A flank attack in Age of Wonders is when you hit an enemy on its "flank" (sides or back), which gives 20% bonus damage.

Note: For the purposes of this guide I turned on hex grid to help visualize things more easily. The option is under World UI settings in game.


All units in Planetfall face a direction in tactical combat. In the image above the hexes labeled 1-3 are considered the unit's flanks. Further, ranged attacks that come in perpendicular to the direction the unit is facing (via the hexes labeled *) are also flanking.

• If a unit is in defensive mode they cannot be flanked normally. This is important to remember and is by far the most common defense against flanking. The unit will need to be staggered out of defensive mode in order to be flanked in that case. Or...
  
• If the unit has "all-around awareness" they cannot be flanked normally, even out of defensive mode. Heroes can also invest skill points to get this.
  
• The "hallucinating" debuff is very powerful and makes all attacks against a unit count as flanking (credit: Gom).
  
• If the attacker has "always flanking" it will be a flanking attack on the victim always, even if they have all-around awareness or are in defensive mode. This is fairly rare, see "other notes."

Because being flanked depends on which direction your unit is facing, it is advisable to rotate units to face the enemy after moving. You can click the rotate action on the unit or right click the unit and drag toward the direction you want them to face. This doesn't cost movement points. Even if your unit is in defensive mode and "can't be flanked", they could potentially be staggered out of defensive mode and then flanked, so it's recommended you just get into the habit of always doing it.

Question: which direction is this unit facing?

Some units in the game don't make it obvious which way they're facing (this is often a tip off they might have "all around awareness", but not always). To see for sure what direction a unit is facing, you can select them then click the "rotate" action. The darker, stationary green line that shows up indicates current direction. Here we're looking "up" toward the Therian units:

It also works with enemies, which is relevant for planning flanking attacks if you aren't sure which way they're facing for whatever reason. Here we have an enemy Therian prowler looking downward:

Like with other Age of Wonders games, units will "turn to face their attacker" if they get attacked from a direction that they aren't currently facing. Utilizing this mechanic, you can chain multiple flank attacks together against a unit, having them rotate and expose their backs to your other units in the process. Please see this video (or imgur slideshow[imgur.com] if you prefer) for a demonstration on this.

Two notes here:

• Units with the "heavy" property do not spin around to face their attacker. These units are also relatively common, so keep in mind these combos will not work on them since they rely on the spinning mechanic.
  
• For repeating attacks the unit will spin after the last attack in the sequence if it landed.

Some units come with the flanker property, which adds an additional 25% damage on top of the 20% damage flanking attacks already give. As you can imagine, this makes them do a lot of damage when flanking, which makes them fairly prized by veteran players who like doing flanking combos a lot.

Units that come with it:

• Lancers (Amazon)
  
• Amazon Echo Walker
  
• Wild Swiftbeak
  
• Psynumbra Initiate (all except Syndicate variant)
  
• Sleeper Agent (Shakarn summon via hero "Call insider" or Tactician ability)
  
• Hidden (Kir'Ko)
  
• Runner (Syndicate)

A lot of these units have fast movement or single action attacks, which let you step around units and get flank attacks off a little more easily. A common tactic especially with the fast movement flankers is to "go wide" and sprint in after the initial clash happens for flanking attacks.

Mods that add flanker to units:

• Exploitative Targeting System (Syndicate): can be used to cheaply give all sorts of units flanker. Especially good when paired with the tactical op you unlock at the same time when researching this, "tactical advantage protocol", which guarantees flanking on all of a unit's attacks for 3 turns.
  
• Hunter's Camouflage (Therian)

In addition to the above, all Syndicate heroes can pick the "backstab" skill to gain flanker. Putting a hero in a vehicle of a unit with a flanker property gives it to the hero (e.g.: lancer).

Finally, there is also a rare property that's similar to Flanker called "Opportunistic" that Blackguard Adversary/Tyrants get that gives +20% flank damage and a chance to immobilize. Yes, this stacks with Flanker.

• For weapons with "jumping" attacks like the crystal shotgun, whether or not you're flanking[imgur.com] on the subsequent attack jumps is based on the original attacker and their orientation toward the jump target, not the "direction / unit it jumped from" or anything like that.
  
• As far as I know, the only two sources of "always flanking" are the T4 hero weapon "Void Seeker" that has it built-in, or using "Tactical Advantage Protocol" (Syndicate) on a unit.

If you have further questions I recommend the Planetfall discord: https://discord.gg/r4wr5R2

Other mechanics: I've compiled a bunch of info about lesser known PF mechanics here [docs.google.com](topics like reputation, race relations, settlement buy costs).