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The Combat engineer is an often overlooked specialist, mostly due to a lack of understanding about what they are capable of. Why would you want to give up a second medic to get a guy that can blow up terrain? Removing cover from the game that is hiding your unit seems counter intuitive to winning, but it's really not.The reason you would want to blow up your own cover is twofold. Firstly you can increase the amount of ground covered by a significant amount as you no longer have to either waste 1/2 your movement going over an obstacle or waste movement going around it. This is a no brain-er if your next piece of cover is 20 cm away and you need your full rush movement in order to reach it.

The second, and far more tactical use is that it lets you go from being completely hidden to all guns blazing, without triggering overwatch. I'll let that point sink in for a second, blowing up your terrain does not trigger overwatch. This gives way to the following tactic:

From full hidden cover when the enemy is overwatching your position blow up your cover. Shoot at the enemy with all your guns. Move back into full cover, hidden from the enemy. Without the combat engineer this sequence is impossible as revealing even one model leaves you open to overwatch fire.

Using this tactic you increase the number of units bringing all their weapons to bear on the enemy while ensuring that the unit with combat engineers is protected 100%. Having a unit that can fire every turn without the fear of return fire is very attractive, but you need to have sufficient terrain density in order for this tactic to work. AT-43 is a game meant to be played with lots of terrain if you aren't using a lot, you're removing most of the tactical fun from the game entirely. Combat engineers are available to Red Blok RPG Soldaty, Red Blok Spetsnatz Kommandos and UNA Star Troopers.

Interesting. let me give you my preconceptions in return now and ask you to mold them rather than ask my usual questions.

Some points. the only units I have found that qualify to use combat engineers are RPG Soldaty and Star Troopers. Both are large units vulnerable to enemy attack, so this looks to me to mean that these units benefit most from double medic as they may take incoming fire for more turns than usual simply because of unit size. Star Troopers being by far the larget unit you can take in a UNA army so it stands to some reason that a 12 Star Trooper squad benefits from 2 medics more han any other in the UNA list. In fact I am hearing of Star Troopers being around only as caddies for Colonels. Now RPG Soldaty are somewhat similar but share their status with Krasny, so while less pointient it appears no less true. Besdies Krasny have a valuable ongoing double role for specialists, repairing vehicles, this is not siuational at all and yet takes up valuble medic space. So it makes sense in a way to use RPG Soldaty as the caddy unit for an officer instead.

Now both of these units admittedly are the shortest range in their respective armies, and may want to close quickly, this is true snd blowing up terrain might help. but they are also the weakest or joint weakest and have the most to gain for sitting behind said terrain feature and taking cover.

This is how I read it so far. I can see combat engineers being useful in specific scenarios, or tag teams with a vehicle. For example RPG soldats blows up the container, a Red Blok strider besides them can now see past and has a straight run for a stomp attack crushing plenty of enemy infantry on a rush move. Possible, but from what I see outside some sort of 'siege' scenario I will be prefering double medic for RPG Soldats ansd Star Troopers, if I ever bother with them.

Having played AT-43 for more than a year and having concentrated on the Operation Damocles and Frostbite campaigns, I would say that most of my armies are built according to the missions or scenarios at hand. Look at the map that you would be playing, the mission objectives and terrain; some have many uses for Combat Engineers, others have less. When used properly, their strategy is very efficient.

It is not a pretty sight to have a terrain that is blocking an enemies LOS disappear and be facing flamers. Ouch!!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing to remember about Field/Combat Engineers is that they now have the "Minefield" ability introduced in the Operation Frostbite campaign book. For 50 A.P. an engineer can lay a minefield within range 1 of itself at the end of its unit's movement. Any unit triggers the mine if at least one of its members travels even partially over the card representing the minefield. This makes the Combat Engineers more useful.

People on the AT-43 forums have reported that minefield are of dubious value for the AP cost. I can't personally report because I've never used them...but some of the things I've heard revolve around it being too easy to get around minefields.

Maybe people can speak to the tactical value of minefields in the game...

The minefield is the size of a playing card and costs 50pts?

That is steep allowing for the movement rules. This will only be of use in the event of a bottleneck, and then if no other routes exist it could be game breakingly powerful.

It might be better if for 50pt you gained the ability to deploy minefields, one per turn.

After all if you can spam Hekats you should be able to spam mines.

You can't spam Hekats anymore. You used to be able to, then they changed the rules (although they called it "clarifying" the rules).

You can still spam them, one a turn is spamming.

I hear about how vulnerable they are blah blah. You dont even need to do anything with them. The first costs you 4Lp, the second 3Lp (because you dont move the first, the third 2LP (likewise). You can end up building a retinue/screen for your character, so you dont need to use your army for same. After four turns you are turning profit on each Hekat summoned.

The most comon Therian tactic thread is about keeping the commander alive, or destroying it. So why not include a free resource generating Hekat wall?

So the only way to get to your commander is by flanking and trying for an assault that way, and the Commander is surrounded by Hekats so assault is not really that good an idea anyway.

Sure the Hekats are not generating LP when you use them, but thats to keep the commander alive, and is what LP are for. Also the enemy must haver expended resources to get past your army and to your commander as both he asd the Hekats should be screened from the front.

Orlanth wrote:You can still spam them, one a turn is spamming.

I hear about how vulnerable they are blah blah. You dont even need to do anything with them. The first costs you 4Lp, the second 3Lp (because you dont move the first, the third 2LP (likewise). You can end up building a retinue/screen for your character, so you dont need to use your army for same. After four turns you are turning profit on each Hekat summoned.

The most comon Therian tactic thread is about keeping the commander alive, or destroying it. So why not include a free resource generating Hekat wall?

So the only way to get to your commander is by flanking and trying for an assault that way, and the Commander is surrounded by Hekats so assault is not really that good an idea anyway.

Sure the Hekats are not generating LP when you use them, but thats to keep the commander alive, and is what LP are for. Also the enemy must haver expended resources to get past your army and to your commander as both he asd the Hekats should be screened from the front.

I don't really understand what you mean about a Hekat wall. If your Company Commander is behind a Hekat and, lets say, I shoot at it with a unit of Steel Tacs, the Hekat would receive the first impact, the rest would hit the CC's unit. Of course, if your CC is Tiamat, then she would receive all the impacts because she is a size 4 and the Hekats are a size 3. Then again, you could give the Hekat a Shield Formation drill and Tiamat would roll for cover saves...... If your CC is an infantry fighter, you can always snipe him and then it really doesn't matter where you are positioning your Hekats.

Most of the games I play are scenario or objective based. If you are building a wall to protect your CC, by turn 4 you would have probably lost the game based on the objective of the scenario. Wouldn't it be more efficient to hide your CC behind a container and put the Hekats to use?

I am theoriesing here and looking at ways to use Hekat spamming as a way of genereating LP. This should work over time, especially if your commander is next to a nanogenerator wherras your Hekats will apy for themselves quickly.

The idea is that you are behind containers anyway, this is to stop flanking moves, well actually to inverst in LP generators on legs that can happen to counterattack if you want them to.

also I am thinking that Hekats you spam also end up in the activation sequence, want something to go last so that you can be the one to grab an objective, play and dont activate the Hekats first to help waste time and hopefully have some units to move after all others are done.

From what I am reading Therians run below with one of two units less that their opponents, will this not even things out?

Your suggested strategy is a rather immobile one.

But AT is a game the is rather based on moving units. Without moving units your enemy will collect reinforcment points and objectives. You are going to loose the game by round 4 since your oppenent moves in all his reinforcments while you are still stuck with your starting units and some hekats.

Please explain that one to me.

If I sit at the back and spam Hekats it frees the whole of the rest of the army from doing anything related to protecting the general, the Hekats do that. So they can ALL march forward or otherwise focus on objectives, I am seeing more units in the fight, not less. Now I might be labouring under a false assumption that most generals lurk. It is clear that Urod is wasted that way, and possibly some others. But I would not want to be risking an Sigma/Omega unless I was taking Tiamat and even then the hidden rearguard retinue would remain just to ensure I always had at least one Alpha to body hack.

-off topic A question on this if you dont mind. Body hacking: Does Tiamat only go for overseer attachments characters in golems only or might she morph a Baal Omicron or whatever who happens to be closer? I am assuming the former but it would help to know for sure. I also take it you can lose Atis or Urash this way, even if you have a cheap Alpha elsewhere who happens to be further away. Is this so?

This goes for every overseer closest to her, so you should check which overseer is closest to her or you will cripple yourself. Also, if she hacks an unit overseer, she kills the whole unit.



@Hekat Spam
Normally you don´t keep your commander in the back. A good army uses synergy effects. By keeping the commander in the back you loose some of the synergy effects. Hard to explain, but after some games you will know.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:This goes for every overseer closest to her, so you should check which overseer is closest to her or you will cripple yourself. Also, if she hacks an unit overseer, she kills the whole unit.

Ao a Wraith Golgoth Alpha is an 'Overseer'? I thought overseers were Golem officers.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:
@Hekat Spam
Normally you don´t keep your commander in the back. A good army uses synergy effects. By keeping the commander in the back you loose some of the synergy effects. Hard to explain, but after some games you will know.

Tell me more.

All therian officers are overseers.