Thick wood battling in CMAK

[securityguard]

Lets say you're proposed with this problem:

1. You're moving infantry through some thick woods. Woods so thick that your tanks or spotters cannot see through it to where your infantry is at, or cannot support them in any way.

2. You have a split squad ahead of your platoon, on 'move on contact'. They finally make contact with about 4 Jager squads and get smoked in 5 seconds. Your platoon of men cannot see these Jager squads, but you know where they're at.

How would you approach this situation? It has arisen NUMEROUS times, since my friend runs to VL's and hides his units in the thickest woods possible to prevent support team help. As far as I can tell, whoever has the jump on the other person wins the fight no matter what (in this situation).

I've thought about 2 things: Area firing until they pop up or bring in flame throwers. Problem with area firing is the fact they might not pop up (not likely) OR your men will keep area firing while being fire at directly (somewhat likely). Problem with flame throwers is that they're slow and they will get INSTANTLY targetted and murdered before you can get the edge on the enemy.

The amount of infantry change in CMAK is so much. I've seen 3 guys wipe out a 8 man squad in the woods only because the 8 man squad couldn't fire at it (kept flickering in and out of existance, even the 'auto area fire' thing didn't help). Being so fragile, if you get jumped you're toast. It encourages rushing to woods or VL as fast as possible and hiding if theres large amount of cover. No matter how careful you are approaching this as the 'attacker' you get smeared.

[xerxes]

Infantry in heavy woods is certainly a tough nut to crack. Here's a couple of approaches.

1. Concentrate your force against a flank in the woods position.

2. Use suppressive fire on enemy infantry just out of LOS.

3. Sneak forward an entire platoon. Then open up. Sneaking FTs is also very effective. Ideally you support the sneaking units by using #2 to keep the enemy from spotting the sneakers.

4. Use small short range mortars with a double command range HQ. Sneak the HQ into LOS and then indirect fire the mortars.

Combing all of these techniques can be very effective at dislodging infantry in woods.

[securityguard]

Originally posted by xerxes:

3. Sneak forward an entire platoon. Then open up. Sneaking FTs is also very effective. Ideally you support the sneaking units by using #2 to keep the enemy from spotting the sneakers.

Awesome idea. The only problem is how slow sneaking is - if the support by area fire begins to fight directly, you might lose a ton of units or lose if you aren't fast enough. However I could see sneaking working in other situations, I will definately try that and area firing.

[Webs]

If you can't see them, they can't see you.

Go around them instead of through them.

There's also nothing like an arty barrage to knock out concentrated infantry in woods.

[dugfromthearth]

1) drop artillery on the woods

2) use flamethrowers. The trick is not to engage with the flamethrowers. Once your recon spots the enemy, move your flamethrower to just out of sighting range, then use area fire with the flamethrower - it will still break the enemy.

3) use area fire like FT with your infantry. Move to just out of sight of the enemy your recon found and then use area fire. Best is to use a turn of area fire, and then the next turn "advance" with one squad to see if the enemy is still in position.

The real key to this is that the attacker has the advantage. If the enemy is sitting in heavy woods, they cannot see to provide cover fire for eachother. If they bunch up, area fire will chew them all up quickly. If they spread out, hit each squad in detail with your concentrated units.

ideally you use a flamethrower or other weapon to break a whole in their line. then penetrate their line and roll up each side hitting their units one at a time in the flank.

[xerxes]

You only need to sneak the last couple of meters once you've ID'd the general location of the enemy.

Now a clever defender won't sit still, they'll hit your first scouts and then reposition or even worse, hit your flank as you engage. Woods fighting is a real art.

If you want a scenario that features intense infantry woods fighting try:

Chekovnya Woods

[JasonC]

Differential LOS and many-on-few is the name of the game in deep woods fighting. Meaning, you want an arc of 3-4 of your units to all barely have LOS to one enemy, while that enemy is the only guy with LOS to them. His buddies you want just out of LOS. The way to get this is small advances and good "head game" anticipation of where he will be and how he will be deployed. (Predictable is dead in this sort of fight).

You can't put everyone right on top of each other, or every burst suppresses them all. Spread them out even 10m, though, and someone barely in LOS to one unit won't be in LOS to the next, unless perfectly aligned "on line" for that route of approach. The farther you push into LOS, the less perfectly he has to anticipate the direction you are coming from.

If you push too far, to 10m away e.g., all his supporting-neighboring units will overlap their LOS and all see all of you. Then when they first pull their triggers all your guys go to ground. They pile on the nearest and chew the heck out of him. You don't suppress them back because your guys are too busying chewing woodchips.

So you have to make small movements, barely into LOS with the foremost guy, with his neighbors pushing on just a bit farther on his flanks. You want to go to ground, stop moving, and fire instead as soon as LOS distance is reached. Even if your first guy is pinned, if he rapidly gets help you can pin the original shooter and free him again. Then you get several on one working for you and KO the nearest enemy. The next turn you shift positions ever so slightly again, trying to pick off just one additional enemy unit.

You have to be patient about it and wary of enemy firepower. Think of the places you currently can see with several units at once - typically because they are equally far, making a sort of "shockfront" 25m from each e.g. - as basically yours, everything else as dangerous. Clear places by walking this LOS "shockfront" through the position gradually, not by moving your men through it rapidly.

The other thing to keep an eye on is the ammo counters. Infantry expends ammo very rapidly in close range fighting. The enemy will too. Use units with low ammo to give warning on the trailing flanks of your real force (the guys that still have ammo and yellow or better morale). Watch when the enemy goes heads down or fires slowly, and press when and where he is vulnerable.

[Bonxa]

If your opponent repeatedly use woods as defensive positions and you can predict somewhat where he'll be already at setup, use prep-fire. With green or conscript even heavies dont' cost much. Just put them on 5 min delay or something and one to three patches of woods will be cleared for you in a very efficient way. This obviously only works well under the above circumstances. But one or two "secure" holes in his line might enable you to go around other positions easily.

[Redwolf]

The whole thing is like a sailing ship or battleship battle.

Don't think of it as a fight in good cover. It is a fight with no cover at all, like a sea battle.

Both sides will see to move forces so that they have local numerical superiority.

The trick is to hold enough of your forces back until you located all the enemy troops and then go elsewhere.

If the defender trys to fight static line he will lose if you just pour infantry in.

[xerxes]

Engineers with satchel charges are also very good at this sort of thing. They can hurl their satchels just out of LOS and still get most of the damage. If you're going to push forward, using the satchels to suppress first is very effective.