or you will lose guys and you will never get to move them to combat!
2) Putting Trucks out of harms way---actually doesn't work unless you have spare officers (clearly not something Russians have a lot of...) if you move your trucks back from
the front...they won't be able to "combat move" to the fight unless they have an officer to activate them to do so....they are effectively stuck/out of the fight
until you send back an officer to activate a combat move....
3) Fleeing units (Russians remember) HAVE TO KEEP FLEEING! ... it's a Direct fire 11...they are going to be running for quite a while...
and then...because you need your officers to attack germans in trenches...there are few officers way back there to help rally them....combined with FOW and not
getting a chance to activate....dispersed russians...
I had always discounted the utility of those IG...but...ANY DF at range will have that effect....
clearly...those are useful for defensive positions in disrupting the enemies movement to attack, and forcing grouping, even if their firepower is minimal.
Probably obvious to anyone---but those new to the system (like me) find joy (well...maybe that's a stretch as russian...) in discovery...
cj
Infantry Guns and Combat movement observation
