DAK: Commander

Having completed enough Commonwealth troops to field one side of a battle I'm now able to move onto the opposing force. As Mr T had already purchased some Italians I opted for a box of the Perry Deutsches Afrika Korps infantry with supporting weapons from the same range. The big box of plastic infantry gives more than enough for a platoon strength force and then a few packs of metal round out the force.

First up with have the command section made up of a Lieutenant, senior sergeant  and a couple of riflemen. This is almost exactly the same as the Indian army command group. For the DAK we have a couple of metal models and a couple of plastic ones, as they are from the same range the blend in well together.

With these commanders in place we can have a look at what you can command your men to do on the table during a battle. Each player starts with the same seven cards in their hand at the start of a turn. Each turn is divided into up to seven activation phases where players each reveal a card and then carry out some or all of the actions on the card. Once the cards are revealed the player with the higher score on their cards (draws are handled by an initiative counter) carries out their actions and then the other player does the same.

There are three types of action that a card could allow you to undertake and each unit is only allowed to take two actions each turn. Those actions don't have to be taken together and the game has a reactive fire mechanism that also uses up an action. So you could move a unit up and leave it covering an area so it can take a reactive shot later on in the turn.

The red aiming symbol allows a unit to take a shot or make an assault. This is your chance to lay down some fire without it needing to be a reaction to an enemy move. As you can see there are five Engage Order symbols available each turn for your forces so you want to use them wisely.

The blue arrow is the Movement Order symbol and this allows you to walk or sprint your infantry across the battlefield. Vehicles use the same order but as you would expect move much more quickly than the PBI. Sprinting allows your infantry to get around quickly but at the expense of making saves against shooting more difficult. You don't want to be caught sprinting in the open by an enemy squad.

The last (green) symbol is the Tactical Order symbol and this is used for a couple of different things. Firstly it allows a heavy weapon to unlimber and setup to fire, and possibly more importantly it allows you to rally troops whose morale is wavering. You only get three of these each turn so you probably want to get that heavy weapon out early in a good spot so you can concentrate on your troops morale later in the game.

In the game squads are split up into Teams each with their own leader model. I've been representing this with painting the team leaders of a squad with the same coloured base. The reason this matters is that if your squads team leaders are within 30cm of each other you can split the actions on a card between both teams. Otherwise only one team (or vehicle / heavy weapon) can benefit from all the actions (up to two activations) on a card and you are likely to waste some. You can also play a card (up to twice in a turn) on your commander and he can take a free action of any type for himself and spread the actions on the card out to any team leader within 30cm.

Working out how to get the best out of this action economy is going to be central to commanding your forces to victory. 

I've also completed the first infantry squad which come as a standard eight man squad with two SMG armed leaders, an LMG, and five riflemen.

More infantry and some terrain to hide behind are on the way.