Tanks vs Mech vs Infantry; Part 1: Infantry

For my first post about strategy I figured I'd start with something very generic, which is the decision to play a tank, mechanized, or infantry company. Back in V1 I started with infantry(FJ to be precise) and played mostly infantry forces for almost all of V2(along with a smattering of mechanized and tank companies). With V3 though, I seem to keep leaning more toward mechanized or tank forces.

Infantry Companies
Infantry forces are always a solid and reliable choice. In FoW, infantry tends to be a great jack of all trades sort of force with excellent resilience when on the defense, and typically more close assault power than tank units. Best of all in many cases they also typically have a large number of points left over after filling their compulsory choices which enables them to get the best selection of support choices. Moreover, infantry will typically defend in most missions which can be a significant advantage in forcing the burden of attack onto your opponent(with the new missions in V3, this is less significant).
Their are also fortified infantry companies which will be able to defend even when faced with an infantry opponent. The fortifications these forces bring can be quite useful in impeding an opponents attack, or in protecting one's own troops. However, too many fortifications can prove a serious detriment as they take away points needed to purchase troops. Therefore, I'd typically recommend taking a minimal complement of fortifications.

One change inaugurated with V3 was to require that infantry companies which have more than one fully armored non-recon tank platoon place any additional fully armored tank platoons in reserve if the mission has the reserves and prepared positions rules. (fortified companies must put all fully armored tank platoons in reserve in these situations).  The reason for this was to make infantry forces look and act more like infantry companies and less like the tank delivery systems some infantry forces resembled. It does however, cause infantry players some trouble when defending vs. a force with lots of armor, especially in mobile battles where anti-tank guns and the like may  have trouble getting into position.

The solution to this is to slightly change the nature of one's support platoons. The key phrase in this case is "fully armored tank teams" as many tank destroyers(M10s, Marders, Achilles, etc) are not fully armored and so instead of taking 2 tank platoons in support of an infantry force(as many V2 infantry lists did), one should take one platoon of tank destroyers and one platoon of tanks. Alternatively, one might put a huge number of points into a single tank platoon (such as a large unit of Tigers, Panthers, IS2s). This does offer some significant advantages in concentration of force and firepower, but can sometimes make it difficult to respond to multiple simultaneous threats. When using but one armored platoon, It's often advantageous to leave some of the platoon behind in a good firing spot in cases where an opponent will likely present multiple threats. A few infantry forces also allow the selection of an individual warrior tank(such as Barkmann in the case of the SS lists in Earth and Steel). This can offer a very significant advantage as they deploy after most of the opponent's forces and can always be on the table regardless of the reserves rules.

On the attack, well supported infantry forces have the best ability to quickly seize objectives from dug-in opponents. However, they tend to be slow moving and have limited ability to redeploy, so deployment and planning for how and where one will attack is key. On static defense, infantry have no equal, however their ability to redeploy is exceedingly limited, so deployment is critical. Oftentimes, I can correctly predict whether a defending infantry player will win or lose based solely on their initial deployment. Proper deployment requires analyzing where the objectives are in relation to terrain and what forces the attacker has at their disposal and predicting what the attacker would be most likely to do given these factors. Typically it is not possible to defend all objectives perfectly, but by placing strong forces at the objective which is most vulnerable can often tempt the attacker into taking the longer or otherwise more difficult route to get to a different objective. This can often buy time for reserves to arrive or mobile troops to respond.

New England Regional Championships

Having played Flames of War from the twilight of first edition and strategy games in general since almost as far back as I remember, I've become quite good at them (perhaps unsurprisingly) and even become a bit of a community leader in New England as far as Flames of War goes.

That being the case, I intend to use this blog to post up tactical and strategic tips as they occur to me as well as local and regional events which I'm involved in. All with the aim of promoting discussion and activity throughout the wider New England community.

Currently I'm involved in planning and coordinating the New England Regional Championship Tournament Circuit which will ultimately conclude in September with the Championship event itself. So far the following tournaments have been confirmed as part of the circuit:

April 7th: Hidden Hobbies; Wareham, MA; 1625pts Mid War
April 28th: Open
May 12th: Battlestandard; Manchester, CT 1500pts Mid War
May 26th: Open
June 9nd: Game Castle; Londonderry, NH, 1750pts Late War
June 23rd:Adler Hobby; Hollis, NH; 600pts Early War
July 14th: Open
July 28th: Quarterstaff Games; Burlington, VT; 1500pts Late War
August 11th: Open
August 25th: Time Machine; Manchester, CT; 1575pts Late War