Christian Knudsen

I totally get and respect that attitude re: ASL, and it's why I can't convince my gaming buddies to play it - they just don't want to spend that much time trying to learn the rules when they could be actually playing games that are also fun but involve a lot less time investment. I once joked that one would need to attend a seminar held over 12 weekends just to properly learn the basic rules for Chapters A-D, and like all good jokes it has a kernel of truth. I'm currently being mentored back into the game, we've played 6 scenarios now, and my mentor figures I'm almost ready to move on to scenarios involving vehicles. It does take a bit of effort, and there's a reason that ASL is less a game than a lifestyle. I'm a bit of a masochist though, and have always been attracted to more complicated and "simulationist" games, for some reason. And I wouldn't be playing ASL today had I not both bought it cheaply nearly 30 years ago, and managed to keep it all this time, through many a move and much pressure from the wife!

I like both computer and boardgames. When I play ASL online I do it over skype and VASL, so much of the social nature and banter of ftf play is preserved. And I have friends that I play actual boardgames with, although to be fair they have resisted the urge to try ASL so far. Rules lawyering is an issue, but there are several ways to avoid it. The first is to play a well-tested game that has a ruleset that minimizes confusion. It gets to the point where you can see pretty quickly which games have been shoved out the door without enough testing, just because there are things in the rules that are commonplace occurrences within the game that don't work or are unclear as written. The second is to be a bit picky about with whom you play. The guys I play with regularly all have the guiding principle that while winning is nice, fun is the goal. If we have a disagreement over rules, we apply the common-sense test - would the application of a rule as lawyered make sense in the real world? Or would it lead to a situation that strains credulity? Then we go with the interpretation that seems to lead to the most realistic result in our eyes. If someone wants to make a federal case out of it, and it happens too often, we just don't invite that person to play again. One thing I will say, though. If you have a ton of boardgames that are in good condition that you are not going to play, then make some $$$ off them! There are LOTS of people out there who will pay good prices for games. EBay, the Boardgame Geek marketplace, and the Facebook Wargamer's Marketplace group are all great places to find new homes for your unused games, with people who will pay well for them, especially if they are rare/out of print. You will likely make far more than you spent on them in the first place!

I got out of ASL for the same reason you did - lack of ftf opponent. But now there is the VASL program for online play, and a big community that uses it, with guys that are willing to teach the game to new or inexperienced players. I'm very very glad I kept all my ASL stuff all these years. The best thing about ASL is the tremendous flexibility the game offers. There are scenarios covering any theater, any time, and any situation. And for the dedicated, a wealth of historical campaign games are available. Plus, it's fun!

All the material I was able to find for 2 ID indicated that the prongs were not as effective as the cutters, because they tended to snap off or bend. There were a bunch of different stopgap solutions that were being tried in different units, although 29 and 2 IDs seem to be going with the prongs/pipes. I don't think it was until Operation Cobra kicked off that the actual Culin (and the Rhino) were used in any great number. If there were some way to make the Culin fail to breach, or damage it, I would consider it appropriate for this action, but as it is now I think it gives the Amis a bit of an advantage that they did not necessarily possess historically. Of course, it's only a game, so while I enjoy this sort of research (It's fun to put my degree to use for once), it's more of a "nice to know".

IRL the Germans defended this sector in two areas. The first was the infamous "Kraut Corner", which was a hedgehog defense of the large wheatfield by where IanL has placed his 2 Platoon E Coy in his most recent post. This was manned by about a platoon. The rest of the defense was anchored around the hamlet of Cloville and stretched East along the main E/W road up to where the road bends around to the north, with a bit of a refused flank guarding the pathway pointing south toward the summit of the hill. The sector just to the east was based around a hedgehog defense of six connected fields between the road and the forest near the hill summit. The American attack pulverized the German defense, inflicting over 50% casualties on forward German companies. A great resource for this battle is a monograph by the commander of 1 Bn, 38 IR, LCol Frank Mildren, available at http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/ref/collection/p124201coll2/id/429

One minor quibble on this one - No Sherman Rhinos were present in any numbers in this action. The Culin hedgerow cutter had not been adopted by this date (11 Jul), although some trials had been conducted. It wasn't until after a demonstration for Gen. Bradley on 14 July 44 that the device started to be manufactured in any relevant numbers. The 29th ID and supporting 747 Tank Bn had experimented with devices similar to the Culin, but these were not effective and were prone to breakage. Instead, these "prong" devices were used to make holes in the hedgerow so that engineers could place charges further into the bocage embankment. So my advice is that Sherman Rhino should not be available until about the 3rd week of July. Until then, demo charges should be the sole method used to cause bocage breaches.

I would agree with Sailor Malan2 on the digging in point, even to his timetables. However I would say that a line infantry unit should have to entrench in stages, but that this should take place in any "posture" aside from attack. So a unit that is not moving or attacking automatically gets foxholes, 1 per team, after 2 hours, but may not build any other fortifications in this time period - the first thing any infantry unit that stops does is dig in, and this takes 2 hours on average. Guns also emplace during this time, if in suitable terrain. Line infantry in a defensive posture and in supply can start building further defensive works at the fol rates: 2 mines OR 2 Wire lengths OR 1 trench length per platoon per hour. A platoon in this sense is as given in the OB, and teams don't count. So a full OB American Coy gets 4 platoons worth of work per hour. Rates are halved after darkness. Engineers are the only ones who can build vehicle obstacles. They do not need to dig in like line Infantry (although they can if they want to) and build at the following rates: 1 mine OR 1 wire length OR 1 trench OR 1 vehicle obstacle per squad per hour, halved in darkness. Out of supply troops can build only foxholes or trenches, at the usual rate. Just spitballing here, obviously, and this brings with it a bit of bookkeeping that may be undesirable, but I think it is a bit more realistic in terms of timelines.

I made that map several years ago by hand, based off aerial photos and some other sources. it depicts the ground literally 500m or so east of the engagement area being represented in the battle, in fact if you look in the original map in the top post, this map depicts the area around and south/southeast of the hamlet of Cloville, which area was in the AOR of the 38th IR of the 2nd ID. Coincidentally, I am also the guy who did the Theater of Operations ASL playtest that IanL talked about! Incidentally, I can't see your map image, IanL. - nevermind, there it is...

For those interested, my ASL battle has finished (with an American victory), and we have learned A LOT about the process of translating a separate lower-level game system like ASL to Theater of Operations. Here are the links to my AAR (for those really interested in a blow by blow solo ASL game by an inexperienced player, lol), the lessons learned from the playtest, and a good discussion regarding how to integrate the two systems. All of the above are on the Gamesquad ASL forum, btw. Of course those here are likely far more interested in porting CM to Theater of Operations, but keep in mind that the more systems we can concretely mesh with Theater of Operations, the broader the appeal. The broader the appeal, the more prospective customers, and the more customers, the greater the chance that Battlefront will make a system to automatically inject force levels and extract battle results to/from Theater of Operations. Just think what we could do with that!

Since I started reading JasonC's posts, over the last 15 years or so, (I've been lurking here a long time, I guess) he has pretty unwaveringly (and at times, to be fair, somewhat brusquely) advocated an attritionist stance, both operationally and tactically. As an attritionist, he argues that efforts that do not aim to reduce enemy fighting power are at best an inefficient way of winning, and at worst a waste of resources. Therefore he argues that terrain has no value, unless it imparts an edge when it comes to destroying enemy power. A bridge that crosses a major river is just a bridge. A bridge that is the only supply route for an enemy formation, the destruction of which would leave them unsupplied and cut off, is a valuable target. The minute the enemy finds another MSR, that bridge is less important. So his position is that any piece of terrain has only relative value tied to its ability to affect the reduction of enemy fighting power. Great, sounds good. But the current question (and we are far from German tactical doctrine now), has become one of scenario design. As I understand it, JasonC is basically saying that a scenario designer who ties the balance of victory to terrain locations is handcuffing the player by forcing them to go after ground, not go after the enemy. Now I'm not knocking scenario designers - I've tried designing some, and I know it's really really difficult to do, much less well. My hat goes off to anyone who gets one finished, frankly. But I see his point about scenarios that overvalue victory locations. Why do I have to put boots in that village when I can just drive around it because I have killed off everything outside of it, and it is now totally isolated, all the ground around dominated by my fire? The enemy there is powerless, and I can kill him whenever I want, because he can't move without being blown to smithereens. Yet achieving this, I have lost the CM scenario, because I have not physically planted my flag on the enemy strongpoint, as it were. I can, however, see two situations where one would design a scenario with a patch of ground that absolutely must be taken. The first is that you as the scenario designer provide a reason that makes that village an important piece of terrain. Maybe it is the only good option for an MSR for forces advancing past it, or it has an important bridge crossing that you need to use. Maybe the important VP location is the hill that allows your FO to see the the road going through the village! The other reason is to create a scenario in which you have to take that village because your commander thinks that ground has intrinsic value in and of itself, and you are just the poor schlep following orders! But even then, I think that victory should not be solely or largely dependant on holding that ground at the end of the scenario, in terms of victory points. If all the defenders are dead or shattered, they will not hold that village for much longer. As a final point, one of the big reasons I am hopeful that choppinit's operational layer project succeeds is to reduce that sort of terrain VP based mentality. One almost never sees defenders withdraw in a CM scenario. They stand to the point that they break or die, and it is rare that a scenario awards a majority of points for defender force preservation. I realise that it is very hard to do from a design and balance standpoint, so there is that. But in a dynamic campaign, force preservation can become huge, and the idea of living to fight another day can have some real merit, so long as the campaign itself is well designed. Of course, I'm sure we will see the same arguments repeated then, with "campaign" substituted for "scenario". I look forward to it!

Backed, to the best of my admittedly limited financial abilities. While I enjoy CM, like many others I have always wanted an op layer, mostly to draw me in and give me a sense of story - this is why I prefer campaigns to missions, and have followed both the attempt that was CMC and the various efforts to meld CM to various game systems, whether home-made, boardgame, or computer. Anyways, I hope that people back this - to those that are hesitant, back anyways! If the funding level is not reached, you lose nothing, and if it is, you have probably the only remaining chance to create that op layer for CM that we have been wanting for the last 15 years or so. Even a small pledge now can surely be added to after the kickstarter is over if you like what you see in the coming months. And if at the end of it all it does not work out, you are only out a few bucks - I think missiing one trip to the pub (or a movie night, or whatever) is worth it to take a chance at what could totally remake the whole CM experience.

The Zen of maneuver warfare, Wehrmacht style - I love it! I always read that the german concept of infantry attack involved infiltration and "nailing down" the enemy. I always wondered what exactly was meant by that, and now I know. Another great thread JasonC, my thanks.

*Cough* I would be very happy to read such a thread, if anyone could be persuaded to elaborate...

Lt Bull, I actually disagree with your premise that these types of "looping" was not that common, but with a couple of provisos, which I will address. The amount to which a unit is "dug in" is directly a function of time spent on position. And there were periods, especially when the Amis were busy clearing Cherbourg, that the Germans had plenty of time to improve positions, as First Army did not really turn south in any strength until the first weeks of July, giving German units almost a month to prepare positions in some cases. When a unit occupies a defensive position, there is always a priority of work that goes on. This usually looks something like this: 1. Deploy OPs/LPs 2. Dig slit trenches - these are usually just big enough to lie in and still below the plane of the ground, and can be dug in a very short time. In this case, I agree with you that it would have made sense to start with the ditches at the ends of the fields, assuming these were not waterlogged. 3. Prepare range cards. 4. Dig fighting trenches. 5. Lay comms wire all over the bloody place. 6. Begin constructing defensive obstacles according to the obstacle plan. 7. Dig overhead protection and shelters. 8. Dig depth/fallback positions 9. Dig communications trenches between positions. Keep in mind that this is off the top of my head, I am probably missing stuff, and things like defensive fire pre-registrations for direct and indirect fires would be started early and continue throughout, in increasing complexity as secondary killzones are covered. The point I am trying to make is that the development of a position is a very planned and organized affair that is done to a timetable - for instance I expect that fighting trenches will be complete and overhead protection started no later than six hours of troops arriving on the position. After a month, I would expect that fighting positions, obstacles, shelters and comms trenches would be extensive, which is what we see on Hill 192, and, I would expect that to be repeated in any position that was occupied for any length of time. In fact, a competent unit should have a fully developed position, with strong fighting positions, some fallbacks, and a developing obstacle network, after only a few days on position, with this time getting shorter the further away from the enemy the unit is. So we can see that time is less of a factor than one might think. Of course a unit might lack some sorts of defensive stores like wire and mines, which would lessen the obstacle plan. But digging can be completed very quickly, even while manning the MLR, maintaining outposts, and conducting standard administration like eating and maybe even sleeping once in a blue moon. Your main argument against "looping" and digging "into" the bocage (where possible, of course), seems to be that it was too hard, what with all the rocks and roots and such. But there are several advantages to doing it that make the effort really worthwhile for the defender versus fighting from the top of the embankment. First is that you have more overhead protection, thus removing the need to jump into a separate foxhole, from which you can't put fire into the adjacent field. Second, you are much harder to spot, as you can camouflage your firing slit quite easily. Just these two factors increase survivability quite a bit. So why would you not, especially if you had time to do so? It's what I would have done, and I value my skin quite highly. And to those who object that the firing slit would have restricted field of view too much, this actually is a bonus. You dig the slit just wide enough to cover the arcs of responsibility for that weapon system, and trust your flanks to your comrades. While it is good to be able to see, whatever you can see can potentially see you too, which is why you never occupy a position that has longer lines of sight than you can engage with your own weapons systems, and why reverse slope positions are so valued. Anyways, I want to stress that the level of fortification encountered was largely a function of how long the defender had to prepare, and there were plenty of occasions where the defenders did not have time to do much more than dig a few foxholes behind the embankment and then fight from the top. But digging in does not take long at all, especially when you are motivated to stay alive, and the advantages to digging IN to the embankment far outweighed the disadvantages.

I agree, but unfortunately this raises the issue that I talked about earlier regarding scenario design. I.e. you end up with puzzle-like scenarios that are designed to be played only once as Allies vs the AI, or you have to create maps that either put fortifications and gaps EVERYWHERE, allowing the defender to pick where they want to actually place the defence, or you put fortifications and gaps in places that make sense to you as the designer, and thus totally limit the scenario defender. I have a depressing feeling that we will have to wait until CMx3 to see the mixing of fortifications and linear feature tiles, or else the ability for defenders to make map adjustments prior to setup.