The choice boils down to how you want to use your snipers. If you want to have a unit you want to be firing every turn with their sniper ability picking a full unit of snipers with medics is quite beneficial. The snipers will be far more survivable and able to take out more enemies before going down. This offsets the point cost of having 300+ points sitting at the rear of the board.

On the other hand if you want to have your snipers lay in wait for an enemy to make a mistake, pop up and take out an officer or hero, then a sniper team is going to be the way to go. In this situation you will be looking for a last turn activation to move into position followed by a first turn activation to get the sniper shot off. Since you’ve only spent a small number of points on this unit having it wiped out isn’t going to cause too much grief, especially if you’ve bagged one of your opponents heroes.

I personally prefer the special weapons team approach that I don’t need to activate at all on turns where no target is in sight. They lie in wait for my opponent to slip up. for 75-125 points the psychological effect they have on your opponent can be entirely worth it.

When you have a full unit your unit needs to be engaged every turn if it is going to earn its keep, it will also be more likely to attract indirect fire. How you play your snipers is really a matter of personal preference as I’ve seen both methods be very effective.

Mixed VP – RP

This is the most common approach, send your point holding unit towards a VP location while your smaller support units take some RP locations and give covering fire from there. This is not a bad strategy at all and requires you to design your reinforcements in such a way that you can bring one unit on in the second turn and then the rest the following turn. In this strategy you get a slow build up of forces over time to make up for the firepower of troops that have been killed or grounded in their turns.

RP Blitz

By focusing more on RP points you can have all your reinforcements come onto the board on turn 2. This type of strategy lends itself to a massive turn 2 assault on the enemy positions taking advantage of your newly reinforced firepower. An opponent that does not recognize this and hasn’t dug in properly will be in for a world of hurt as all those extra guns come blazing down on them turn 2.

You could potentially be behind in the VP count if your opponent managed to take some VP locations early. For this reason it is a good idea to put any of your grounding forces on the table turn 1 in order to try and stop this from happening.

VP Blitz

If you see your opponent is light on grounding weapons the VP blitz can often pay off. The idea is to go straight for the VP points on the map and hold onto them for dear life. The idea is to get a point lead and hold onto it, even if it means you suffer heavy losses. You will still want to be generating some RP but only with one long ranged unit. Red Blok’s Frontline list excels at this sort of strat as they can park a sierp on a RP location and still be able to bring in reinforcements. The rest of their army rushes forward to pick up VP locations and fight off the advancing enemy. Having a good point holding unit is key for this strat to work.

You will generate a first turn VP lead and force the enemy to come to you. If they want to win they must take points from you (flamers anyone?), being behind in VP means you have to go on the offensive.

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.

platoon 1 – 16 LP total

• 1 Sierp 200 AP
• Urod 570 AP
• 8 Krasnye Soldaty 1 grenade Launcher 2 Mechanics 150 AP
• 9 Dragonov Kommandos 3 AT-Gauss Sergeant 310 AP
• 3 Dragonov Groupa S 125 AP

Platoon 2

• 1 Sierp 200 AP
• 1 Hussar (sargeant) 445 AP

This list is very easy to split and given Frontline’s ability to take RP points very quickly, you can leave UROD off the board in reinforcements and grab enough RP points to bring him on in  turn 2 (Scenario depending). This really leads to a stunned look on your opponents face when he realizes you’re putting 6 units on the board turn 1 with 3 AT-Gauss guns, 2 sierps, a hussar, a repair unit, and if that wasn’t enough, sniper support.

I’ll see how this list stacks up against Karmans and UNA later but so far I’m really enjoying it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I recently played a game against the UNA where they were using Stark in his Copperhead. The UNA must deploy Stark first on the board and is a big juicy target for Babylon zero. I killed him on Babylon’s activation in one volley because I could re roll my failed damage tests. His cover was ignored. Now I could see zero fire being more balanced if you were required to use the “sniper” profile of the nucleus cannon 2.0 (only 1 shot instead of 2) but as it stands it seems extremely over powered.

I won the first game very easily but the UNA player came back with a good strategy. Using a morning star list, and Col. Stark on foot he took a good number of missile teams and laser guns. This put an end to Babylon Zero, but not before she had taken out a cobra snake, again with 1 attack.

Herein lies the problem though. This unit essentially is forcing a very specific build on everyone that faces Therians because if they are not equipped to handle Babylon Zero with overwhelming firepower they are going to get melted. Red Blok faces an even greater problem than the UNA, at least the UNA missiles ignore cover, practically the only option for the Blok is to go heavy Dragonov At-Gauss.

Infantry heavy lists seem to be the key to beating her, but I don’t think that anyone should be forced into a single cookie cutter list to just counter one unit. There is an interesting discussion over on the at-43 forums it is about cheese in general but a good portion is devoted to Babz.