Hexsides and Hand Grenades

Yesterday I pulled out the World at War expansion, "Death of the 1st Panzer" and decided to play scenario 1, "Blind Sided".  I've played this scenario before many times and my Soviet tanks almost always end up as heaping wrecks strewn across the West German countryside. Trying to improve a bit on my Warsaw Pact tactics, I ended up playing this same scenario several times just to see how different approaches would affect the outcome.  In this short article, I'm going to demonstrate the very different flow of three different playthroughs of this scenario and the lessons I learned from them in regards to World at War tactics. In the scenario, "Blind Sided", the West German 1/171 Panzergrenadiers is caught by surprise by elements of the Soviet 1st Tank Army on the opening day of the war on May 14th, 1985.  The Soviet commander's job is to capture all the city hexes of Walkerburg in the southwest corner of the map while the West Germans, cau...

So you think you know World at War by now?  There's one essential ingredient you need to know how to use in order to bring it all together.  Helicopters! Let's go through basic helo movement and combat today. Helo Movement: Helicopters basically have two modes. These modes are: Flying - a flying helicopter can move Hovering - a hovering helicopter cannot move (duh).  It must switch to flying mode before it can move. A helo's mode is denoted by which side of the counter is displayed.  Hover mode (left)   Flying mode (right) You'll notice that the hovering helicopter can use its AP firepower while a helicopter in flying mode cannot do so.  Also, the fact that flying around makes it harder to hit stuff is reflected in the higher "to hit" number for the helo's HE firepower in the lower left corner.  You'll notice that the flying mode HE is underlined, which indicates that the Cobra is capable of moving fire (as all attack helos ...