Decisive Action is a game all about deep planning, tactical maneuver, and judicious use of combat multipliers like artillery and electronic warfare, as discussed previously. But this is war, and so, at the end of the day, you’ve got to put the pointy end of the stick into the other chap. Or rather, put the armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot round into the other chap’s explosive reactive turret armor, this being modern war. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today: how combat works in Decisive Action.

First let’s go over weapons systems. Units in the game have different sorts of attacks, called Fire Power types, that run the gamut from large-caliber main guns to air defense to anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). All the types are color-coded and listed on each combat system’s data card, so you can see at a glance which Fire Power type(s) a unit has. The “standard” Fire Power types (guns, small arms/MGs) can all fire twice in a turn, while the “specialty” types (air defense, ATGMs, engineer attacks, and HE) can fire once a turn, which represents the increased prep time needed to use them, ammo limitations, etc. Regardless, every unit can fire up to two times in a turn, including Opportunity Fire, subject to the aforementioned single-shot limitation on specialty weapons.

The Fire Power Matrix lays out which Fire Power types can attack which types of targets, which include unarmored ones like personnel, lightly armored ones like armored personnel carriers (APCs) and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), and heavily armored ones like tanks. So a tank’s main gun can attack opposing tanks and other vehicles but can’t shoot up troops or airplanes, soldiers can attack other soldiers and light vehicles but can’t knock out a tank with rifles, and so forth.

Attacks are simple to resolve. A single unit fires at a time. The target must be in line of sight (LOS) to the firer and within Sighting Range; the latter encompasses the difficulty of seeing infantry hunkered down in trenches at a distance versus the ease of seeing a vehicle zipping about the battlefield (though units that fire are automatically sighted at any range at the moment of firing). You then take the Fire Power value of the weapon being fired and modify it based on various factors like the defensive value of the target, the terrain, overstacking, etc. The advanced rules take into account more factors like facing and weather, while the optional rules add in extra detailed modifiers like advanced protection systems (APS) and limited fire control (LFC) with which you can season the game to your taste. Then, for each vehicle, squad, or team in the firing unit, you roll 1d20 and compare it to the modified Fire Power value: 1s always hit and 20s always miss, but other than that, for each roll less than or equal to the modified value, you score a hit and your opponent removes one vehicle, squad, or team off the targeted unit. If any of the poor sods survive, they roll a Troop Quality (TQ) check. If they fail, they become Suppressed, and if already Suppressed, they become Broken.

And that’s about it. For indirect fire (e.g., mortars, artillery), the process is only a bit more involved. On-map units can spot for themselves or use a separate spotter, whereas off-map artillery requires the latter. Spotters consist of recon units, forward observers, HQs, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Indirect fire also requires Fire Support Coordination (FSC), which represents the process of gathering target intelligence, planning the fire mission, clearing fires, etc. To get FSC automatically, you need to fire at or adjacent to a hex that’s a pre-planned target, which you secretly choose before the game begins (usually you get three pre-planned targets, though there’s the option to snag more). If you’re not firing at such a hex, then you’ll need to spend an Operations Point. That’s a whole ‘nother article – coming soon to an InsideGMT blog near you! – but suffice to say here that Operations Points model the time and effort that the commander and his staff expend creating plans, writing orders, communicating with lower and higher echelon units, herding cats, etc. They are a finite resource, so you will have to make hard decisions about when to use them. They can go fast, particularly if you have a lot of artillery to fire at non-pre-planned targets (hello Russians), and in this way they also abstractly model limitations on artillery ammunition.

The whole firing process is the same for indirect as for direct fire except that you roll 1d20 for each firing vehicle/tube against every enemy unit in the target hex, rather than against a single unit. Habitual overstackers beware.

Before we part ways, let’s look at two examples. First direct fire.

Here we have an American platoon of four M1A2 Abrams tanks defending a Syrian village, which is being attacked by a Russian platoon of three BMP-2s. We’ll say that the Russian platoon’s company, the 1^st Motor Rifle Company of the 1^st Motor Rifle Battalion Tactical Group, activates first and chooses a Fire action (patience! blogs on activation and actions on the way), and so the BMPs shoot first with their ATGMs (yellow Fire Power type).

Stationary vehicles in non-clear terrain can be Sighted at up to 10 hex range, so the BMPs can see the Abrams. Looking at the data card for the BMP-2, we can see that those pesky American AFVs are also well within the 16 range of the ATGM (the superscripted number). The ATGM’s base Fire Power is 15 – looking scary for the ‘muricans.

Now, however, we look at the data card for the M1A2s and see a Defense Value of 6 – now it’s looking a bit less scary. We subtract the 6 Defense from the 15 Fire Power, as well as a further -1 for the Village terrain, for a final modified Fire Power of 8. The Russian player marks his BMPs with a First Fired marker based on the Fire Power color (had it been the BMPs’ second shot this turn, they would have been marked with a Final Fired marker). He then chucks three d20s and rolls 15, 7, 9 – a single hit (the 7, which is the only roll less than or equal to 8). The American player flips his tank platoon to its other side, which depicts three vehicles instead of the original four. The tank platoon’s TQ is now 13, so a roll 14 or greater results in Suppression. Our stolid tankers roll a 10, so they’re in the clear. Good luck to the BMP crewmen…

Now for example le deux. Here we have a Russian infantry platoon and an SA18 SAM team lying in wait to ambush some unsuspecting schmoes on a trail on the JMRC East map, a training ground in Germany. Not to be outdone in skullduggery, the Americans have sent a UAV in ISR mode (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) to spot for their M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers.

The Paladins activate and takes a Fire action, receiving a First Fired marker; they’re firing HE (orange Fire Power), so they will only be able to perform Indirect Fire once this turn, though they could fire the machine gun later so the unit is not marked as Final Fired. The UAV has LOS to the infantrymen, which obviates the need for the artillery to see them. If there is a pre-planned target in either the Russians’ hex or any of the surrounding hexes, the arty is all set to fire; otherwise, the American player will have to spend one Operations Point for FSC.

There are three M109s, so we’ll roll three times against each of the enemy units. The Paladins have a base 10 Fire Power for their HE, reduced by 2 for the Woodline terrain (signified by the half-green/half-white center dot in the hex, visible in hexes like the one directly north of the UAV). The infantry are otherwise defenseless. The American player tosses the dice first against the platoon, rolling 8, 20, 9 for one hit, and then again against the SAM team, rolling 5, 1, and 18 destroying the team. The American player adjusts the VP marker on the track for the eliminated squad and team, while the Russian player rolls an 11 against an 8 TQ for his TQ check, resulting in Suppression for the platoon.

So, there you have it, that’s Decisive Action shooting in a nutshell. The next few installments will cover movement and opportunity fire, actions, activations, and eventually the all-important use of Operations Points and Assets. Until then, may your spear stay sharp and your sabots discarded.

---

Previous Article: Roots of Decisive Action, by Joseph Chacon with Evan Yoak