The Commander Series Forum

I see that FAO and FAC have disappeared from most of the Russian lists. Does this mean scheduled artillery and airstrikes only?

Dave

Early war, yes - mid-late war, take a look at Scouts

Ahah, somehow I'd missed that! Thanks.

So scouts can request art but not air....so no direct air support for Russians at all?

That's right

Too right - most of it was burning

[wasn't me - I was nowhere near ]

Oh!!!!

and they looked so nice in their winter paintwork

Thank the lord: Sturmoviks are too good otherwise!

Don't tell me, James trashed you again

On a serious note, the only army lists in the whole of BKC2 not to have an FAO are the Russian Far East / Poland / Finland (pp118-9) and Russian Early Eastern Front (pp120-2); and the Russian Mid Eastern Front, (pp123-5) although they can use scouts as a pseudo FAO. The first Russian FAO appears in the Russian Late Eastern Front. (But not an FAC in any Russian list!!)

How is it that Chinese manage to have an FAO? (page 72) And all the other minor nations?

This exclusion for Soviet armies will mean they cannot access Artillery Support (other than scheduled) or new strategems like the counter battery fire (described on page 27).

The only consolation for Russian players will be integral artillery support, from within regiments or divisions, as per new units / rule described on page 26 under para 'Artillery Support Units'.

May be I have missed something in the last year or so, on this Forum, in terms of the debate about how Soviet armies used artillery in period 1938-1943? But I cannot see the justification for excluding them from FAO type command & control units? They were often quite lowly graded in past at CV6 but why none at all?

Carl (guess who plays early war soviets) Luxford

I always take the view that army lists are for guidance and will happily ignore their restrictions or modify them in those very few areas that i think doesnt match my understanding of historical TOE's.

Not possible if you are playing tournament type games of course but if you only play with friends at a club it should not be problem

No idea what the arguments are in this particular case though as soviets are not my thing!

Carl, I wanted to get the Russians right (I primarily play early German-Soviet war), hence dropping the FAO and allowing scouts later on in the war to call in artillery. Early war, the Soviets are limited to scheduled fire and direct fire support (by having artillery on-table).

The lack of an FAO does interfere with counter-battery somewhat (something I had overlooked when I made the changes), although to be honest, using an FAO to call in counter-battery fire is a bit dodgy anyway! So that is a game rule, rather than something historical.

I'm going to suggest allowing the Soviet CO to request CB fire once per turn, but this is on a command value of 6.

If the Soviet CO requests CB fire at a 6 and misses his command roll will it count as the CO's failure and end his turn?

Yes