AT43 Addict

Snipers are a versatile unit that can turn the tide of a battle with one well placed shot. Deciding how to best use them can be tricky. They must remain stationary to use their sniper ability which limits their mobility. If you create a full unit you are spending a lot of points on models that may be under used. If you create a sniper team your snipers are going to be quite vulnerable. Depending on how you use your snipers, each approach can work out well.

read more »

AT-43 is best played with objectives, this is well known, but with limited infantry forces on the board which should you go after first? Getting VP locations will give you an edge in winning the game early, while going after RP points will let you bring all your reinforcements onto the board first turn. Whichever you choose it is important to devise a strategy around your choice and execute. The following are a few of those strategies. read more »

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. read more »

Now that I have my Hussar I decided to put together a 2000 point Red Blok Frontline list that utilized it and see how it played out. I must say I really like the new list and found it performed really well. I was playing a Therian opponent and found that having 2 type ** afvs was invaluable. With repairs from the krasnye and from Urod there was little my opponent could do short of taking out an afv in one barrage. The sierps did melt pretty quickly but they got their primary job done. Ground the Banes. The list is as follows. read more »

In AT-43 you spend most of your time taking and holding points. getting RP are essential to getting your reinforcements on the board and VP are essential to winning. Enter the point holding unit. Its job is to get to an exposed VP point as fast as possible and hold onto it for dear life. Every faction can field such a unit and it is essential to have one in your force.

These guys take indirect fire weapons so they don’t all have to be exposed to enemy fire, and can help slow the enemy’s advance. They also should have a large number of troops as they will be holding onto those VP points that will be highly contested and WILL take some nasty indirect fire in an attempt to dislodge them.

Examples of point holders are:

• UNA: 12 Star troopers with flamers and medics
• Therians: Grim golems with flamers
• Red Blok: Krasnye Soldaty with grenade launchers and medics (Captain Vrachov optional)
• Karmans: Anakongas with flamers (Guru Lucius optional) or Wendigos with grenade launchers (Lucius optional)

These units will be extremely tough to dislodge either due to large numbers and/or stealth and will also be very difficult to advance on due to their indirect weapons. The Point holder will need to be backed up with an anti AFV unit as these pose the greatest threat to dislodging them.

The point holder is a key role in any AT-43 army, sure lists that let AFV’s control points are great for grabbing RP points quickly, but when it comes to holding onto a fiercely conteded point, nothing beats the combo of a large unit with medics/stealth and indirect weapons.

Lets face it, stealth is a real pain. Not being able to achieve any hits until you are within range 1 can put a damper on anyones day. There are ways of dealing with it though, some obvious and some not so obvious.

First up the standard stealth detection units. These units can hit stealthed units as normal. They include Red blok Dragonov Kommandos, Red Blok Zviezda and UNA with triple lens helmets.

The important thing to realize though is that ALL units can “see” stealth, they just can’t see them well enough to hit them. This makes any unit with a template weapon capable of inflicting damage on a stealthed unit. The two types of weapons are indirect fire weapons (grenades, grenade launchers, mortars etc…)  and flamers.

We’ll cover the non flamer weapons first. If shooting at a unit that has stealth that is outside range 1, all your shots are counted as missing. This means that the blast deviates a minimum of 10 cm and scatters as normal. If the opponent’s unit is sufficiently large and/or your blast template is sufficiently large you will still hit the stealthed unit. This makes the 7 cm blast weapons from the Cobra Snake and the 10 cm blast from Dotch Yaga especially dangerous.

Flamers are unique as they do not require a shooting test to hit. They may be fired at their full range of 25 cm even though this distance is outside the range 1 band for being able to shoot a stealthed target without missing.

As a side note. You can still teleport with Atis into a stealthed unit, you can see them just not very well.

So there you have it, even the armies without stealth detection can still deal with stealthed units. mortars, flamers, grenade launchers are all effective at hitting stealthed units outside the range 1 band.

Previously I wrote about the basics of the activation order. With the release of operation frostbite there are some additional rules that change things a little. When you have two units that can be represented by the same card you may choose which unit to activate when that card is turned over. You do not need to pick ahead of time which card will represent which unit.

Some players are claiming that this removes some strategy from the game. This is true, but it does streamline play a little. if you have 2 identical units on the board there is no need to mark which is which, you simply pick one to activate.

Personally I preferred the rules the old way but I suppose I will get used to this new rule. It doesn’t change a whole lot, and remember unless you’re playing a tournament just use a house rule, that’s what I do.

I’ve been playing some games with the available tier 3 units and this week it was the Baal Golgoth. I set up a 2000 point list for either side, the Therians using the Baal golgoth plus some min sized grim golem units and a unit of assault goliaths. On the Red Blok side I ran a standard list Urod, Krasnye soldaty, some RPG kolossus Dragonovs and molots.

The Red Blok list had tremendous trouble inflicting enough damage to defeat the Baal. With 16 armor even the Dragonov at-gauss need 5+ to wound. Atis was very quick in recognizing that the dragonovs were going to be the largest threat and quickly engaged and dispatched them. Urod wounded the baal on a 3+ but for a maximum of 2 damage. The Soldaty took rockets and needed to be in range of the deadly heavy flamer in order to engage so they weren’t much use.

I tried out some bacterial grenades to no avail. Essentially Atis gives the Therians the ability to remove enough strong AT firepower (dragonovs) to make killing the baal extremely difficult. When Dotch Yaga comes along it will be a different story, but I don’t think that Tier 3 should be the only way to deal with the Baal.

Some Quick math came up with the following. assuming that the Baal has no cover and a range of 3.

• RPG kolossus 1 impact (2 damage)
• Dragonov AT-Gauss .83 impact
• Urod .88 impact (1 damage) + .25 impacts (2 damage)
• Kossack .5 impacts (2 damage)
• Dotch Yaga 1.25 impacts (2 damage)
• Soldaty .33 impacts (2 damage)
• Bacteriological Grenades .33 impacts (2 damage)

As you can see nothing comes near the effectiveness of Dotch Yaga in defeating the Baal, there is nothing in the Red Blok arsenal that for equivalent point cost can effectively deal with a tier 3 threat. Which basically forces Red Blok to take a tier three unit because they never know if they will be facing one or not themselves. Even 4 units of min sized krasnye with grenades can potentially put out the same damage as dotch Yaga, but they have to get so close to the baal that its heavy flamer will just melt them.

At-43 plays very differently than other table top games currently on the market. The turn is dictated by what is called the activation order. Each unit gets a card and each player places the cards face down infront of them. Each player takes turns revealing the next card in the order and then moving shooting and resolving close combat with that unit.

This opens up a large amount of strategy since the order units activate becomes important. If a unit is destroyed before it gets to activate the player must still reveal that card. There are ways a player can manipulate their activation order by spending Leadership Points (LP). Leadership points are spent activating units without an officer, manipulating the activation order, assigning combat drills and using special abilities.

A player can manipulate their own activation order in the following ways.

• For 2 LP they may delay their activation essentially passing on their next activation, you may not delay twice in a row.
• For 2 LP on the activation following a delay the player may choose to activate the next 2 cards in their activation order.
• For 1 LP the player may move the card they are about to activate anywhere in the existing order and then reveal the following card.

These open up a lot of strategy with respect to the order of units. Double activation allows 2 units to act before the opponent gets the chance to move, repair, or activate abilities. It costs a fair number of LP to do this but it can be very powerful when executed correctly. Being able to move the upcoming card in your activation is also helpful. For instance if you realize you made a mistake in your activation order, or the unit that is coming up was destroyed and you dont want your opponent to act twice in a row and potentially inflict even more damage unanswered.

The strategic options in at-43 are great and this is what makes it such a fun game to play. Other table top games play like checkers, at-43 is more like chess.

For more details on the rules of At-43 you can download them at the at-43 website.

UPDATE: With the release of Operation frostbite, if you have two units that use the same card you may choose which one to activate when the card comes up. The units must have the same special weapons and officer rank for this rule to apply.

I enjoy playing the Therians but do have a small problem with how Babylon Zero works. For those that haven’t encountered this unit yet be thankful. Essentially it gets 4 nucleus cannon 2.0 sniper shots while still being able to move. This means that in one turn it can pretty much kill any AFV on the board. read more »