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PondScum

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    Seattle, WA
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    I used to have some before CM:BN
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    Software developer

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  1. Ha! Same scenario, I flanked a German platoon HQ behind bocage (maybe the same one?), and proceeded to butcher them with long-range rifle fire into their exposed rear. Four minutes later one of them was STILL alive, periodically popping up to plink off a shot, then ducking down. Meanwhile my platoon was burning through ammo, and I was getting twitchy about having enough for the next campaign mission. So I decided to send in a Stuart over the fields behind him. Rolled it up to just a few meters away, blazing away. The #@!^& survivor throws a grenade, taking the Stuart's tracks down from green to half-red with a single blast and making the crew nervous. Of course, the Stuart's two MGs promptly hosed him down, but now it could barely crawl away, and was effectively mission-killed for the rest of that scenario. SPOILER FOR THE MISSION . . . . . . . . . I sent my starting platoons on a big right hook to the far-right objective. From there they worked their way inwards, flanking every enemy position in turn. Meanwhile my weapons platoon edged slowly forwards on the left, supported by the Stuarts, until the two reinforcement platoons arrived and I could start pushing in earnest. Eventually I had both forces close in on the crossroads in the middle. I also used my excess of jeeps to drive ahead of infantry and "spot" for mines in obvious choke-points - they take wheel damage, but the driver normally survives
  2. SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . . The AI has TRPs at both ends of the bridge (or at least, it did on my run-through). This allows its FOs to call down a strike near either of those points - within 50m, iirc - very quickly and with no warning spotting rounds. A smart human player would call in a predictive strike as soon as he saw you massing forces near the bridge, but I'm not sure the AI is that smart. I think it'll call in a strike when it sees anything "worthwhile" at either end of the bridge. To defeat this you'll need to do something like the following: Minute 1: Nothing at either end of the bridge. Meanwhile you've massed your forces ready to cross (e.g. in the shellholes from the planned bombardment). Minute 2: The mad minute - your forces quick-move up to, across, and away from the bridge. Do NOT stop as soon as you get to the other side. Keep moving out of the danger zone. But you can't move too many, or they'll bunch up, slow each other down, and generally make a great target for MG fire. Best to send them across as teams, 5-10 seconds apart. Which means you can't get a whole platoon across at once. At the end of this minute, you'll probably still have teams near the bridge ends, and this is when the AI will (probably) call in artillery on one of the TRPs. Minute 3-4: Clear the area. Incoming! Minute 5 (or whenever the shelling stops): Repeat from minute 1
  3. I misread that as "muzzle, cuffs, and feathers" and threw up a little in my mouth at the unwanted mental image it produced. Corn-swaggling is positively wholesome by comparison.
  4. Sigh - agreed. I moved on to Razorback Ridge, and essentially gave up with 20 minutes to go. I had taken the farm, but interdicting artillery meant that any squad trying to move through it towards the final objectives got cut to ribbons, and my platoon holding the farm itself was rapidly being whittled down. So I took a ceasefire and a minor victory on points. Then the final mission starts and I find out that many of my units haven't even had a decent ammo resupply. Ugh. I think this has put me off CMBN for a while.
  5. Everyone knows that the pie is a lie. Edited to note that you should all play the "Courage and Fortitude" campaign, waltz through the first mission (hint: you have pioneers), and then try, just TRY to get through the second mission without hard liquor, screaming at your computer, and/or silent tears for your tiny pixeltruppen. It's not quite Rune-esque, but it's getting close. The scenario designer CLEARLY likes artillery. And then more artillery. And a bit more. Do we have enough artillery yet? I'm sure some more can't hurt. I know, let's add artillery! Everyone likes artillery. Too much is never enough. Oh dear, is the mission over already?
  6. Don't worry Stuka, you can rest assured that where you are concerned there is lots of weeping. Generally of an "it is to weep" nature, true, but weeping nonetheless. And we try not to get close enough to notice the open weeping sores.
  7. *** SPOILERS *** I used TheVulture's approach of infiltrating a platoon along the far river bank and up the right side, and got a German surrender on elite with 12 minutes to go. The initial German artillery fire blocked my lead (and best-led) platoon, which I was planning to quick-move down the road. Instead I sent the next platoon in line racing across the fields on the left to skirt the fire and do a dog-leg to the bridge. They got down into the swamps on the far side with only a couple of casualties from grazing MG fire. It may have helped that I broke them up into separate well-spaced teams, on the theory that would reduce their chances of being spotted in the dark. Once at the river's edge, they can quick-move two squares a turn for several turns before tiring, so I just kept moving them slowly along. Meanwhile I had spotters and HQs looking for contacts, and engineers moving to the bridge to blow the wire (and themselves, courtesy of an apparent mine). Helpfully, the shellholes from that initial German bombardment provided a nice staging area just before the bridge. I tried luring down artillery fire by moving scout teams around in the open, but nothing worked until I moved the weapons company MGs out - that prompted massive retaliation which probably accounted for half my casualties. The tanks moved out VERY cautiously, sending the lead tank out on its own for a short distance, and only following in its footsteps when there was no response. Thankfully the AT guns opened up one by one at long range, getting mostly partial penetrations. Inevitably the lead tank would get hit, panic, pop smoke, and reverse out of line. I'd then wait 4 minutes while my FOs called down 60mm mortar fire on the gun, and mass-move my other tanks out at the end of the barrage, with area-fire orders from their final move point onto the gun location. The ex-lead tank would bring up the rear for a bit, to calm its nerves By the time my tanks reached the bridge, my river platoon had reached the right side of the map, so I laid down the first of two 105mm smoke barrages to cover their advance. With individual German teams now running from their foxholes under tank and 81mm mortar fire, I got over-confident and started trying to move my best platoon over the bridge. That was a bad mistake, because the improved visibility allowed unseen machine-gun fire to pin them in place, where artillery then slaughtered them. That made up most of the rest of my casualties. My tanks kept their slow advance along the road, and their luck, with several missed Panzerschreck shots and one non-damaging hit. German infantry who found somewhere to hide from the tanks routed under flanking fire from my platoon now advancing behind the hedges on the right, and everything broke in front of the hill (which also got the loving attention of my 105mm). Thankfully my platoon found the last AT gun on the other side of a hedge just before my tanks would have advanced into its sight-line. Towards the end I was getting bored, and finally sent all my tanks on a hell-ride down the road and up around the back of the hill, while my platoon consolidated in the farm at the rear right of the map (every team was now rattled, and they were down to 2/3 strength). I had to run my tanks up to the rear of the trench lines before the AI finally threw in the towel. I suffered 86 casualties. Things I would do differently next time: Try to get two platoons to the river instead of just one Lead with engineers, to blast the wire ASAP and give the two platoons a fast route across the bridge. Maybe use the 81mm mortars to lay down a WP smoke screen as well, for a little extra cover Experiment with 60mm mortars in direct-fire mode, if I could find a good spot to hide them (in the trees on the left, maybe?) Never leave any big infantry unit in the same spot on the battlefield for more than 5 minutes (on the assumption that enemy FOs will call down an artillery strike in 6 minutes). I might even track this in a game log. I wouldn't bother trying to move ANY infantry across the bridge, except engineers to clear mines and maybe an expendable HQ to spot. I'd rely on the same slow tank advance up the middle, artillery on any enemy that showed its head, and a flanking move by my own two platoons on the right.
  8. You're saying that Stuka's a "pusher"? I'd continue with "thrust from the rear?" but with the rest of the gang turning up you can never be too cautious about a lurking Bauhaus.
  9. I had a half-section of Pioneers blow themselves up on that exact section of wire today. They were blowing it from the "wrong" side, and I watched the replay several times. One second there were three Pioneers hiding with their heads down, waiting for their charge to go off. The next second there was a massive blast, the wire was all gone, and there were three little red crosses where my Pioneers used to be Oh, and a huge crater. I take it they detonated a mine...
  10. You wouldn't see it coming down the street: the clowns would be using it to bust through your back yard instead. Sleep well, kiddies.
  11. Supposedly your FO has to be able to see where the spotting rounds land, *as well as the intended target point*. Which means that only having a keyhole LOS to your target generally gives terrible results. It also makes indirect fire missions useless in most bocage scenarios, as your FO can't get to a safe position to see beyond the next hedgerow.
  12. Lots of helium - Boo loves to talk in a squeaky voice.
  13. Another victim brought sobbing to his knees? Exxxxxxxxxcellent...
  14. On the positive side, someone else will be piloting the TB3, which means old foul Joe can skip that whole embarrassing "crashed on takeoff" experience.
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