Advantage of Russian SMG platoons

[K K Rossokolski]

Good for assaults

[John Given]

The pros and cons were already mentioned, but I thought I'd chime in anyway.

If you have the late-war verison with some hard attack factors (I think it's about 4), you can do serious damage if you attack the rear armor.

Stick them in an unspotted, hard to reach spot, like a non-road forest hex, **turn off their op-fire,** and let the enemy come to you. They will usually overrun/capture disrupted units nearby. Never use them for direct fire on soft targets, unless it's a loaded carrier in an adjacent hex.

They are basically just "clean-up" units - let other units do the job of disrupting, these guys do all the assaulting and capturing. Although I don't really advise doing this, in an emergency, they can be double-timed and assualt more than one hex per turn *if* there are plenty of disrupted units nearby, several other (double-timed) SMG or other friendly units assisting, and fairly smooth terrain, for a kind of "ghetto banzai." (fatigued units assault, and resist assault, at one-half strength, but the SMG infantry have such a high assault factor that then can *sort of* get away with fatigue induced by double-timing)

I don't really like to use them for spotting too much - I leave that to the AT rifle platoons because they are only worth 2 vp per sp, compare to the SMG's 3 vp's per sp. Also, because the SMG's have a high assualt value, they make good "roadblocks" ...I've noticed the same phenomenon with japanese infantry ,and all nations' engineer units. Trying to assualt even disrupted examples seems to have a markedly smaller chance of success compared to "regular" infantry.

Btw, russian AT infantry have no assualt factor - a german halftrack could overrun them... :chin:

Hope this helped somebdy.