five principles of patrolling and my little silver people

[nicolo]

This is part of a multi-segment section that will be rolling out on my blog here on bolter. http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...logid=1063& Anyway, thought I would throw it up here as well and see if I can get any advise, ideas on how to make it better, it will be a work in progress, and hopefully will progress to something people can find useful, as well as be fun for me. Anyway thanks for any suggestions.

 

So going to switch gears for a second from posting pics of projects, but don't worry I will be back on that theme here shortly. I just received a bunch of bits from scibor out of the warstore, as well as for fun ordered one of those megabitz bags. I'm very satisfied, and scored some cool stuff that will be making their way onto my models here shortly. As I get a little more progress I will post it up for all to see.

 

Anyway, we are playing a 2000pt three round tournament at my local game store this weekend. It should be fun, the owner puts on a tourney once a month at different point costs and with usually pretty fun themes. If you are in Missouri, swing by Gamers' Hideout in St. Robert, MO this Saturday and check it out or play. The more the merrier and the better the prizes .

 

Now I am getting more into the painting and converting aspect of the hobby, and that is mainly why I started this blog, to force me continue to work to improve and maybe get some comments of either encouragement or even better constructive criticism and tips to get better. But I was drawn to this game through a love of the fluff and a desire for a competitive fun game to play. I am by nature a competitive person, it manifests daily with my chosen profession. To me a fun game is one where both parties are trying to destroy the other, and after a brutal battle a winner emerges triumphant. As such playing the game is still my first choice.

 

Now I will not claim to be a master of this game, there are plenty of people who know more about it than me. I have only been playing for two years now, basically since fifth edition, and while in that time I have won or placed top three in almost all of the local tournaments I have played in, I have never played on the larger national tournament scene minus a regional showing at 'ardboyz. I would love to go to the "tournament" scene and play, unfortunately my job is often very restrictive in when and where I can run around the country to. Now while my experience isn't vast, or amounting to what most would call big fish in little pond syndrome, what I do bring to the table is years of actual real life combat experience.

 

I know it's just a game, but one of the things that I love about it is that real world dynamics and thinking do actually apply. It's just warfare in a different scale, and once you learn the combo's, rules, powers, etc it's still just that: warfare. I'm not going to go on about tactics vs. strategy, or the many different combo's and techniques that float around the internet. Hell, I learn most of them by reading others' reports and articles published on the net. What I do that I believe has helped me out is that I apply the principles of patrolling and constantly run through my ooda loop, as just a few examples though there are others too. Planning, Recon, Security, Control, and Common Sense are the five principles of patrolling and they start for me with list design and mission analysis. From there they continue throughout the entire game.

 

PLANNING: By Planning I mean deciding upon an army and having a good feel for both its weakness and strengths. Don't delude yourself; no matter how balanced there is always an inherent weakness in a list or aspect of how it plays. I have learned to always wargame in my head the worst case scenario and plan how I would react to it. This has kept me alive in life, and ironically now helps me in playing a game that is rapidly consuming my life. This doesn't mean obsess about the perfect list, play rock paper scissors, or min max your list to death. I try to build effective lists, but ultimately I can't bring myself to play the "best" list if it isn't fun for me, no matter what the math or test games tell me about its effectiveness. I have learned though that unconventional lists can do just fine as long as you have an honest understanding of where you are weak and where strong. This all goes into the planning stage.

 

RECON: Now as tempting as it might be to break into your opponents house and see what their list is going to be, so you can bring the ultimate rock to his scissors, this is not what I mean by recon. And for the record I am not condoning or suggesting breaking and entering to win a game. Here I am talking about the age old adage of “know thy enemy.” Study the local scene; study other codex’s, read anything and everything you can about other playstyles, etc. The more homework you do, the more effective you mental wargaming exercises will be and minus the ever present hatred of the Dice Gods (who truly and violently hate me as shown by my amazing skills to roll ones when playing my Deathwing), you will be better prepared and more likely to make that “correct” decision and proper application of force during the game. Here too I include a proper breakdown of the missions that you will be playing, and while you don’t have to tailor your lists to the mission, you do have to understand how they may affect how you have to play your lists at time. This is a whole other topic as well, and one in which I will touch on later down the road. Common misconception of the average Infantryman is that he is not intelligent. When in actuality the Infantry has a higher average raw intelligence score than any other MOS in the Army. In short your head is a weapon, hone the blade of knowledge or insert some other cliché of your choice, do your homework or don’t cry when you get hit with a surprise on the table top. Ignorance equals death in this game and in life.

 

SECURITY: Now we are onto the actual game. Security. The end all be all, alpha and omega of life in combat. A must always. I always deploy to mutually support and never leave units unprotected on accident. This can be as simple as leaving a dred to back up your devastor squad. Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t sacrifice models, or throw distraction and harassment units at my opponent, but those are always intentional. Sometimes security is found in speed, and I will make sure to move my tanks a little more to make them harder to hit if I think I am about to get charged. It can come in many forms, but basically, unless you are playing that monster hoard rush, where you have a thousand models on the table and can soak up losses while continuing to steam roll forward, always consider how to protect your pieces. Cover, supporting squads, over-lapping fields of fire, whatever just don’t leave them flapping in the wind and wonder why they got smashed before you could do anything about it.

 

CONTROL: Which flows into the next principle; Control. You move your models; they don’t move you (though I am sure some of you hardcore fanatic types out there hear them whisper in your ears at night). Consider what you want and need them to do, and move/shoot them accordingly. Have a plan, even one that changes, and act upon it. I am going to talk more about this with the OODA loop and how to apply a flexible plan a little later. In short for now though understand plans change, and what you need to be looking for is that “correct” decision right now, and how it applies to what you want that desired endstate to be. You figure out where you want to go and you keep inching towards it with every move, even the moves backwards (retrograde) are still designed to get you to that goal. You exert control where you can and keep focused on the goal, not the flashy and shiny distractions out there.

 

COMMON SENSE: The final and most important Principle of Patrolling and the one so rare and uncommon that the Army had to write it down as a Doctrinal term: Common Sense. I should stop here and say “Nuff said!” but I feel compelled to keep going. THINK, THINK, THINK. Don’t run your scouts at some ThunderCav, or some other one-sided craziness, unless it serves as a definite step towards your goal and is a deliberate part of your plan. Even then, rethink the plan and make sure you can’t come up with a better way. Before each move, before each shot, before each assault stop for a second and apply this fundamental. Don’t get caught up in the moment, lose track of the goal, or let your opponent play those crazy Jedi mind tricks they like to try. Before you make a rash decision that may cost you the game, pause and think about what is going on. Apply common-sense; decide best course and then act. Then rinse and repeat.

 

Well I have already rambled for way more than I intended to, yet still haven’t gone into the depth the issue actually needs. I will continue this shortly. Next time I will go over the Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act method of decision making, as well as The Five Elements of Maneuver, and a more detailed template for doing Mission Analysis.

If you are interested the missions for the tourney I’m playing in this weekend they can be found here http://gamers-hideout.com/e107_plugins/for...ewtopic.php?272

 

It should be a fun time, the local crowd here is awesome, and I have yet to have a bad experience win or lose at the store. I should hopefully have decided upon a list to play as well by then, floating between my Blood Angels who I have been neglecting lately or my Deathwing. I’ve played the whole Grey Knight scene a little too much lately, plus I am not finished converting them to have them ready for 2k pts. Oh well, anyway thanks if you have bothered to sit still and read all of this. Please if you have any comments, critiques, questions, rants, ideas, or otherwise go ahead and throw a comment down there. It would be nice to know I am writing for more than just the little silver voices in my head, either way though I am still finding this fun, so I am going to keep rocking on.

[DarkGuard]

Before I attempt to read and digest this, can I mention one thing first? Paragraphs, spaces, the enter key. At the moment it looks like a massive wall of text and that is hard for anyone to read through. If you were to add a few more clearly defined paragraphs, make sure there's at least a line between each one, break it up with sub-headings then it'll be easy. I'd love to comment on it but you've got to help us all.

[Brother Nihm]

*Massive wall of text crits you!*

 

What DarkGuard said. :P

[Brother Valerius]

*Massive wall of text crits you!*

 

Nicolo uses "Wall of Text".

 

It's super effective!

[nicolo]

Thanks for the tip. My apologies, I wrote this last night while on duty, and I just hammered through it. I like to think I am good at a lot of things in life, but computers and everything that comes with them are definetly not on that list. That's another part about getting myself out there and doing this, hopefully it will help to improve me in this area as well. No matter what, you got to keep learning in life. Anyway, hope that makes it easier to digest/read. Please keep the comments coming, and maybe I will be able to hone this into something useful.

[Something Wycked]

Do your homework or don’t cry when you get hit with a surprise on the table top. Ignorance equals death in this game and in life.

Even then, rethink the plan and make sure you can’t come up with a better way. Before each move, before each shot, before each assault stop for a second and apply this fundamental.

Absolute, solid gold. This is a mental game, and the person involved who thinks most clearly, most accurately, most deeply, and thinks most will likely win- dice gods permitting.

 

I learned a sort of counterintuitive principle from playing chess: after you have found the perfect move to play, stop. Think. Examine every piece on the board again, inspect every possible move and their consequences. Then and only then, after you have verified through examining every possible move that the one you had picked is the correct move, make that move.

 

I'll be watching this thread, nicolo :huh: Hooah!

[Ming]

I can see what you are applying for the 5 themes above.

 

I'll give you a little story hidden here that I did not put on my B&C blog concerning a game I played last week. I essentially played vs "that guy" at my FLGS that nobody wants to play. It was fun, with my mind going through your 5 elements. I also had the start of a cold going and really just did not feel right or well. I figured to get my game in and leave.

 

PLANNING: My planning was pretty poor. I've been very busy, and tend to have just one army list with me when I go to the store for wednesday night fights. I just make lists based on my collection and overall strategic build goals, with no idea who I might be playing against or what plays best. In this case I had an old list I just grabbed and brought, which has some severe issues vs some opponents. Heck even when I look at the list I wonder if the math adds up. For wednesday nights it would be better to carry around a few lists taylored for different types of opponents.

 

RECON: I had played this guy in the past. He always uses Tyranids. He loves certain units. He loves the ones that poop out more bugs, he loves the living ammunition that can fly around terrain, and he loves doom. I ignored all of that in the game. Heck, I have not bought nor read the Tyranid Codex. I have no ideas about their current strengths nor weaknesses. I did not review my opponents list before the game. He filled me in on wounds and strengths and toughness as we went on. I did not proof his information, which is sometimes known to be fiction. He plays with large lucky dice, which might be...weighted. He talks the whole time. If I had not played him, he would have abused some newbs that were considering it.

 

SECURITY: I played up Kantor's Kastle in a corner (table quarters deployment), and had units fairly close and supporting, but left myself wide open for Doom. Since I had not even read the rules for Doom, much less the bug pod it is delivered with, that put me in a bad light. Looking across at all the huge bugs and giant swarms of gaunts, I set up a gunline with dismounted troops in tight clusters for maximum shooting, not good for security of key units. (interesting rules for Doom...cost me a key unit because I did not have the common sense to move away from it...)

 

CONTROL: I listened to the opponent explain his shooting ranges for his S5 and higher bug weapons, and sat back from the FEBA to make sure I would not be assaultable till at least turn 2, and to minimize risk to vehicles. Of course I set a dev squad up behind a razorback, with the intent of moving the razorback on my turn to uncover them. Of course the razorback was wrecked, so the devs had to walk around, wasting much needed firepower. In fact even with precautions (and suspicions of dice luckiness) I lost 2 razorbacks turn 1 - both were wrecked. BTW the mission was annihilation. Vs the bugs I determined to shoot the big ones (poised to assault) and then the little ones as order of priority, since this list was short on power fists considering the numbers of big bugs on the table. I ignored the pooping bugs, and with "lucky dice" they were putting out 12+ each per turn.

 

COMMON SENSE: Sometime around turn 3 I decided the game was stupid enough and my attention to detail was gone, so I just released the reserves (assault terminators) from their landraider and just play things to the end point. It is stupid to run into the center of a huge swarm (the original gaunt mobs supplemented with 88 more pooped out) with 5 terminators to kill a trygon, but I did, leaving me standing there to get overwhelmed. But again, the purpose was to start throwing units away just to end the game quicker and go home.

 

Yes, I lost. Killed alot of bugs, though. Even killed the doom thing and its pod.

 

The next day I called in sick and just stayed in bed.

 

Regardless, every one of your 5 elements above were broken by me, and I lost the game for it. "That guy" went home happy and confident about his win. When he was packing he momentarily lost sight of his 6 lucky dice and almost came unglued with worry.

 

I still have what is left of the cold a week later. Skipped playing last night. I'm doing some planning and recon for next week...Maybe I'll have a rematch...and use his dice for my saves....but not morale checks...knowhutImean?

[nicolo]

Thanks Ming for the report. Sometimes we all have days were we just kinda want to play, but don't want to do the "work" of the game. I feel you about the bugs too, I have had some crazy bad games against shooty bugs with my hybrid blood angels. I always have a hard time figuring which models are what and do what, I finally ended up broking down and bought their codex and started reading.

 

Don't you hate "lucky" dice?!! I have multiple bricks of dice, but I have always wondered about those guys I see playing with one set of leadership dice, one set of armour save dice, etc. Not ever trying to call people cheaters without hard proof, but playing against them and their magic saves always leaves me feeling a little raw about the whole deal. Roll the dice and check, if they are hinky, bring them to the store and call him out on it. Once you sacrifice your integrity for a game you don't get it back, there are too many people like that out there as it is.

[DarkGuard]

Just to say that wall of text is now looking a lot better :). I'll try to get round to reading and commenting as soon as I can, am a bit busy at the moment due to real life demands unfortunately.

[Guest Drunk Guardian]

Looks like a great start - thank you. Looking forward to reading the rest!

[Khorneeq]

In theory- it looks great. Simple principles to follow and I (as lots of You probably) have known them earlier.

In practice- it doesn't work for me.

I'm getting carried away with the game too much, to focus on using this rules. But I am doing it "intentionally".

Just want to have a good time playing, winning is not crucial. Just an extra benefit of a good game. :rolleyes:

Maybe sometimes I should stop and think a little...?

[spartan249]

Great minds think alike.

 

I do all these things you describe, though I learned the format slightly differently (USMC).

 

For everyone who wonders why some games just don't go well... listen to this guy. He knows what he's talking about.

[Something Wycked]

For everyone who wonders why some games just don't go well... listen to this guy. He knows what he's talking about.

And more than just listen to this guy; don't be afraid to put together an After Action Report (even if its just in your head!) to figure out the reasons behind what went right and what went wrong in your games, and these principles are a good guideline to start your report. It'll make you a better tactician :tu:

[nicolo]

First off I have to apologize, I had completely intended to continue this thread by now, unfortunetly real world work commitments have prohibitted me from getting to it as quickly as I wanted to. I will have my spin on the next section up tomorrow evening latest. Looking to go over the OODA loop/ flexible real time decision making, and a few other things.

 

To those of you who have read and especially commented, I really appreciate it. Whether you wish to take the game super seriously or just have a good time moving your little guys on the table, I hope you can get something out of this, even if it is to decide that this type of thought isn't for you.

 

Something Wycked: I am definetly building to an AAR discussion, the majority of the players in my area are military, mainly due to the location of the shop outside of base, and we often do mini aar's with each other after friendly games and tournaments. I have found it to be hugely instrumental in my progression playing 40k.

 

Again, I will get some more up here very soon, and thank you for reading.

[nicolo]

So to continue our discussion, we are going to move into developing a flexible real-time decision making thought process. Or a stream-lining of the “evaluation” phase of decision making. This has a two-fold benefit, one it will help you to “see” all the options (expanding your situational awareness) on the board, while coming to the “best” decision for you at that time. And second it will make you a more efficient and faster player, which will please your opponent, as well as allow you to get more turns in under time constraints.

 

To do this we must have a full understanding of the battlefield and the mission. As I have said previously, the more knowledge you have the better off you will be. Here especially the more “factors” you have to base your analysis off of, the better your understanding of the current tactical situation will be. This will allow you to be able to develop a plan based off of what is going on, and therefore helping to determine what needs to be done.

 

Now an Important note: This thought process is not something only for the shooting phase, or assault, but rather for each model in each phase/aspect of the game. You need to get into the habit of fully utilizing all of your forces together in all phases to realize their maximum potential. A bad habit I see a lot is: people quickly moving all their models, but then taking time to “think” in the shooting phase, only to realize that they didn’t line up their shots and are not maximizing the potential of their shooting phase through lack of planning in the movement phase, thus then messing up their assault phase as well.

 

Observe: So since we understand the mission, the armies (hopefully at least your own), and have applied the previous steps we are now fully step one in the OODA loop. Observe everything; take in the whole picture, know what and where every piece is. If you are unsure of what it is or what its capabilities are make sure you ask your opponent. In this stage we are taking in everything; how they deployed, where/what are the mission objectives, time remaining, and position of friendly and hostile forces. Take it in, there is no such thing as too much tactical data, and as you practice you will find that you can take more of it in and filter it faster, while starting to develop patterns based off previous experiences.

 

Orient: This is the subjective one. You must now take that “big” picture and filter it in regards to the mission to determine what your current goal is. Here you must take in to consideration a variety of constantly changing factors, from which turn it is, to greatest individual threat, to what the opponent’s most likely course of action is, to what their most deadly course of action is, etc. Here is where you have to start to put things in perspective of target priority (and I’m not going to go into too much detail in how to determine that for there is an excellent thread on just that topic here in the forum, if anyone could post a link that would be awesome). Basically you need to decide on what you wish to accomplish in the micro (the inching towards victory) that will help you get to the macro (victory). There are many ways to win a game of 40k, it’s not all killing everything, or holding every objective, even though that certainly helps. I have won games even though I had almost no models at the end of the game, or that my opponent thought he had the initiative and I was forced to run away the whole game. I’ve done this by keeping my eye on the big picture and making the necessary moves in the short term to keep putting me towards that goal, often while my opponents got tunneled into trying to wipe me out or catch my fleeing jump troops. You have got to keep your eyes wide open, and not get distracted by shiny squirrel syndrome.

 

Decide: Alright so we have an understanding of what is going on, we know what our desired end state is, and we have determined several options to get there based upon the current situation, what you think the opponent will do, etc. Here is where we take those options (and in the early stages of the game there will be many) and compare them to each other to select the best one for the current phase.

 

Act: Well we’ve made a decision, it’s time to commit to it and move models, roll some dice, pray, or whatever you decided. It is now time to realize the potential of the choice and see what the actuality is.

 

Now it is not enough to simply recognize good choices and make them, for if your opponent is doing that as well you will probably find yourself in a rock, paper, scissor war of attrition. To truly utilize this and turn it into an advantage, you must realize that your opponent whether consciously or not is doing the same thing. The goal is to use your decision making matrix to influence and cause your opponent to react to you. This is done through what is commonly referred to as Maneuver Warfare. Where simply put you decide and implement moves that causes your opponents loop to narrow in options and forces them to move along your desired path. We will talk about this a little later, for now we will keep it to simply making a flexible decision.

 

I keep saying flexible, and what I mean by that is simply that you have to constantly assess and reassess the situation. The age old adage is still very true it is better to make a good decision now than a great decision later. That being said, just because you have made a decision it doesn’t mean you are committed to it. One thing I have found that a lot of my opponents and myself have in common when we lose is that we become fixated on one thing, and even though it no longer makes sense in the “big picture”, we refuse to change our tactic/direction. This is a very common occurrence. When I teach Soldiers how to clear an objective one of the hardest things for them to grasp time and time again is not getting tunnel vision. What I mean by that is that everyone sees the “bad guy” and everyone wants to go get him. They “Tunnel” in on him to the exclusion of all else, letting their situational awareness be reduced to a single target, and thus often missing the other “bad guy” hiding behind a tree (bigger tactical picture).

 

When going through your decision-making-matrix you have to constantly reassess, and if at any time either your goals change, or you find out your decision to get there is not working; then you have to be willing to let it go and change direction. This can sometimes be contrary to common belief of what a model should be used for or do. In fact I often catch a lot of grief for it at my local store, where I have become infamously known for running mephiston away from a fight. To me it doesn’t matter if he jumps into a crowd and kills a lot of models if that doesn’t do anything to help me to get to my goal. I may move him up planning on assaulting a particular target, only to redo my loop and deciding that assaulting that unit is no longer my best option based on how the turn/game is evolving. I see many people in a sense over-commit themselves to decisions made with previous information which is no longer relevant to their desired endstate based on how the game is progressing. The game can change with every move of a model, shot taken, and save made. That is one of the things I love about it. You have to be willing to change with it and understand the ebbs and flows that the phases/game takes. Always check your decisions based on the facts of the action. Then take that information and throw it back into your observations and start your loop all over again.

 

Well, let’s throw this out in the open and see what people think so far, there is still a lot more to come. I want to ideally continue to develop these concepts and continue to introduce (re-hash for some) some concepts that for me have been beaten into my head through real life applications, and try to relate them to this great game we all play. I would like to continue to move through the thought processes and conclude finally with the final evaluation of the game (After Action Review) but I’m keeping this thread flexible and we will see where it goes together. Again comments and critiques are always welcome. I am still enjoying myself, and I am going to keep on rocking with my “little silver people” provided work doesn’t keep hijacking all my time. Hope this is helping someone, but either way it’s helping me a lot to get it out and put it down. It’s making me “think” a lot about why and how I play, and reminding me of why I enjoy it so much (besides my rapidly growing pathological obsession with owning every 40k book I can get my hands on). Anyway thanks again, and if you have any suggestions please throw them out there.

[spartan249]

More solid gold. I endorse this thread cause I'm too lazy to explain it in so many words.

 

However, it's all theoretical talk that has a big possibility of whizzing over readers' heads. Examples to help illustrate principles (like an example about flexible decision making, whether anecdotal or hypothetical) will help the image-oriented learners digest the principles with more retention.

 

Keep it rollin, man. I just hope that I'm not the only one reading this.

[nicolo]

Spartan249- Good point, I will try to add some mini battlereps/pics to illustrate some of the principles.

 

Feel free to contribute any of your own that you feel helps to illustrate, I will do my best to include more vignettes to make things a little clearer. I had intended to post up pics from the tourney that I was talking about in the beginning of this thread, but my first opponent had a bad day and was getting upset and I didn't want to ruin his fun more by walking around the table snapping pics. On the bright side (for me at least) I took first and walked away with a new box of Sanguinary Guard and another ten bucks left in store credit, not bad for three rounds and a five dollar entry. I will try to illustrate some examples here though from the tourney, because especially the first round there was some mistakes which had he been following these principles my opponent might have avoided.

 

ha, and yeah I hope you are not the only one reading this too :D

[Gothical]

Excellent thread, giving me lots to think about. Have to let it sink in for a while though (and try to fit it around all my dissertation work on Alexander the Great) before I can really comment <_<.

 

Sorry, not too much to add - just thought I'd let you know that you're not alone, and that this is an awesome thread (totally subscribed)!

[Something Wycked]

Edit: That link to the target priority article: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=153225

 

I keep saying flexible, and what I mean by that is simply that you have to constantly assess and reassess the situation. The age old adage is still very true it is better to make a good decision now than a great decision later. That being said, just because you have made a decision it doesn’t mean you are committed to it. One thing I have found that a lot of my opponents and myself have in common when we lose is that we become fixated on one thing, and even though it no longer makes sense in the “big picture”, we refuse to change our tactic/direction. This is a very common occurrence. When I teach Soldiers how to clear an objective one of the hardest things for them to grasp time and time again is not getting tunnel vision. What I mean by that is that everyone sees the “bad guy” and everyone wants to go get him. They “Tunnel” in on him to the exclusion of all else, letting their situational awareness be reduced to a single target, and thus often missing the other “bad guy” hiding behind a tree (bigger tactical picture).

This principle probably wins me most of my games.

 

I'm not claiming I'm the most flexible, non-tunneled thinker out there, because I'm not. I do have practice in freeing up my perceptions through the OODA loop, but I'm just as perfect as everyone else and I make mistakes.

 

That being said, I think I'm pretty good at sensing when my opponent has tunnel vision of one variety or another and taking advantage of it. A friend of mine is an easy example of this- he plays Black Templars and he will often put together a lot of points in an HQ unit. The thing he loves most is to drive that HQ unit (most often in a LRCrusader) straight at my HQ whether my HQ is good at assault or not, or at another unit that he deems most threatening. My response is to set up my units in such a way as to make this very costly for him. It can apply the same to every opponent you face.

 

More generally: when you are practiced with your OODA loop and you can run through the process more accurately and quickly than your opponent, you can get "inside" their OODA loop and begin to predict what your opponent's moves will be- especially if, as nicolo mentioned, your decisions are narrowing the choices your opponent has to choose from.

[nicolo]

Something Wycked- Thanks for posting the link

 

I definetly suggest reading it if you haven't, heck read it again even if you have. It is very important to understand the concept of target priority. It will help you to focus your loop in the right direction.

[nicolo]

Slightly back tracking, but next up is going to be using METTT_C to help you evaluate and streamline what to consider each turn. Mission, Enemy, Time, Terrain, Troops available, and Civilians on the battlefield (we can ignore the last part unless you are playing a campaign or some other such game). Stay tuned more to follow shortly.