Welcome Cadets to the Red Army Higher Command Training School 3. You have, no doubt, heard that the Soviet Union stands on the precipice of Global War with the West! You are to be leaders at the front line; soldiers in a conflict much larger than yourself! You will lead young spirited "VOLUNTEERS" into battle. Some, who are eager to follow in their forefathers footsteps in the great patriotic war!
Red Bear will review today the basic tactics of a company construction and the factors that should weigh on a commanders mind.
1.0 Battle Plans
The first thing you should consider when building a Red Force is which part of the Red army excites you the most. I always find that building a force around a playstyle works best,
1) Defend
This is a slow game that includes plenty of timing decisions such as when to reveal your ambush, and when to go gone to ground and fire, trying to draw your opponent into a kill zone or to take opportunistic shots where you can. While you will mainly play on battle maps that are dependant on your opponent, if you run into a similarly defending player, you will play what are referred to as "Fair Fight" missions which normally have no advantage for defenders or attacks largely.
2) Attack -
This battle plan includes the use of combined arms, to bring down the West. This would work to slowly eat away at him and his support. A slow dance of death as you play a high stakes game of Scissors / Paper / Stone to break down his force, gain control of the centre of gravity of a conflict and then pressure him into submission. This would normally mean games played will have the attacker with his full force on the table at the start of the game, with the defender having some advantages such as minefields. Normally there is a clear line of conflict and the ability to play defence in depth for the defender.
3) Manouver
The battle plan is for players who wish to go dashing around the battlefield with fluid motion. The battles fought generally end up on diagonals or quarter tables that mean no flank is truly safe. A static defence will generally suffer here as they commonly have to move out of their deployment zone.
2.0 Formation or formations
As you can see, you can bring multiples of the same formation if you wish and/or a mix up for better combined arms
You will find in Team Yankee, a Unit can bring a wide number of formations to the field. Bringing more than one generally means spreading out your points. The benefit being that it would be harder to make you quit the field due to formation morale. However it also means your force generally would consist of several units without any serious hard hitters.
3.0 Platoon count
Each game has a win condition and this can easily be found on any of the missions you roll for. While we would all want to achieve the objective at all costs (and soviets normally pay huge costs in casualties), A good commander must know how to do so while maintaining his company combat effectiveness. Thus the value of a win is determined by how many platoons the winning company lost in taking its objective. If your force has more than 9 platoons, you will ignore the first platoon you lost. This is a huge deal for Soviets who often lose platoons.
Use units that are cheap, such as BRDMs, Gaskins and or an East German Tank formation allie unit to boost up to this number.
4.0 Reserves
Back in the good old days, Bear would just select all unit and right click on the enemy base (Red Alert). but in actual fact, it is unlikely your entire force will be engaging the enemy from the outset. Most missions incorporate this by calling it RESERVES.
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Platoons in Reserve
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Often times, Veterans will tell you to keep an even number of platoons. The reason for this is RESERVES. Yes, as in real life, an army's force doesn't travel like a blob in Red Alert. It moves in a certain formation and when contacted by the enemy, filters to the Area of Operations. Reserves normally have players nominate half of their units to be in reserve which will start to trickle onto the battlefield after a certain time. If you have an odd number of platoons, the number of platoon you nominate to be in reserve would be rounded up. I.E a 7 platoon force would nominate 4 platoons to reserve and have only 3 on the table at the start of the game.
5.0 Conclusion
Bear would always advise you to play a few demo games, borrow or proxy a force before committing to a certain playstyle. Determine your style of play and the kind of force you would like before going into the buying part. The last thing you want is to have built your entire core and then realise what you expected from your army and how they perform is vastly different (dice rolls excluded).
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