Offense or Defense

[Dog Soldier]

Some say PzC is all about the attack. Some say the defense is the finer point of the game.

What do like to play, attacker or defender?

What are your favorite attack or defensive tactics?

One defensive tactic I like to use it the reverse slope defense. Set your boys up behind the crest of a hill with a picket line of mobile troops out front to hold a thin line and spot for the artillery. Give the attacker lumps with the big guns all the way to the top of the hill. When he arrives all fatigued and victorious, loose a couple of turns of direct fire from the entrenched troops and add an assault or two and watch as the former attackers tumble back down the slopes they came up while I round up a few units as prisoners.

The hard part is to lure him on to commit to the frontal assault and not let him get around the flanks of the hill.

Dog Soldier

[Mike Bowen]

Attacking is more fun in a general sort of way but I think to be really good at Pz Camp you need to know how to defend, that shows a truly good player IMHO. Having said that learning to defend can be fun and as mentioned springing the odd counter attack can be very rewarding.

I also think learning to pace a big game is very important. You have 200 odd turns for a reason you need to rest regroup. You may not win quickly but you can loose quickly.

Just played Smolensk and the joy I got from destroying a GD bat was almost as good as winning a hard fought game, if defending when you are getting kicked all over the map as your historical ego did these little victories are what keep me going.

However attacking against a position where you take a 10:1 loss ratio is not fun and I have just spent 50 odd turns craking my head open and racking up VP for Foul in a game of Salerno. Once he was dug in there was little to do and I found that quite depressing.

Also the tactic of choice to surround disrupt and destroy is perhaps not right in historical terms. Isolated units could keep going for ages Arnhem for example and I think an option so that isolated morale effects took a while to kick in based on the morale of the unit would be interesting.

Sometimes blocking a river 10s of miles away has an instant impact and that seems wrong.

Sorry I wandered off the point a bit. The main thing is normally attacking or defending is good fun which is why the games are so excellent.

Mike

[Rev Rico]

Mmm... Hard to say definitively. Both have appeal to me for different reasons.

Of course, I am playing a Minsk CG right now and I do NOT enjoy being pummeled turn after turn. Who would? So I took great joy in ambushing my opponent with what little panzers I had!

Some games give both opportunities to both sides - like MG44.

Bob

[Dirk Gross]

What Mike said.

The zoc kill thing has always been a part of the game system in all eras. The weak zoc ought to help since partially surrounded units can "squish" out, but only if both sides don't use that to actually totally enclose a defender. I've never tried that myself (an agreement with my opponent), although some of the desert scenarios use weak zoc. Also, some of the scoring is based on killing a lot of enemy units rather than getting objectives.

[Dog Soldier]

Bump.