RE: Obstacles, Part 2

I've seen, in training videos, and heard from others that you can set
and blow both sides at once.  When I asked some advanced Pioneers about
doing one then the other they looked kinda strange at me ;-)  

Maybe Americans are more cautious or maybe it's engineers as a whole.
Are you thinking of training doctrine for creating abatis that emphasis
safety?  Safety restrictions would be a lot less in war.

For a DS battle I was thinking along the lines of this:

Abatis is set up prior to game start (charges set but not blown).

Forget safe distance the Pioneers/Engineers could be sitting in a track
or in a trench either waiting for orders to detonate or for say the last
unit to pass through before detonating.  I like your roll idea.  Maybe a
failure would mean the unit would have to check charges on the next turn
and then attempt to detonate again on the following turn?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jatkins6@ix.netcom.com [SMTP:jatkins6@ix.netcom.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 1998 10:39 PM
> To:	FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
> Subject:	RE: Obstacles, Part 2
> 
> You wrote: 
> >
> >I wouldn't set it up under fire either.  I was thinking more along
> the
> >lines of having it set up prior to game start.  Say, as part of your
> >withdrawal/defensive plan.
> 
> I'd have to say there's a bit of a problem here.  You aren't supposed 
> to do both sides at the same time, which means that you have to split 
> it between two turns.  Time to rig charges, move off to a safe 
> distance, blow it, come back, rig the other side, move off to a safe 
> distance, blow it, and double check.	Doing it all at once can cause 
> problems--say roll unit quality dice vs a 3? to do it right?
> 
> >I knew what you meant by Engineers being Combat engineers.  Assault
> >Pioneers are infantry trained to do combat engineer tasks.  In the
> >Canadian army there is one platoon for every infantry battalion.  It
> >gives the bn cmd an engineer asset to be used at his/her discretion.
> 
> That's not a concept I'm familliar with, so I don't really know how 
> competent they'd be.	Institutional rivalry says I'm shocked they
> don't 
> blow themselves to shreds. . . :P
> 
> John M. Atkinson