Wargame Red Dragon: Norway Guide
Reading Time: 14 minutesA challenging but fun minor faction, Norway is a fascinating puzzle of trying to figure out how it works and an interesting task of finding a strategy that works.
Minor nations aren’t always the most effective or competitive in Wargame: Red Dragon, but they’re often the most fun to my eyes, since they require using carefully your strengths and what assets you have to compensate for weaknesses in your broader forces. Norway is an excellent example of this, since of the ultra-small nations – Norway, Denmark, Canada, and North Korea – it has a fun playstyle as the most motorized of them all, reliant upon fast movement, ambitious striking options, and airpower in order to compensate for its lack of heavy firepower. When Norway succeeds, there’s nothing like the sensation of having overcome the odds with a tiny nation that people write off as a joke, but when it fails, it fails badly.
Norway is definitively a minor nation, with major omissions in its deck. Although it has generally excellent infantry, and a variety of special weapons, it lacks for ATGM infantry, long range infrared AA, advanced fire control helicopters, anything above a Leopard 1A5 equivalent for its tanks, shock reconnaissance infantry, any helicopters, and an ATGM plane. This makes it extremely difficult for Norway to engage enemy heavy armor in the open, and even enemy medium tanks can present a problem to counter cost-effectively.
Rather than a force for armored slugging matches, Norway is built around the concept of a fast, mobile army, a motorized force that’s supposed to be able to seized ground quickly at the beginning of a match, and with the infantry forces to hold the zones which it seizes. It relies upon its air force to be able to provide the necessary heavy firepower to contest enemy assets, and it is tailored around fighting at close and close-medium range, where its powerful IFVs, Eryx ATGMs, and excellent Stormer infantry can contest enemy forces. As Norway, you need to constantly seize the initiative, surprise the enemy, come up with flanking attacks, and press mobility. You want to fight in forests and find terrain where you aren’t disadvantaged by open field fighting. Your units are highly cost effective and you have massive numbers of them which gives you good staying power, so you shouldn’t worry about temporary set backs, since you have the numbers required to come back from defeats.
As a 40% availability nation, your large numbers of units, thanks to availability bonuses, which means that you can have these units upvetted, and still get more than most other factions. You also have a very large air tab, since you get a boost of effectively +50% availability, giving you for example three F-16AM fighters.
Logistics
Norway’ logistics is a distinctively lacking branch. It has decent transport options for the command CV, and a command jeep, but no armored CV suitable for holding a heavily bombarded position. It only gets 15 point supply trucks. While most of the time these aren’t big problems for Norway’s playstyle, it has to be admitted that it’s very mediocre.
Infantry
If there’s one tab that’s the strength of Norway, it is the infantry tab, where it has excellent shock infantry, good line infantry, some interesting fire support units, and commando options. You have an embarrassment of choices, as well as some very good transport options. These make it good for both an initial opener, as well as being quite formidable in a sustained slugging match in the forest.
Norway’s infantry distinctive asset is the usage of the MG3, which in Wargame is one of the best machine guns around due to the way infantry combat works in Wargame: it has a very large burst that it fires off immediately, and then has a long reload time. This is much preferable to other machine gun options with smaller salvos and faster reload, since all of the morale damage is inflicted at the start, immediately stunning and inflicting severe morale damage on the enemy, which starts a vicious cycle of the enemy infantry being shocked into a panicked and stunned state as they can’t shoot back effectively, meaning they can't disrupt your infantry's fire, which shocks and stuns them even more…. This is common on essentially all Norwegian infantry.
Your basic line infantry, the Gavaernenn have two options: a base version with a base M72 LAW, and the upgraded ’85 version, which trades this out for the M72A4 LAW, with improved AP (to the vital 16 AP threshold which one-shots two armor) and better accuracy. They’re both viable choices, but generally the fact that the ’85 version costs 15 points means that I stick with the base version. Their transports include the 5 point NM113, which has a .50 caliber machine gun but only 1 armor, although at least it is amphibious, and the 10 point NM115 which is the cheapest autocannon vehicle in the game, only costing 10 points but with both a 20mm autocannon and an MG3. Although it only has 1 armor, which makes it less survivable than 15 point IFVs which generally get 2-4 armor, it is extremely cost effective, the cheapest way to get large numbers of autocannons on the battlefield, excellent at being deployed en masse. You also get a variety of wheeled and helicopter options but these don’t make sense for basic line infantry. I get the base Gavaernenn in the NM113. If you get the upgraded Gavaernenn '85 you also get the possibility for the CV9030N, but for various reasons this is generally preferred for the Stormer, the shock infantry, and the next subject.
Your shock infantry, the Stormer, costs 20 points, with the effective Carl Gustav M2 AT weapon, whose 18 AP makes it effective against most vehicles that aren’t heavy tanks or above, the MG3, and battle rifles, making for solid and dependable shock infantry. Generally there are two options that make sense for them: the 5 point transport to deploy them en masse, and the CV9030, a 25 point IFV equipped with a 30mm Bushmaster II cannon and 6 armor (even on the flanks it has 5!) which makes it one of the heaviest IFVs around, with only the Marder II more capable in the direct fire role, although of course there are plenty of IFVs with powerful ATGMs. The CV90 cannot engage enemy tanks frontally, and even at point blank range it will struggle against medium tanks and above, but it will easily kill anything less, and most cheap enemy IFVs such as Marders, KAFV 25s, and Vydra IIs are massacred by it. I get one card of Stormer in the 5 point transport, and one card in the CV9030. You could get the NM135 but the poibnt of the NM135 is to deploy it en masse, which the cost of the Stormer renders unaffordable, and I prefer the CV 90 with the Stormer rather than the Gavaernenn '85 as it offers an extremely effective combination of shock infantry and heavy IFV combination, while the 5 point cost reduction for line infantry doesn't really make it much more affordable.
There are two options for your high end infantry: the shock, 15-man squad Fallskjermjegers, and the FSK, which are essentially the same when it comes to equipment, both with battle rifles, MG3s, and Eryx anti-tank missiles but the Fallskjermjegers is shock trained with 15 men, at 30 points, while the FSK infantry costs 5 points more and has elite training. This means that effectively the Fallschirmjaeger compared to the FSK gets its 5 extra men for free, since the general comparison is that the extra 5 men in a squad equates to one additional training level. So I generally take the Fallskjermjegers. These are generally the tip of the spear of your units: they are what lead the initial opener, aiming to seize and take forward buildings and use their Eryx missiles to establish a localized zone of control. They are best taken in the 10 point transport with 2 armor, the XA-186NO, which gives up amphibious options from the base XA-180 for more armor.
Other infantry options that you have are fire support infantry (Stormingenor), MANPADS, and reservists. These are all viable options, but I generally go for the Eryx fire support infantry which are the Stormengenor '90: they are a very cheap way (just 15 points) to get the Eryx onto the battlefield, which gives extremely potent anti-armored firepower and has a devastating morale and suppression impact on enemy infantry. The other option is the basic Carl Gustav team, which is a reasonable forest fighting anti-tank team, but you don’t really lack for Carl Gustavs given your stormers so there’s no real need for them. You can get a MANPADS, the excellent RBS 70 mk2, with excellent range albeit mediocre accuracy, but the light anti-helicopter role is covered by the 20mm trucks and NASAMS, and you generally don’t lack for anti-air firepower, even if the RBS 70 is a perfectly decent MANPADS. Reservists aren’t necessary when you have lots of cheap infantry in the form of Gaevermann, and either their transports nor armament are particularly good.
All of these can be taken upvetted. They make for an army which is highly effective in forest fighting given the proliferation of Carl Gustavs and Eryxes, and give good IFVs and firepower support with NM113s and CV9030ss. The weakness is the lack of ATGM infantry which makes for long range area denial in the open difficult, and 2-armor 5-point transports, which means you need to carefully manage your infantry forces to avoid having them destroyed in their transports.
Support
There are four principal AA options. Although it seems like a joke, the 15 point 20mm AA-truck NM45 is actually surprisingly useful: a group of them can stun a helicopter easily, they can be deployed en masse around the map, they’re very mobile, and unlike most other SPAAGs they get 1,575 meter anti-ground range, making them useful as ground fire support vehicles. While you can’t rely upon them against enemy principal combatants, certainly not against aircraft, they’re a good dissuasion force on flanks and if the enemy is too aggressive with their helicopters they’ll deal with them effectively, as well as serving as good picket assets.
The 25 point infrared AA NM195 is generally pretty mediocre, lacking a stabilizer, its missiles only with 4 HE, only mediocre accuracy, and rather low mobility and protection. Most of the time the two heavier AA options are preferable: the NOAH or the NASAMS. The NOAH is one of the most cost effective HAWK anti-aircraft systems, representing an upgraded HAWK with excellent accuracy and range against aircraft, and for a substantially cheaper price than the American upgraded HAWKs which pay a substantial surplus for anti-helicopter range: the NOAH is cheaper at just 70 points. On the other hand, it has very limited mobility. The NASAMS is substantially more expensive, at 85, and represents an AMRAAMS carrier with more missiles – 6 that have the unique feature of being fire and forget, meaning the NASAMS has an incredible rate of fire, often firing a second missile before the first missile has hit the target (sometimes this is a drawback since it can be shooting at an already-dead target), and if it dies the missile will continue to guide it to the target. It is also highly mobile, and has the longest anti-helicopter range of any of your assets, at 2,800 meters: its anti-aircraft range is shorter at 3,500 meters, and it also only has 7 HE compared to the NOAH’s 9 HE, although this still means it can one-shot planes, although it won’t automatically stun them, and its accuracy is lower. The biggest particularity of the NASAMS is that the missile has the exact same performance of the AMRAAMS, which makes it less maneuverable: it is less capable of turning, and so at short range sometimes misses aircraft because it doesn’t maneuver to keep up with them, despite theoretically having decent accuracy. Even with this drawback, I prefer the NASAMS for its high mobility and dual purpose anti-helicopter, anti-plane performance, but they’re both perfectly reasonable options.
Norway has a decent, if unexceptional, 107mm mortar, which is perfectly reasonable for providing smoke for your units, and for light fire support. Unfortunately, the rest of its artillery arsenal is rather mediocre. It does get an intermediate, 100 point M109A3GN but this is one of the worst artillery pieces in the game: it is almost as expensive as more advanced 10-second aim time fire control system howitzers, but its aim time is 30 seconds, and its accuracy is still pretty mediocre. If you’re going to use a howitzer, the base M109, which only costs 50 points and has extremely low supply cost, is probably your best bet. This is ineffective at hitting precise targets, but can somewhat fulfill the MRLS role when you get a group of say, 4 of them, and use them for general area bombardment systems, harassing forests and cities where enemy units are concentrated.
The most advanced (and only) MRLS system you get is the M270, which in Norway’s iteration is a cluster artillery system. Generally, this is substantially less useful than the HE version, which only the French get in Blufor, or the Russian Uragan which the Finns also get. With 6 AP, it’s rather mediocre against most Redfor medium and heavy tanks, which generally have 4 top armor, but it can perform chip damage to finish off injured enemy tanks, is effective against lightly armored enemy air defense, artillery, and command vehicles, and most prominently functions as a denial weapon – clustering roads at the beginning of a match which can forestall the enemy moving down it. It is often rather niche, but for lack of other support options it is the best that you have.
Armored
The armored tab is one of Norway’s biggest let-downs, since its heaviest armored unit is the 70 point Leopard 1A5N02. This has excellent soft statistics with a very accurate and good AP gun with a good stabilizer, medium optics, high mobility, all nice for 70 points, but it is let down by having only 12 armor – one of the biggest weaknesses, since this means it can be one-shot by enemy 30 AP KE weapons, while 13 AP would protect it. This prevents it from functioning as a forest fighting tank. But beyond this, it just is generally slightly too light to function as an effective medium tank, and is badly out-matched by some typical Redfor medium tanks, such as the M1 Wilk, T72M1M, or the M-84A, and is almost completely ineffective against superheavies outside of the ambush role. This means you have to use it extremely carefully, avoiding frontal confrontations against heavy enemy forces, and using it for ambush strikes and quick engagements from forests.
Below this, you have a variety of other Leopard options. Generally most of the mid-range components are pretty mediocre, decent at killing enemy IFVs but gunned down mercilessly by enemy medium tanks, so are rather cost ineffective. The best, not obligatory but the most cost effective, is the 25 point one the Leopard N0, which is an effective fire support vehicle: it will knock out enemy IFVs and has enough armor to protect itself, is very good as an infantry support vehicle, and doesn’t cost too much if you lose it. You could also go for the M48A5 which gets better AP and a .50 caliber machine gun, but no stabilizer, a larger size, and worse mobility.
Norway also has definitively the worst tank in the game, the M24, a completely un-upgraded WW2 Chaffee tank, which only the Finnish Sturmi (A WW2 Stug) can really compete with for mediocrity. With terrible range, poor armor, bad accuracy, bad HE, low AP, etc. the M24 is even as a basic fire support tank a dreadfully subpar option.
Reconnaissance
While the M24 might be a good example of a bad WW2-era unit that has stuck around in Wargame, the M8 Panserbil is a surprisingly excellent motorized opener unit. Based on the M8 Greyhound from WW2, it’s astonishingly useful, fast, with good optics, medium stealth, with a high rate of fire gun that can mow down infantry and even perform well against light vehicles, all for just 15 points. It’s very good in motorized openers, and en masse can even hold its own against enemy autocannon vehicles. A very useful light fire support vehicle, picket, scout, and motorized opener.
This is the star of Norway’s reconnaissance tab. The rest of it is decent, if rather unspectacular. The recon version of the M24 is decent, if not really that excellent: not as good as say, the reconnaissance M14 that Denmark has, but it has 10 AP so one-shots 1 armor vehicles, and isn’t too expensive at just 30 points. It is like the KAFV 90 that South Korea has, if a bit worse. You get regular reconnaissance infantry, which at least gives you cheap reconnaissance infantry that you can spread around the map, but which are very ineffective in fighting. At least they get decent 10 point motorized APCs or 5 point trucks. Your commando reconnaissance infantry comes in the form of a 2-man sniper team, which makes it quite effective at sneaking around: they can come in either helicopters or APCs, and generally I use them as helicopters to sneak around behind the lines and spot enemy units.
You also have a reconnaissance helicopter, which I take since there aren’t any good alternatives: it is unfortunately really overpriced for its capabilities, at 55 points for only very good optics! Still it’s fast and has very good optics so it’s a perfect reasonable spotter.
Vehicles
One of the few effective anti-tank assets you have is the M51A2 TOW-2, a jeep armed with TOW-2 missiles. This isn’t quite optimal: it gets spotted easily, and dies to essentially anything that gets into range. But it does have quite good range, accuracy, and 25 AP, and only costs 40 points, and you get a fair number of them. The inability to position it in buildings and the low stealth is a problem, so you have to look for specific places for it: try to position it to get flanking shots on enemy attack vectors, from very long range. If necessary turn off the missile to conserve ammunition. The NM142 has more missiles and some armor but costs significantly more and isn't wheeled, and is larger, so isn't worth it.
A basic fire support option you get is the NM113 RCL, which is an extremely cheap, at 10 points, recoilless rifle carrier. Unlike recoilless rifle jeeps which are more for a motorized opener, the M113 fulfills a cheap fire support role, since it has mildly more protection than the jeeps and good HE firepower for the cost. While you aren’t really lacking in these cheap HE slinger and light AT options, en masse it can be useful against heavier tanks with their chip damage from HEAT.
Helicopters
Norway simply doesn’t get any helicopters in a dedicated helicopter tab, only some transport helicopters. This of course feeds into the problem that Norway has with reacting to events: other factions can throw in a Hind or a Cobra to respond to a breakthrough on a front, or a tank killer to give some heavy AT firepower, but Norway doesn’t have anything. You have to be the one with the initiative, setting the pace, making the other player react to you.
Aircraft
Thankfully, with one exemption, Norway has an excellent air tab. It has a good fighter, a competent SEAD/helicopter hunter plane, a great bomber, a rocket plane, and a cluster bomber: although by omission you can see the weakness in the deck, in that it lacks for any ATGM plane, making you reliant upon the cluster bomber or the regular bomber with carefully chosen bombing targets to inflict any damage on enemy heavy tanks with your planes.
The crown jewel of Norway’s aviation is the F-16AM, which is a 150 point F-16 which boasts AMRAAMs, Aim-9L Sidewinders, 40% ECM, high maneuverability, and which you can get 3 of on hardened. This means you get one of the best fighter wings of any air force for just one card, save maybe for South Korea and to some extent Sweden, although in per cost effectiveness it probably isn’t as good as Denmark’s F-16 Block 5s. These are excellent fighters, not quite as good as the top tier fighters like the Rafale, Su-27PU, or Finnish F-18, but close.
You also have a long staple of SEAD operations, the F-5A Puff. This little plane only has mediocre SEAD missiles, but just having them is extremely useful, and it is an excellent helicopter hunter with its AIM-9L missiles and 20mm cannons. It’s a very versatile plane, and that it only costs 80 points means that it’s quite affordable. Even in the anti-air role, in a large pitched engagement, following up with the F-16s they can be very useful at close range dogfighting to complement your other aircraft.
There is one of the best conventional bombers in the game in the form of the F-16A, which for 125 points gets x2 1,000 kilogram bombs, good ECM, excellent performance characteristics, and good secondary weapons. They function as your primary strike package, and provide the mainstay of your firepower. Since you get three of them you don’t lack for bombers.
Unfortunately, Norway’s other aircraft are not so competent. It has no ATGM plane, which would otherwise be crucially important for it to deal with the presence of enemy heavy tanks that the rest of its firepower simply cant deal with. Instead, its dedicated anti-tank plane is an F-104 cluster bomber, which only gets a measly 2 cluster bombs, both packing 6 AP. While these can be surprisingly effective against static enemy tanks, they need to be carefully applied and aimed, and are certainly far less effective than an ATGM plane. At least it does have a good gun and AIM-9J missiles, meaning that much like most other Norwegian aircraft, it is very capable in the secondary dog fighting role. Your direct attack plane is an F-5 armed with rockets, which is cheap rocket plane that’s reasonably capable of killing most infantry squads and light enemy units like AA pieces, artillery, IFVs, transports, etc. although very ineffective against heavier units, even if sometimes if it gets rear or side shots with its rockets it can do a surprising amount of damage. Napalm bombers are largely not worth it.
The fighter and Puff are the only planes which you should take upvetted, as being downvetted doesn’t really impact the rest of the aircraft.
Summing it up: The Playstyle
With these assets in mind, how should you play Norway? In the opening of the match, while it might struggle against the most heavily motorized factions, such as China, France, and South Africa, it generally has a very effective line up with its motorized Fallskirmjaeger 90, Panzerbills, the Puff for a helicopter hunter, motorized NASAMS, and its mortars. You should focus on using these to seize forward ground, such as buildings or forest zones. If you want to be unscrupulous, use the M270 to bombard opening roads to delay enemy movements. Flanking attacks are important, and you should play wide, with multiple potential attack vectors, to seize as much ground as possible and surprise enemy units. Your CV9030s and Panzerbills are excellent for this, since the latter provide cheap scouts all across the battlefield, while the former mean that you can kill most anything that isn’t an enemy tank.
At this point, you should try to make sure that fighting happens in forests and closed terrain, to avoid enemy superiority in open terrain. Don’t try to contest open field, but focus on playing the long game: getting eyes on them, clustering sites where their tanks are located, and hopefully getting cross fire with TOW-2 jeeps. If the enemy pushes closer to your base, use this to your advantage to be able to more fully exploit your airpower against them. Your combination of the potential to seize opening terrain, along with the ability to conflict forests and cities, is your big advantage, alongside your large numbers: your great weakness is your inability to confront enemy heavy assets in open field fighting. Rely on sneakiness, speed, and aggression to be able to win.
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