606 Special Forces Battlefield Doctrine

Unfortunately this forum seems to be dead, which is a pity since people are still playing the game. I’ll just do one round of brief updates to my posts and will only continue posting comprehensive content if this revives.

I guess this post is where I reveal some of my secrets 😉 Forget the formal structure of the other guides, I’ll just describe things a bit and then go into some of the tactics that are very effective with the 606 SF.

The reason why I feel the 606 SF is so effective is because the strategies that work well against them are only most effective on a small number of maps, and tend to resemble the strategies that newbie players often get punished for using. Consider the following:
– Set-piece infantry-heavy strategies (Bulldogs) NEVER work because they get completely demolished by Sniper fire
– Set-piece artillery-heavy strategies (Royal Battery) NEVER work because they get completely demolished by the insane range of Fire Coordinators
– Any commander with low-HP units (Mongrels) doesn’t work because they cannot hold a front line against Rangers

There you go, virtually guaranteed immunity against 3 commanders. What more could you ask for? Of course, the “hard counters” involved are actually tactics, not individual units. You cannot call the Sniper a hard counter to infantry if you let it get spotted, since it gets killed extremely quickly. You cannot call the Fire Coordinator a hard counter to artillery if you don’t deploy enough of them because of poor points allocation, or don’t plan ahead and move them far enough forward because you were too busy bombarding targets that didn’t matter as much. You cannot call Rangers a hard counter to the Mongrels if you let them get easily spotted (which the Mongrels SHOULDN’T be able to do) or didn’t deploy enough Drones to spot targets and take advantage of their increased range. It’s definitely not as simple as elsewhere, where Javelins and Heavy Tanks murder enemy tanks wherever they go, or Heavy Artillery always squash infantry etc etc. I think you get my point.

(If you were wondering, yes the Iron Raiders are the one commander that can reliably beat the 606 SF, because they don’t have a hard counter unit or tactic against those massive Heavy Tanks. SF Tanks are too expensive and Rangers are no longer guaranteed to survive for very long against Mortar Carriers.)

So what about ye good olde 17th Guards? Well, even for them the fight can be extremely tough. Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of the 606 SF against them:

(UNITS)
1. Rangers have longer range (!), superior mobility (!), can kill infantry in 2 hits on open ground………..but cost more.
2. SF Tanks have one extra action point meaning they can devastate the enemy base, deliver tank-level firepower & survivability across long distances and kill Medium Tanks in one turn…… but cost WAY more.
3. Snipers can kill infantry on a forest from tank gun range in 2 hits, twice per turn (!!!)………but cost as much as a Medium Tank (which, may I point out, can only kill 1 infantry per turn?)
4. Fire Coordinators have INSANE range……..but cost >1.5x MLRS and don’t exactly have deal-breaking firepower either.
5. Drones are the BEST scouting unit in the game with lowest cost plus unparalleled mobility (even over water!) and sight range
6. Note that all of the unit ‘upgrades’ of the 606 SF are offensive in nature; defensively they still have the same amount of health or less!!!

GAMEPLAY
All of the above translates to…
1. In a straight-on engagement with equal point value of opposing groups of units, the 606 SF will always lose to the 17th Guards’ superior numbers, particularly if they don’t get the first strike
2. When the 606 SF DO get the first strike, the results can range from normal to spectacular- the latter usually if SF Tanks and Snipers are involved. Think whole swathes of infantry dropping dead instantly. Not so spectacular with tanks, but Rangers get the job done by killing Medium Tanks in 4 hits.
3. If played correctly, the 606 SF player will ALWAYS get the first strike because of wildly superior scouting, superior infantry mobility (Rangers can travel diagonally as fast as tanks!) and superior combat range (Snipers, Fire Coordinators)…which together translate into decisive concentration of firepower at often unexpected locations. Wait, doesn’t that sound familiar? 😛
4. It is very difficult for the 17th Guards player to retaliate because Rangers and Snipers don’t give away their position when they fire. And Drones have such a huge sight range that even a single one on the frontline halfway across the map can cause a viable attack to materialise on the other side in the same turn. Fortunately SF Tanks do give away their position, and their loss is very costly for the 606 SF player.

So how does the 17th Guards player win? Well, by leaving no obvious deficiencies in the front line (bear in mind that with the 606 SF’s gold-standard scouting, nearly every deficiency is obvious) that the enemy can flood into, and by making judicious use of armour, which the 606 SF has the greatest difficulty against. I say ‘judicious’ because the newbie strategy of just going all Medium Tanks and artillery from the beginning is always doomed to fail because of insufficient map coverage and therefore income. The 17th Guards have to find a way to hold on to their income or at least prevent the 606 SF from receiving it, because in an equal income situation they have a solid chance of prevailing if they guess right and launch an attack through a relatively undefended corridor. This, combined with the occasional deployment of AT Teams to kill SF Tanks quickly, and emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting with artillery support, should give them a chance of victory.

Back to the 606 SF- forget the idea of a backbone unit. This is another commander that requires perfect coordination between units to win. A solid group of Rangers and Drone scouts enabling even small numbers of Snipers, SF Tanks and Fire Coordinators to act as major force multipliers- that is the core of the 606 SF strategy.