WARNO A Wargamer's thumb rules

Trivia

This guide is from my Wargame Red Dragon "A frustrated 3,100+h veterans guide to the n00bs." guide. However, having played Warno and put these principles to the test, I noticed they still held water. I guess it's because they are more mindsets then strict metrical definitions.

I also updated the guide and added a few rules.

1. Land Push Rule: Recon,Armor, AA - Optionally Inf And Arty

I see failures in this way too often. People push with recon and tanks, then get hit from the air and lose all their poop or push only with tanks, lose all of them etc.

If you can't see your enemy, you can't kill your enemy, this means your armor unit will already be dead or panicked when they get the chance to open fire, which reduces accuracy. They might even flee if they get hit too hard and their not most elite quality.

Thus the smart thing is to have recon to increase your “optics”, AA to defend against threats from the air, combined with your main armor thrust. If your assaulting a city from open terrain, you might want to bring your infantry with you and have the armor units cover them while they enter the city.

-You might also get hit with arty while pushing, to which there are two ways to defend against this, keep moving or have your own independent counter battery kill theirs. While dispersion of your formations might minimise the damage from arty.

-Also while pushing, keep in mind that stabilisation on AA reduces your micro-management, since you now don't constantly need to stop your AA in order for them to fire at air threats. Whie pushing, the range factor of AA isn't as important as stabilisation, since presumably your constantly closing the distances anyways while on the move.

-While pushing, in regards to Recon, you need to keep the features of said recon in mind, is the optics more important, say the terrain is full of cover or if full of threats, is armor etc. features more important. You might not also have large quantities of high quality recons, weigh all trade-offs carefully.

2. Use Some Basic Formations When Pushing

From the above examples, many push by simply selecting their units, giving them the move fast order and then hope for the best. However, if you do that, your probably going to end up with your AA units arriving first, get fed to the enemy, then your recon and finally your tanks get wiped from the air, since your AA units where just wiped previously and you had no response. Or similar to this.

Instead, maybe move fast to the nearest safe spot, then organise your units, make sure the right units arrives in battle first with the supporting units following close by. Keep the distances such that the different unit types can support each other. As an example, you don't want your tanks to run out of AA cover and so forth. If possible try also to take advantage of the terrain.

3. Consider The Exchange Value

So take the examples from the previous two thumb rules, remember the game rules. In destruction game-modes, then if your AA units shoot down lot’s of air planes, your tanks etc. kills enemy units, even if you lose your land push, you may still win the points if you do your pushes properly and the units killed are of higher values. Losing a Strela 10 in exchange for the A-10 plane, may often be a good exchange, since the A-10 cost more etc.

However, in other game modes where taking/keeping terrain is more important, quantity has a higher role. Though. the exchange value proposition is still there in the sense, if you can kill the enemies sharpest units, you can make their coming pushes or defences lower in quality and thus easier to break/blunt.

4. In Defense: Consider Terrain, Thumb Rule 1, And Potential Threats.

When digging in and defending, the terrain will often be your best friend, the terrain can hide you, extend and obstruct recon/firing ranges and so forth. To maximise the advantage the terrain gives you, you need to consider the same recon, armor, aa rule as in pushing, but now stabalisation is less important and firing ranges more important. The enemy will come at you, thuse closing the ditances they can engage you, thus if you can shoot first you have an advantage.

Another good thing might be to scout out the other players in the lobby, specifically what kind of units they like to use, what kind of deck their deploying and try your best to anticipate what will come at you. If you think the enemy will deploy arty, then maybe add some defence against that and so forth.

If you lose key terrain, do not be afraid of conducting counter offensives and other measures to trip up the pushing enemy. In counter offensives, apply thumb rule 1. Somethimes, if you lost the ground and are able to quickly mount a counter offensive, then you might be able to take your enemy at their weakest point, before they had a chance to consolidate their defence against you. Thus if able, contesting a zone might be smart, depending on the potential exchange values and benefits.

5. Cover Your Flanks

Cover your flanks, in multiplayer, you cannot always trust your team-mate to keep your flank. They might suddenly up and leave with their units, maybe mounting an attack and losing. Recon is the most important unit here. If you can see that something is coming you have more time to adapt, however, if you can spare the units, AA and light armor is also good.

6. Take Your Logistics And Supply Route Needs Seriously

Build logistics "trains", meaning cheaper/expendable supply truck in the front supplying units, while bigger supply truck in the back supplying the supply truck, while helos go back and forth with supply. Try to hide your supply units into the terrain if possible, so they don't get killed before emptying their supply.

Take the supply route into account, you do not want your trucks taking the fastest route, if it means getting in range of fire of the enemy.

Make your you build your deck so that it has enough supply for purpose, meaning the games start to end.

Some players may lock their supply from you so you cannot rely on others for it if you planned your supply badly

7. Consider The Need For Reserves

This is a good to have, optional thumb rule. If you expect to take casualties, it might be good to have fresh replacements units nearby. In some games, the amount artillery raining down from the sky constantly simply means you will bleed units, your defence positions will get hammered etc. If those positions are critical to be manned, your supply lines are long, then the fastest way to replenish those, may be to plan for said replenishment in advance by having reserves in a close-by safer spot.

Another good thing might be to have the cheaper units at the most dangerous spots in order to contest said spot, while the more expensive ones support.

8. Think Through Your Deck Designs

Many will tell you there are this or that right and only way of building a deck. Instead, try to figure out your own preferred play-style and design the deck for a purpose, play-style or strategy. Do you want quantity or quality? Do you want task-based or flexible deck? And so forth. Make the deck fit you instead of listening to all the experts who play the game differently from you anyways.

Also when designing, try to imagine how you would push, defend etc. and then add the recon, armor, AA etc. in accordance.

9. Mark Your Zones!

Oh man, I don’t know how often this has f-ing me, especially in 10v10 matches. Everyone hops on to the server, expecting to play 20 separate single player games, just happens to be together. Nobody marks, suddenly 5 min into the game there’s a preventable helorush on the flank, a flank that happens to be a spawn also and nobody marked that zone at the start to inform anybody that they where supposed to go there and secure it. So now the entire team, yes, I said the word team, has to scramble to go fix this f-up. Eventually all players end up having their attention spread out all over the map, instead of specialising into one zone. All this could have been prevented by a simple flare when deploying telling everybody that you got that covered, then send your units there and shot down that sneaky helo-rush and got the points for the effort.

10. Waste Your Enemies Ammo And Supply

Optionally, if you have the chance, try to make your enemy waste their ammo and supply. This applies mainly to AA and Arty. If you have cheap useless units, place them or move them in such a way that the enemy might think their easy targets and then kill them. In fact, what you are doing is wasting their ammo by giving them cheap piece meal units of little worth.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3040440827

A Wargamer's thumb rules