Key Terrain and Avenues of Attack

[Flibby]

A few questions about these concepts.

Firstly, do you typically come up with the best avenue of attack first before determining key Terrain, or vice versa?

If you have a dominating key Terrain feature such as a ridge overlooking your objective, how do you asses it's occupation vs the fact that you will be vulnerable to enemy fire from a lot of units as well as being able to bring a lot of fire upon them? Is that fight essentially the big pre requisite for the attack?

On avenues of attack, a covered approach seems to be regarded as a good path for an infantry attack, but this limits the opportunity for overwatch. How can this be mitigated against?

[dkchapuis]

I do identify key terrain first, then determine what I have to do to get to that KT and then hold the KT.  Often holding the KT does NOT mean sitting a lot of units on it, because artillery, etc.

Covered avenues of approach or avenues out of LOS are essential.  Usually the overwatch for the units approaching are along different LOS lanes than the maneuver units.

 

[chuckdyke]

Key Terrain is relative depending on the unit. It is a spot which provides cover and concealment for the task at hand. For a scout it is different than from his Regimental HQ. For the scout the KT is his commander's intent his KT is to carry out his commander's intent and staying alive.

[CarlXII]

6 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Key Terrain is relative depending on the unit. It is a spot which provides cover and concealment for the task at hand. For a scout it is different than from his Regimental HQ. For the scout the KT is his commander's intent his KT is to carry out his commander's intent and staying alive.

I belive that for many the phrase KEY TERRAIN signifies terrain features that are likely to impact the succesful completion of the mission as a whole and not something that relates to each individual squad...

8 hours ago, Flibby said:

. How can this be mitigated against?

Smoke could be helpful if you have it to blind enemy held key terrain or to section of an area you're attacking in to allow you to achive fire supperiority.

[Combatintman]

Like this ...

 

[Flibby]

4 hours ago, Combatintman said:

Like this ...

 

Thanks Combat.

I have read that topic with great interest before and will do so again to refresh my memory.

In the meantime what I fail to glean from posts from people such as yourself or Bil, which I am entirely sure is my own fault, is the finer details rather than the bigger picture.

For example, let's say one has an elevated enemy position. Any spot which one could consider a SBF position is going to be fairly obvious to the enemy. Is the idea that regardless of that fact, if you have to fight onto the key terrain in order to establish fire superiority you just have to get on with it, or do you try to obscure your approach there, if anything making it slightly more obvious?

The theory behind tactics sits well with me I just have a hard time applying it to CM. None of the tutorials I have seen actually lead you through a scenario aside from the Jeff Paulding Armchair General Ones. Whilst very useful a lot of the attacks were 'brute force' - absolutely great and well put together, but with nothing like the detail that you have set out in your linked post...

Perhaps I just need to lose more often to some decent players 

[Combatintman]

2 hours ago, Flibby said:

Thanks Combat.

I have read that topic with great interest before and will do so again to refresh my memory.

In the meantime what I fail to glean from posts from people such as yourself or Bil, which I am entirely sure is my own fault, is the finer details rather than the bigger picture.

For example, let's say one has an elevated enemy position. Any spot which one could consider a SBF position is going to be fairly obvious to the enemy. Is the idea that regardless of that fact, if you have to fight onto the key terrain in order to establish fire superiority you just have to get on with it, or do you try to obscure your approach there, if anything making it slightly more obvious?

The theory behind tactics sits well with me I just have a hard time applying it to CM. None of the tutorials I have seen actually lead you through a scenario aside from the Jeff Paulding Armchair General Ones. Whilst very useful a lot of the attacks were 'brute force' - absolutely great and well put together, but with nothing like the detail that you have set out in your linked post...

Perhaps I just need to lose more often to some decent players 

I'm a rubbish player to be honest - mainly because I spend more time in the editor than actually playing scenarios.  I am very much like you - I totally get the theory, planning and tactics piece but never seem to be able to convert that into anything other than scraping victories with huge losses if I'm lucky.  What I will say though is that many players from what I see on the forum chats just struggle with the concept that people get killed in combat and get fixed by trying to avoid them altogether.  This leads to a paralysis in both planning and execution.  I think there's an element of that on show here and personally I wouldn't worry too much about it - as you say, sometimes "you just have to get on with it."  There are ways in which you can reduce the risk of course - suppression via direct and indirect fires, covered approaches, feints/deception (which only work when playing a human), obscuration, attacking from an unexpected direction, attacking a weak point or all of them combined.  Which ones you use all depend on the detailed ground and the resources you have available or the resources you are prepared to commit to that particular part of the operation/plan/scheme of manoeuvre. 

In the tutorial, I used suppressive fire on Objective FRITZ to allow my force to cross the gap that I assessed would be covered by fire from that position and the whole scheme of manoeuvre from there on in was to use manoeuvre along a mostly concealed approach in order to attack the position from an unexpected direction.  The close assault piece in the woods was assisted by the concealment provided by the woods and me employing fire and manoeuvre using direct fire from the dismounts leapfrogging forward and their parent half-tracks.  It was one of my few CM triumphs.

[Flibby]

18 hours ago, Combatintman said:

I'm a rubbish player to be honest - mainly because I spend more time in the editor than actually playing scenarios.  I am very much like you - I totally get the theory, planning and tactics piece but never seem to be able to convert that into anything other than scraping victories with huge losses if I'm lucky.  What I will say though is that many players from what I see on the forum chats just struggle with the concept that people get killed in combat and get fixed by trying to avoid them altogether.  This leads to a paralysis in both planning and execution.  I think there's an element of that on show here and personally I wouldn't worry too much about it - as you say, sometimes "you just have to get on with it."  There are ways in which you can reduce the risk of course - suppression via direct and indirect fires, covered approaches, feints/deception (which only work when playing a human), obscuration, attacking from an unexpected direction, attacking a weak point or all of them combined.  Which ones you use all depend on the detailed ground and the resources you have available or the resources you are prepared to commit to that particular part of the operation/plan/scheme of manoeuvre. 

In the tutorial, I used suppressive fire on Objective FRITZ to allow my force to cross the gap that I assessed would be covered by fire from that position and the whole scheme of manoeuvre from there on in was to use manoeuvre along a mostly concealed approach in order to attack the position from an unexpected direction.  The close assault piece in the woods was assisted by the concealment provided by the woods and me employing fire and manoeuvre using direct fire from the dismounts leapfrogging forward and their parent half-tracks.  It was one of my few CM triumphs.

Yes I think that you may have hit the nail on the head there. 

In striving for finding the perfect SBF position, the perfect covered approach etc belies that most of the time there's going to be a fairly significant opposition in those key areas and you're just going to have to pick a place to overwhelm the enemy with fire and move in using the best positions you can.

[Monty's Mighty Moustache]

On 7/18/2023 at 10:44 PM, Flibby said:

Firstly, do you typically come up with the best avenue of attack first before determining key Terrain, or vice versa?

I am by no means an expert but I tend to do my OCOKA like outlined in my DAR (which I really must finish). It is really useful in the early stages and helps identify KT and NAIs and TAIs too. 

 

On 7/18/2023 at 10:44 PM, Flibby said:

If you have a dominating key Terrain feature such as a ridge overlooking your objective, how do you asses it's occupation vs the fact that you will be vulnerable to enemy fire from a lot of units as well as being able to bring a lot of fire upon them? Is that fight essentially the big pre requisite for the attack?

It depends on your forces I guess. If you have a boatload of artillery then there's no reason not to deny the terrain to the enemy with indirect fires, make him at least keep his head down if he's up there or dissuade him from trying to go up there in the first instance. If you have only manpower and armour then you'd probably have to find a way to take it.

On 7/18/2023 at 10:44 PM, Flibby said:

On avenues of attack, a covered approach seems to be regarded as a good path for an infantry attack, but this limits the opportunity for overwatch. How can this be mitigated against?

Movement techniques would be my go-to, you'd have to use bounds, either successive or alternating and provide all round overwatch to the element that's moving.

When I get away from the above (tired, CBA or am not thorough enough) is when I usually get into trouble, and I get into trouble a lot

MMM