Countering Stealth
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.
You know, I really thought you weren’t allowed to shoot–as in even TRY to shoot a stealthed unit. Is this an interpretation of the rules or is it literally stated this way? Sorry, but I’m travelling and don’t have my book with me. Do you feel this goes against the spirit of the rules (like players who try to target indirect fire on a wall so they can hit the soldiers hidden behind it in the blast… glad the FAQ stopped that nonsense) or is it something all players will be comfortable with?
I don’t think it goes against the spirit of the rules myself. The way I view stealth is that it does not completely hide a unit from being detected, what it does do is prevent it from being shot at with any degree of success. I know the enemy is moving somewhere over in that general direction so lets pour a ton of template weapons over there and hope to hit them.
One of my favourite sayings is “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades” and that definitely applies to the stealthed units.
In AT-43 stealthed units are detectable you can see them on the battlefield you know where they are moving to and can move your troops to counter their own movement, you just can’t shoot them with precision weapons very effectively because you don’t know exactly where they are. Template weapons just need to be “close” and they will always miss and scatter to represent the fact the gunners are simply guessing at the exact location of the enemy.