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Pioneers are dangerous- to their friends


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This has just happened to me twice- pioneer squads moving past known minefields spontaneously threw their satchel charges at the mines, killing nearby friendly troops. The pioneers in question were doing movement to contact in one case, sneaking in the other.

I lost 7 men in each incident, many of whom were crack or veteran pioneers!

So I recommend taking out minefields right away if you will be having pioneers in the area at all.

(Though when I deliberately targeted the next minefield, the poineers ignored it for several turns until I gave up trying.)

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I had the same thing happen to me in CMBB a few times. When a minefield is detected, I get the recon group out of there and get the pioneers in to clear it.

The recon group then provides overwatch while the satchel charges do the work and no one gets hurt.

Well, most times...

EDIT: Because my grammar sucks.

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I remember a Soviet AI Assault where I had no chance and dug in way to the rear.... a T34 drove on a minefield and got immo'd. A few turns later there was still no contact when I heard a big bang. After the game I investigated loading old saves. The T34 got immo'd. Casualties: 1. Then pioneers arrived, removing the minefield. total casualties after that turn: 2 tanks, 40+ grunts. A TH team had killed 1 tank and a few grunts. None of my other men had fired a shot smile.gif . The Soviet engineers had one satchel charge less.

Gruß

Joachim

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Yes, Makjager, that's CMBB I was talking about.

Joachim, that's a great story! If only we could claim that such lucky events were all according to our plans!

I am now playing an operation in which my forces are almost all pioneers, and they are having a really hard time because most of them are armed only with rifles. (Nov '42) I can't remember whether pioneer teams are better armed in other years, or if there are different versions of pioneer units, but I keep imagining that pioneers would normally use as many SMG's as possible, beyond their official issued weapons. I know I've heard the term Sturmpionier somewhere...

I think to represent a historical pioneer unit, especially in urban fighting, one should include regular infantry platoons using SMG's and grenade bundles as well. I admit I am guessing about this.

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  • 2 weeks later...

You are correct there, mrpwase. What I am suggesting is a scenario in which you take, say, 1 or 2 platoons of infantry, perhaps jaeger or recon infantry, with lots of grenade bundles, plus 1 or 2 platoons of actual pioneers, and use the whole bunch to represent a pioneer company armed for urban fighting. (Actually, I don't know whether pioneers normally fought together as whole companies, but that's the case in this operation I downloaded) I checked and found that in later years the pioneers are indeed better armed with smg's and MP44's anyway.

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The early German pioneers squads are armed better than regular infantry as each squad has 2 SMGs and one LMG for 12 men. The 3 squad plts are made up of 6 halfsquads in CM.

If you select LW pioneers - those have the classic 10 men '41 rifle squad pattern.

If you are doing a scenario, you can use PzPio plts armed with 2 LMGs and 1 SMG per 9-men squad from later periods (IIRC). Just select a later date, buy pioneers and set back the date.

Gruß

Joachim

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Originally posted by aco4bn187inf:

This has just happened to me twice- pioneer squads moving past known minefields spontaneously threw their satchel charges at the mines, killing nearby friendly troops. The pioneers in question were doing movement to contact in one case, sneaking in the other.

I lost 7 men in each incident, many of whom were crack or veteran pioneers!

So I recommend taking out minefields right away if you will be having pioneers in the area at all.

(Though when I deliberately targeted the next minefield, the poineers ignored it for several turns until I gave up trying.)

Move your pioneers 25 meters or less away from the mines and they don't need to throw the demo to disarm them. Do not "area target" the mines. It can take anywhere from 1-5 turns.
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