The Commander Series Forum

Recce overruns Commander, drives him back. Pass another test, do it again - only need to do that three times and you have a dead commander.

Legal?

Pat

I recall a thread on this a while back called 'Cheesy use for Recce' IIRC which covered this. Was in the BKC Tactics section which is no longer there, which I've only just noticed. Nothing to stop it in the rules but in my view pointy stick time.

Why pointy stick? group of armoured cars come across some enemy officers prancing around in a jeep why not shoot them up a bit

Adrian

Surely if your HQ is in a position to have this happen to them, they deserve to spend the rest of the war as a PoW

Didn't German elite units do this in early WW2 France. A group of them walks into the town hall, shoots up the place and lies about huge armour columns coming down the road. The commander surrenders all his infantry brigades to one of Romel's reccy units. I'm sure I read this in a book but can't remember which one, any ideas?

Sounds like a good plan to me, Pat.

Hell No JB - i am trying to garner opinion for arguments to STOP wilkie doeing it to me when we play in a fortnight!

Pat

This shouldn't be much of a problem unless you place you command units very far ahead of your own troops.

Recce units are fragile. Use opportunity fire to stop them. With every contact your command units moves backwards, bringing the recce moving behind it to opportinity fire range/LoS of new units from your side.

Most (all?) recce units have CA of 2. With hits on 4+ and saves on 6 they need more than 4 contacts on average to KO and HQ or 6 to KO a CO. That's a lot of successfull commands to get through - Even with 2 recce units "attacking".

The side purueing this tactic is wasting his recce unit most likely. Recce's can't use the recce action to get the +1 CV or direct fire and receive move commands during the same turn. I'd much rather have the +1 CV than go on a wild chase to possibly kill an enemy command unit. Even if he'd succeed on the chase the recce is most likely in a position (i.e behind your lines) where you easily destroy it the following turn. In most cases he is not getting the most out of his recce units by trying to destroy your HQs.

And of course the final option is simply deny contacts by enemy recce by placing your command units within 5cm of your units. Units are not allowed to go nearer than 5cm of enemy unless they Close Assault. And it so happens that recce units aren't allowed to initiate close assaults. I.e they can't enter the within 5cm of visible enemy units.

iA

You could always slip a piece of card under the recce unit and ping it onto the floor - that should annoy him

Nice...you could do this as a combo with the pointy stick and that should make him incandescent with rage; I'd call it the pointy-stick-slidy-card-trick

And your opponent would become poppen head mitt spitzen und sparkzen

Pontic

Und flippen und floppen liken carpen fishen.

Oh I forgot to say - run like hell when you do it

Why pointy stick?

Well it's all about what recce units were trained and used for. They were trained to fight yes but they were also trained to avoid contact their weapons were to get themselves out of trouble. In a British Armoured Car Troop the actual recce would largely be done by the Scout Cars or on foot, lower profile so harder to be seen. Turrets were taken off Stuarts and Daimlers to give a lower profile. A Recce unit thet starts a fight with a command post is asking for trouble with an enemy retaliation/reaction and would not doing it's job.

Taking out an isolated HQ yes perhaps it gets what it deserves, sending Recce units out on SAS/LRDG type raids pointy stick.

Combine this with the use of FAO's here

http://www.blitzkrieg-commander.com/Content/For...

and you have a game where CO/HQ/FAO/FAC flit around the table trying to spot the emeny, Recce trying to overrun them and your combat units sitting around waiting to be pounded by artillery or roll forward and sweep up the leaderless hordes.