Maintaining Covered Arcs and Determining To Hit DRM 

A recent discussion on the ASL forums delved into To Hit penalties incurred by a vehicle when changing Covered Arc to shoot enemy units. The discussion on the forums was short and I don’t believe it dug into the subject as deeply as it should. The discussion also highlighted the troubles new players have understanding this rule. In this article I am going to take a deeper look into the rule, provide a few examples, look specifically at an older Q&A, attempting to make this a little more clear. 

Rules Dive

This article is specifically examining C5.12. It is a very short rule stating “The Case A DRM is applicable only to a Gun which made a CA change as part of its shot. If a Gun makes a CA change and fires with a Case A DRM and then fires again in the same phase, the Case A DRM will not apply unless it changes its CA again for the next shot.” For such a simple rule, a lot of confusion exists. 

I think the source of that confusion is D3.51. I will not list that rule here but I suggest you take a moment to read it before continuing. The summarized juicy bits of D3.51 are this: once a weapon fires within the current CA, all other weapons pay the same Case A DRM, if a weapon elects to shoot outside the current CA, it only pays the Case A DRM for the last change. This last bit is the part introducing confusion. Nearly every such question I have seen on this topic comes back to this point. 

Finally, D3.51 has a small tidbit about VCA changes. D3.51 states “If the VCA is changed … Any further changes of the TCA incurs normal TCA Case A DRM in addition to the NT Case A DRM of the VCA change …” Again, I encourage you to read the totality of the rule as I have excerpted the rule here for clarity. Let’s bring all of this together into a few examples and see how this all plays out. 

Constraining The Examples

For these examples, assume no other DRM apply to the shots being discussed. I have multiple other articles covering all the DRM if you wish to see a more accurate accounting of ALL DRM. That is not the point of this article.

Example 

Refer to Figure 1. It is the American Final Fire Phase. Having survived Prep Fire Phase, the American AFV opts to fire on German AFV A. There is no Case A DRM. This is the easiest example and perhaps too simple to even discuss but I include it for completeness. 

If the American AFV instead opted to fire on German AFV B. They could change the VCA. As part of such change, the TCA remains relative to the VCA. The MA attack against Tank B receives a +3 Case A DRM. If the American tank instead opted to turn the TCA, the attack receives a +1 Case DRM. Again, these examples are fairly simple and do not involve multiple shots from the Americans. 

Example 2

Now let’s look at something more complex. Refer to figure 2. It is the German MPh. The German player seeks to eliminate the American Sherman. First he moves tank A into position. Assume the American player changes TCA and shoots the MA. This change incurs a +1 Case A DRM. If the American opts to fire the CMG as well, this would suffer the same +1 DRM. 

Now the German player moves Tank B into position. Recall, the TCA is now pointing at the U6/U7 hex side after the first shot. If the American player wishes to shoot the MA at tank B, he has to change the TCA two hex spines (to point at the S6/T5 hexside) incurring a +2 Case A DRM. Remember, only the last CA change applies to the shot (C5.12). Finally, the German player moved the squad/PSK into place. The American player fires the AAMG. Here, there is no Case A DRM. Unless the AAMG is in a fixed covered arc, Case A DRM are NA to an AAMG (D1.83)

Assume the American opts to change the VCA as part of the shot against tank A. The TCA remains relative to the VCA. The Case A DRM against tank A is +3. Now the German player moves tank B into position and the American player opts to pivot the TCA and fire against Tank B. The Case A DRM for this shot is +5. The VCA change still applies to the shot (D3.51). If the American player opts to fire the CMG as part of this, the same +5 DRM would apply.

The AAMG shot against the German squad is unchanged. 

Even More Complex

Again, refer to Figure 2. The German player moves tank A into position. Again, the American player pivots the TCA to the U6/U7 hex side and shoots (+1 Case A). Now the German player moves tank B and the American player shoots. This time, the American player elects to spin the VCA. The TCA remains relative to the VCA so the American tank aligns its VCA with the S6/S7 hexside to bring the MA to bear. This incurs a +4 Case A DRM.

Accounting For ROF

Again, refer to figure 2. Assume the American player changes VCA to the U6/U7 hexside as part of its shot against tank A and keeps ROF. Assuming otherwise allowed, the Americans could fire again on tank A paying no Case A DRM (C5.12). Now the German player moves tank B into position and the American player turns the TCA to the S6/T5 hex side and shoots.This time, the Case A DRM is only +2 (remember, the TCA is initially aligned to the VCA pointing at the U6/U7 hex side). This is because C5.12 says previous DRM do not apply to a Gun taking ROF. If it opted to fire the CMG as part of this second MA shot, the CMG DOES pay the previous Case A DRM for the VCA change in addition to the new TCA change (+5 DRM). 

An Old Q&A

There is an older v1 Q&A I wish to highlight.¹(c) If an AFV has an AAMG with a restricted CA, does it have to pay Case A DRM for the AAMG fire? Does it matter if the AAMG is the MA? A. No. No. This Q&A directly contradicts newer Q&A and rule D1.83. I believe this is one of those v1 Q&A deprecated by introducing the v2 rule set. The v2 rules updated rule D1.83 to reflect this Q&A. As such, I believe we can ignore this Q&A and safely remove it from the Q&A collection.

Conclusion

I know it has been a while since I have written anything. I do have an article in the upcoming Journal 15. I have also updated another older article for inclusion in the upcoming Special Operations magazine. I was also pretty busy helping my friend finalize his scenario pack for publication and reviewing other articles for publication in other spaces. I have also been developing some scenarios of my own and coordinating some playtesting. All of this has kept me very busy. 

Going forward, this is likely to be my new norm. Articles will be fewer and farther between as my attention is divided by more and more endeavors. I have a long list of articles I wish to write but there is only so much time in the day. I hope you understand. Have a good week. 

Footnotes:

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  (c) If an AFV has an AAMG with a restricted CA, does it have to pay Case A DRM for the AAMG fire? Does it matter if the AAMG is the MA? A. No. No.