hobo

In most cases that is probably sound advice. However, in this scenario you needed to buy some time before being completely overwhelmed. Shoot first and ask questions later would have served you better. Remember, your advantage was quality of troops (not sure if you actually new this) and timing.

Yep, fire and displace. I was dying for you to unleash with the HMG. Between he and the INF gun they should have died with no ammo left.

Nice game MG and thanks for taking the time to put this together. Frankly I think this scenario would be better for H2H if the Germans got to pick all of their defensive placements. A mine or two in the woods and more fallback positions for the trenches would have helped tremendously. In CM games I find the trench line to be rather useless and prefer a bunch of parallel short trenches facing the line of attack. As to the ATG, I think MG was a little bit unlucky with the LOS as he should have been able to pick off at least one of the Stuarts early in the game which would have made a very big difference. With that said, putting it so far forward was risky. I would have tucked it back in a corner some place and waited for the Stuarts to expose themselves in one of the fields and covered the road with shreks and fausts. Just my 2 cents.

Honestly, this is the point in the game where the troops in the real world would admit defeat and fallback to some point outside of the map and fight another day. Probably call in the heavy arty on the farmhouse. Anything else is probably suicidal as the outcome was determined a while ago.

The stuart is also one of my favorite tanks. 130+ 37mm rounds including 15 canisters, 3 7.62mm MGs, and over 35 MPH in open ground. When I have them they absolutely shoot first (and second and third) and ask questions later. Thank goodness I do not have to live under our current military ROE because I shoot up everything in site. Because they are cheap they are also great for mass flank runs which tends to turn the big cats around leaving them open to Sherman shots. I also noticed the turret turning away from the Tiger after each round. Shouldn't the AI should stay focused on the Tiger until it shows some sign of being put out of action.

I will help. Send me a PM with the vehicle pack requirements and can start Monday. CP

Really cool and I will be giving it a shot in a AI campaign next week. Thanks, CP

Yes, but I think my recommendation was to move them a little further south, not up that road. In addition, I would have brought the guys just north of the ones you show south and in to the hedge as soon as they started receiving fire and have them hunker down in a defensive mode for a few turns. Those two groups alone could have bought you a couple of minutes as Ian would have to have sent a few teams to deal with them. On my fourth point, you should have fired on his contacts with the HMG as soon as the first spotting round landed. It was pretty obvious where his spotter and mortar team were once that round landed. In addition the moving your mortar North a little bit after a few rounds might have helped as well but as we said before, they are very hard to manage properly. I also recall recommending displacing the guys in the North field to be used as covering fire when it was clear the weight of Ians attack was center south. Go back and check my comments in the thread. I think they are consistent with what I am saying here. My recommendations may not have won the battle, but sitting tight and waiting for Ians onslaught was doomed to failure. Take care and thanks again for sharing. I enjoyed watching the battle unfold.

Nobody said CM was easy and Method was surely given a tough hand and a tougher opponent. I stand behind my position that he was too passive which led to the result. As to the mortar comment, I am well aware of the difficulty in adjusting it. After re-reading my post "Sweeping" is probably not the best word choice. I do think he had the time to walk it slightly north after his initial barrage which if done might have nailed Ian's spotter and own mortar teams which took out methods ATG and then after a couple of rounds marched it slightly further north to the center. However, you are right that the time delay on the arty is tough to manage and while I dont play much any more, I was usually one step behind where I needed it when I did play.

Ian had a significant firepower advantage over you. Your advantage was troop quality and a tight time frame. Your best chance to win was to break up his attack so he would not roll over you. To break up the attack you should have Had your troops fire on his positions sooner and then be ready to move to a pre-planned fallback position. There were lots of good hiding spots between your front line and the village for a second base and then used the village as the Alamo. It takes time to rally troops and even if you did not kill many you would have forced him to regroup more than once. Had your mortars sweep his positions in more of a harassing manner than just pound one spot. You knew from the contatcs basically where his troops were positioned even if you did not see them. A few rounds in each of those spots would have been invaluable. Taken advantage of the southern flank that Ian gave you. He could not advance up the southern field if you were positioned in the treeline threatening his rear and flank. Also, that would have been a great spot to advance around and attack him from the rear. Fire on the only real spotting position that could be used by his mortars to kill your ATG. For you to win, that gun needed to take out 1-2 of his tanks. Personally I thought it was too far forward. You did have some spotting bad luck I must say. There are probably more but thats what comes immediately to mind. Good luck and thanks for sharing.

Sadly for the fatherland, this battle is over as the defenders were too passive.

Looks like the bullrush that I said was coming. The best you can do at this point is pull back to the Alamo and snipe from the flanks and hope for reinforcements in 11 minutes.

MULLIGAN! Clearly you have not watched enough of Kelly's Heros

Take a look at my previous recommendations. I think they are starting to look good.

Well thank you again. Time to start reading.....

Hey Bud - Thank you for these series. They have kept me thoroughly entertained the last few evenings and I am only in to the first few minutes of Somebody's Hero. My question for you is what happens if your hero gets killed in the first few minutes by some stray shrapnel. Does that mean you and Kohl have to start over or will you rename the comic "War Sucks" or something similar?

In my experience ATGs have to be very well hidden towards the rear of the battle to be effective. Unfortunately it looks like this ATG is going to get destroyed before it gets off a shot. I would have placed it on the road slightly behind the entrance to the courtyard or in either of the corners allowing them to cover the field in front of them as well as a flank shot on the road. I probably would have placed the shrek team where the ATG is and use their mobility to dodge fire and move to the best spot to engage the enemy. Just my 2 cents.

Mortars landing on the ATG. I wonder who has LOS on it that can call these in? My guess is the contacts just below circle 1 is a HQ with the mortar crew tucked in the open space behind them. If I am right, you really need to get some fire in to that spot. If you wait, you die.

Good turn. I would not worry about the woods directly across from #3. I really doubt based on the contacts anything is happening from there and I really doubt he can fight his way across 2 open fields and in to your town from that location in 23 minutes. The action is going to be on the main road and in south fields. I would shuffle #3 north a few spots, perhaps fire at the woods for 15 seconds, and then loop them back around somewhere behind #2 on the bocage. I suck at mortars. If th delay is short, I would adjust them to the clump of contacts just North and then in a turn or turn keep adjusting north to the main road. Lastly, I would have the inf gun fire into the area where the mortars are now for 15 seconds and have the heavy machine gun fire for 15 seconds in to the clump of contacts just north of #1. Gotta keep those heads down. Edit - I forgot about #4. I have never met Ian, but based on his avatar I am guessing he is not the forgetful type. Perhaps not Bill with a wall sized map and a bunch of grease pencils, but I think he knows about those troops but just has not gottten around to dealing with them yet. Make no mistake, everyone in that field is going to die and probably in the next 5 minutes. I suspect he will bull rush the hedge in a minute or two and use overwhelming fire supremacy to suppress and then kill everyone in site a couple of minutes later. The real question is whether he is giving you the flank. My next guess is that he has a squad sneaking down the edge followed by a mortar crew. If this is true, #4 will probably die soon where they stand. If they go their foxholes they will die a few seconds later. So following my hunch, I would attack in to the trees and disrupt his plans by area firing for 30 seconds and then hunting in to the woods. They may die quickly but they are going to die anyway. Who knows, they may actually kill some folks. They can always hide for a few minutes if no one is there and attack again in to the flanks. Keep up the good work.

I want to pay more.....for a BF game with a true dynamic campaign engine.

How long is the scenario?

In the meatime, if anybody wants to play along send me a PM. I will happily take either side. I am generally slow to start but once going can pump out many turns per day.

For what it is worth, I think now is the time to "Fire all of your guns at once" and slow them down as your re-enforcements are about 30 minutes out. If you can get them to duck and cover for just a little bit you should be good. I would: - Have guys in circle 2 blast the Amis directly in front of them for 15 seconds and run like hell to the south end of the field and hide in some woods for a minute or two. - Have everyone in the trenches including the Inf gun fire for 15-30 seconds in to the mass of folks just over the head of #2 in to the circle of #3. - Have the HMG and anybody else with visibility fire/area fire in to the area of troop contacts just north of circle 3 - Have your AT Gun area fire for 30 seconds in to the spot that the ammo guys says contains a tank. (This reminds me of the BoB episode where the Brit tank would not shoot in to the area of the German tank because he "Could not bloody well see it". So he wonders dumb in to the ambush and gets slaughtered. - Pour more mortars in to the road and field of trees in the south. I would probably empty my canisters and turn the mortar men in to front line troops. Since it looks like the game is to be played on the main rd and South, I would rotate the guys in the farmhouse area south and the guys in the front of the north field back and south to support the rd units. My 2 cents for the night.

My guess is that their systems are built on top of windows 8 and either it froze on them or went in to an automatic OS update mode that locked up the tank.

This thread got me thinking about the role of the ATG ammo bearers. First, I always keep them away from the gun itself in a hidden overwatch position and protected from arty to protect them. My ATGs usually die before I need their extra ammo anyway which spawned the thought; it sure would be nice if the ammo bearers could fill in if some of the ATG crew got killed. From the games perspective, think of both units being a single unit that has been split and could reform if they were ever in the same grid together. Thoughts on the feature request?