Advice for new players: 3 bocage infantry deathtraps you should always recognise

[Bulletpoint]

I am beginning to realise that many of the tactical blunders I committed since I was a completely new player comes down to not recognising these three typical situations. Maybe others will find the info useful.

It all seems really obvious now that I put it down in writing, but somehow these situations never seemed that obvious to me before I walked straight into them. Sometimes I even realised the danger but assumed I would get lucky. That's always a recipy for disaster.

1: The hunchback. A field that has a hump in the middle.

This means your troops won't be able to see from one side to the other, but it may not be obvious when you look at the field from above or from ground level, because it only needs a very slight curve. When advancing into the field, your troops come under fire from the other side, but their friends back at the starting hedgerow won't be able to provide covering fire.

How to do it: Always send out a scout team when you see this kind of field. If the other side is only lightly defended, you _might_ be able to rush into the field, as you just need to get enough troops past the line of the high point. From there, you can suppress the other side. However, this is a risky move. Better to use mortars if you can. Using tanks is risky too, as the rising ground might very well raise your tank up out of the bocage and put its turret into the sights of a (sometimes distant) AT-gun.

2: The catcher in the rye. Any field with crops in it.

Basically this has the same effect as the hunchback, but the situation is even worse, in that the whole field causes infantry to go blind when they go prone. When I was a new player, I assumed crop fields would give me an advantage as the attacker, since my troops would be less exposed to enemy fire. Wrong. As long as you hide, you stay out of sight, but the moment you try to move, you're gunned down.

How to do it: Again, always send scouts when you see this kind of field. If the other side is defended, tanks are a better bet here, since they should be able to fire from the starting hedgerow. Also, if the field is short, you might be able to crawl (SLOW move) through the crops, but the moment you approach the enemy, you're likely to be spotted and killed unless you "make landfall" a distance away from known enemy locations.

3: The boot of doom

Probably the worst of the bunch. This field is L-shaped, with your guys entering from the narrow end like a foot that goes into a boot. The danger comes from the fact that once you get to the bend, your troops can be shot at from the side, and again you can't use your starting position to give them support.

How to do it: Always send scouts, and if there are defenders in the "toe part" of the boot, that means trouble. You usually can't fire mortars there, at least not from the starting hedgerow, and tanks will have to advance too close to the defenders in order to get a bead on them, well within infantry AT-weapon range (and your tanks are likely to expose their flanks too).

So basically, the only thing you can do is to get to the other side of the hedgerow that will give you Line of Fire to the defenders. Usually, that just happens to be blocked off somehow. If you can't bring guns to bear on the "toe part", you need to realise that it's a dead end. Attacking with infantry is very likely to turn into a massacre, and sending in tanks is a big gamble. Smoke might help, but only if the wind direction is exactly right.

[womble]

Good points there. All three illustrate the maxim of "never send a squad where a (scout) team hasn't been; never send a platoon where a squad hasn't been..." etc.

One way you can sometimes make progress in crop-filled fields is to have your advancing elements take only very short (1 or 2 AS) Fast movement legs, with Hide orders at every waypoint. Since you go "invisible" and unspotted when you dive into the weeds, the defending unit has to spot your elements again when they pop back up. If you alternate moving teams, there's a fair chance the new targets will be back into cover before the enemy has brought anything too heavy to bear on them. It's by no means perfect, but it's a bit quicker than Slow-ing across the open.

[Bulletpoint]

One way you can sometimes make progress in crop-filled fields is to have your advancing elements take only very short (1 or 2 AS) Fast movement legs, with Hide orders at every waypoint. Since you go "invisible" and unspotted when you dive into the weeds, the defending unit has to spot your elements again when they pop back up. If you alternate moving teams, there's a fair chance the new targets will be back into cover before the enemy has brought anything too heavy to bear on them. It's by no means perfect, but it's a bit quicker than Slow-ing across the open.

I haven't been able to make this technique work yet. I find that even for short movement, one or more enemy machineguns always manage to squeeze off a burst. But I've been trying to do it by using QUICK movement orders, so maybe that's the difference. Also, I have never tried putting a hide order on the waypoints.

[Bulletpoint]

Good points there. All three illustrate the maxim of "never send a squad where a (scout) team hasn't been; never send a platoon where a squad hasn't been..." etc.

This is the ideal, but in many scenarios, I find time is too limited to do the full scouting routine for every field.

The idea was to be able to move more quickly in uncomplicated situations and use the scouts more in potential disastrous places.

So I thought of focusing on those three really nasty types of fields, since many of the other types of fields quickly show themselves to be threats or not. If you come up against an uncomplicated field and no firefight breaks out, then you can be almost certain there are no enemies on the other side (if the other side is not too far away).

There are of course exceptions, as with anything. Thought about a couple more fields:

The 'naked' field

Looks like a perfect nice little boxy field where you can quickly spot any enemies on the other side, so unlikely to be an ambush. But the moment you are in the middle of it, you take fire from another location that has LOF due to elevation. Usually this fire is not very accurate, because it's too distant, but if it's anything like a cannon or assault gun you could be in trouble. Also mortars can play a nasty role here, as direct fire mortars arrive very quickly and are pretty accurate. Especially because the first mortar impact will likely make your guys take cover, then following bombs will pin them in the middle of the field and basically serve them up on a platter to the enemy mortar.

The long field

If a field is very long, it can mean two problems: If the field is narrow, but the opposing hedge is very far away, then there might be unspotted enemies there that will only spot your troops once they break cover. The issue here is that spotting is not only dependant on LOS, but also very much on distance. So you can sit on your end for a long time without spotting the enemies on the other side, even though they are "in plain view". Of course, it also depends on how many troops are spotting on each side.

Solution: Open fire for a short while behind the starting hedgerow. This will make any enemies opposite spot your troops and also open up on them.

The fat field

A field can also be very wide. The problem is both distance and angle to the enemy. Spotting from a hedgerow seems to work best in a 90-degree angle (from my experience) and in any case, you can't fire to the sides from a hedgerow position. But the enemy can fire freely at you when you leave your hedge.

Solution: Make sure you space out your troops along the whole hedgerow and not only check from the middle if the coast is clear.