What can you do when you get shot in the back?

This is something that comes up almost every game but I never really took the time to find out exactly what are my options when one of my troopers gets shot in the back. Turns out, there are few things you can do and looking back at my past games, knowing these things at the time would have helped a lot.

In this post I won't talk about special skills and effects, just the basic things.There are two things your trooper can do when being targeted outside of Line Of Fire (LOF), "Warning!" and "Change Facing". There is also "Alert!" which can help to prevent getting shot in the back, but I'll get to that later.

Warning! - This action affects your trooper that is the target of an attack and any ally in his or her Zone of Control (ZoC). It doesn't stop the shots, but it does let your trooper turn to face the enemy if he survives. This action also allows any allies to face the same enemy if they are in the ZoC, regardless if the attacked trooper survived or not. So you hardly ever end up in a situation where you get shot in the back more than once. Remember though that this happens at the END of the order that was used to attack your troops, it is NOT an ARO (Automatic Reaction Order).

Change Facing - This, however, is an ARO which you can use if the Order to attack your trooper is activated inside his or her ZoC, so if the enemy is really close. It works like a Dodge but you have -3 to Physical (PH) and you only turn around, you can't move like with a normal successful Dodge. It is better than nothing and can save your trooper's life.

The next action is less about just one trooper and the action against him, and more about a group of troopers or your army as a whole. Personally I think if you can master using this next action, you can really mess with your opponent's active turn. It effectively allows you to change facing of your whole army in your reactive turn, which if you think about it, is pretty awesome and it can help you fix some mistakes done in your previous turn. 

Alert! - To declare this ARO, you need LoF. Basically you need to see the enemy with one of your troopers. This does not require any roll but the drawback is that it is the ONLY thing that trooper can do. Which usually means he will get shot in the face and likely die. But the good thing is, it allows you to declare Change Facing ARO with any number of your troops on the table, regardless if they can see the enemy or not. So suddenly, the path your opponent thought was clear might not be, assuming your troops pass their -3 PH roll.

It can also help you if you made the mistake of deploying a group of troops facing the same direction and someone gets behind them, as long as someone along the way can see that approaching enemy, they have a chance to turn around. But it is easier to just remember to always have one guy covering the group's back.

I admit I haven't used this yet, but I will try to keep it in mind because I'd be happy to sacrifice some cheap guys if it means my more expensive units can get into better facing. It gives another use to your cheap Line Troopers (or even better, the 3 Points WarCor). They don't need to hide or wait for offensive AROs, they can be a look-out for the rest of your army.

Of course there are special skills and equipment attributes that make these things easier to do, or harder, but I'll write about those some other time.