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So, I played my first game of FOW today, which went swimmingly. I had a tactical question for all you veterans about what you would do in a similar situation:

Situation:
7-8 stands of Special Service Force in the woods, which I had just pinned during my shooting phase. I know that they'll be assaulting my 5 panzergrenadiers in buildings at the first moment. Because they are pinned, I chose to take the offense and assault them first. I fail miserably and their counterattack wipes me out.

Should I have waited in the buildings and let the assault me instead? In hindsight, they are Trained Fearless, so a 1/3 chance they would have stayed pinned and given me another chance to shoot at them. Had they been able to assault me, I'd get my defensive fire, though chances are I wouldn't do enough damage to force them to break off, and they hit in assault on a 2+. I thought my odds were better hitting them first, but would like to hear other opinions.

I tend to fight pretty aggressively, and if you had been in a situation where you needed to move that enemy platoon right now, for example, if you needed to push them off an objective or something, assaulting might have been the best option.

That said, I think holding out for more shooting would have been the better option in this case, assuming you weren't pressed for time. There are a couple reasons I think holding back would have been better:

1. Even though being fearless, they were likely to rally and unpin, on the off chance that they didn't, you get another turn of MG fire.

2. Firepower is one of the primary strengths of Panzergrenadiers. It's part of why they cost so many more points, even if they are only motorized. They are MG teams and get three shots per turn if they don't move and are unpinned, and in 3rd edition, they two shots even if they're pinned.

I'm guessing you had a command SMG team of some type, and four regular PzGren teams, right? So if your enemies were more than four inches away, you'd get 12 shots. If they're within four inches, you'd get 15. In defensive fire (assuming you were unpinned,) you'd get 15 shots. Even if you were pinned, you'd still get 9, and your enemy is trained. You only need to get five hits (not casualties, just hits) to stop a platoon from assaulting you, and with 15 shots against a trained platoon, your chances are pretty good. Even with only 9 shots, the chances wouldn't have been horrible.

In this case, I think waiting it out for another turn would have been worth it, especially considering your platoon was outnumbered.

Yeah you should have waited, one you are outnumbered, two Pining isn't that effective, three they are trained, you would have smashed them with fire.

If you are are in a building if they assault you they need a skill check to enter the building through an access. So it makes it harder for them to get you, even if they were Veterans, but their only trained so they would have suffered.

Plus anything within 8" of the unit assaulted can defensive fire.

So I would have sat still and waited to pour defensive fire on them.

Not a bad idea, but the fact you are in a building swung it for me.

I think if I had a better handle on the rules for assaulting, then I might have made a different decision. The way I read the rules:

1. # of attacking teams vs. infantry in buildings is constrained by the number of openings and the number of teams which can make it into the contested building, which;
2. Requires a skill check, in this case a 4+
3. Our opponent also had a sniper shooting on the defending PzG's, so there was always the possibility of being pinned, reducing their ROF.

In any case, it was a good game and pretty close, especially for a first game. We were testing lists for the Infantry Aces escalation league.

@Ifurita, at the end of the day if you enjoyed it great.

I played the SS the other day and forgot to use my PUMA's to remove GTG and used them to run around chasing Enemy Recce element (stupid move, if i had done it I would have made my chance to hit 1/3 instead of 1/6).

I learn, I make mistakes but actually half the time the fun is in the game. The new pinning rules etc, have made the game far more interesting (rather than the old "OMG they've had it, they are pinned!). Now it's more a case of clever tactics in deployment.

I would have been tempted to do what you did, pre-emptive strike. It sounds like you were unlucky because trained fearless is one of those Combo's that locks the enemy into being tarpitting any assault though they lose alot of men to Veterans, but will generally bounce back, unless they break off. You could have really smashed them if you got through.

EDIT - ignore my last, Special Service hit on 2+ in Close Combat? wow. Yeah shoot them to bits and avoid HtH like they have the plague.