DAR- Breakfast in Noville

[Artemis258]

"Sir.... I think they see us!"

"Pipe down private and stay still! The germans can only track movement!"

[Hapless]

1 hour ago, Artemis258 said:

"Sir.... I think they see us!"

"Pipe down private and stay still! The germans can only track movement!"

Got a giggle out of that one! Probably needed one...

The right hook has started an engagement with the (no-longer) suspected enemy forces on the Highway near Recce Two. Its a little complicated and its gonna take me a little while to crack it open, tear it apart and get at the juicy throbbing lessons inside (and I definitely need to learn from it before I start doing anything else!).

So, analysis later, in the meantime here's the raw video for you guys to digest:

 

Edited July 20, 2016 by Hapless
Update

[Artemis258]

that's.... worrying.

[Hapless]

Ok, let's start with the obvious stuff.

First of all, its a dawn mission genius! It is getting lighter. Facepalm doesn't quite cover it, nor does whining about it being hard to tell exactly how light it is.

Second, despite that the actual tactics aren't entirely off. The idea was to send the infantry forward to provoke the enemy into firing and revealing his position. The concept is sound- it just didn't pan out as intended.

We need to rewind a bit. There was actually a little bit of contact in the last turn. An enemy HQ team popped up next to Recce Three and shot them up a bit, causing a casualty.

The Sherman Platoon HQ which was a little way behind Recce Three and flanking to the right of the suspected enemy position on the highway spotted the enemy team and opened up on them.

 

Cue the start of Turn 14 and the video above- the gunfire you can hear is the Sherman Pl HQ laying into the enemy just off screen to the right. This revealed its position to enemy infantry in the woods and a little later to a Panther squirreled away in there. The Panther took a shot (at about 0:21) but hit a tree.

 

This revealed the Panther to some of the Shermans, who started plugging away at it. The only problem is that the angle for the three Shermans aiming at is is pretty poor- lots of bouncing going on.

 

Like you see in the video the Panther causally ignores all the incoming fire- including two penetrating hits!- and blows away two of the Shermans. The first one could and should have been hull down behind that crest- but I was pretty sure that it was safe in the darkness and the fog (which it was until it opened up). The second Sherman, well, its in an open field on the flawed assumption that its difficult to spot.

The hits on the Panther are a bit aggravating, especially seeing as though it knocked out the second Sherman immediately after suffering them, but hopefully it'll realise how dead it is next turn or the Shermans will finish it off.

Meanwhile my infantry is pinned down (though they nailed a Panzershreck team in the stream) by fire from across the road on the edge of Noville and a squad just beyond the Panther.

I wouldn't exactly describe this as the kind of 'engagement on my terms' I was looking for here, but we'll see what happens.

In other news, Recce One’s trail team (the ones hiding in a garden in Noville) finally got spotted and wiped out by enemy infantry in the house next to them. The lead team is still bombing around in its jeep, so they can take over listening duty from the apparently less German infested edge of town.

The halftrack platoon around the back is dismounting and pushing into the edge of Noville, hoovering up enemy transport vehicles as it goes- 1 truck so far, with another engaged and a kubelwagen about to get grenade. That should take the heat off the engagement down by the highway if nothing else…

Things are getting interesting!

[Rinaldi]

You have my full empathy with the Panther, very frustrating that the crew had the wherewithal after two clean penetrations to fire off two shots. I wouldn't be surprised if the crew is set to a high motivation and veterancy, they tend to lock up otherwise after a hit. 

[Hapless]

16 hours ago, Rinaldi said:

You have my full empathy with the Panther, very frustrating that the crew had the wherewithal after two clean penetrations to fire off two shots. I wouldn't be surprised if the crew is set to a high motivation and veterancy, they tend to lock up otherwise after a hit. 

Thanks. The cookie is not crumbling to my advantage at the moment, but hopefully he might have spend a lot of points on his tanks and be a understrength somewhere else. Mystery for now.

But good news though! The Panther got immediately nailed at the start of the next turn, though some git in a snazzy hat managed to escape. When we clear Noville out we’ll make sure we catch him by shooting everyone wearing a snazzy hat.

There’s still at least one Panther (or other tank) lurking down there- something has been taking potshots at my hapless infantry stuck in the field, so its time to pull away from that direction and find another one.

Round the back of Noville, the halftrack platoon has been having a whale of a time shooting everything that moves. Unfortunately, this has attracted the attention of a mortar team in a back garden further on- you can see it hitting them towards the end of the gif below.

Direct firing mortars aren’t a fun thing to go up against. The scary thing is how far away that sound contact appears to be (pops up in the top left of the gif)- if he can see my muzzle flashes from there then I’ve got serious issues.

On the right of that platoon they’ve taken a few casualties to an enemy HQ team having a group grope behind a hedge, but the nearest halftrack has laid into them with the .50 cal and hopefully dissuaded them from putting their heads up.

On the plus side, this has really upset him. I can see tank sound contacts dropping everything and zooming towards that platoon. One of these sound contacts is the original Panther (judging by the custom paint job) whose path takes it right past the new position of the recently recovered Recce One Lead Team. However, now everything is backwards and the Panther does a drive by on the recce guys. It’s really not their morning.

Again though, they seemed to be worrying visible. (Espescially to a buttoned up tank moving at speed, grr).

I really need to decide what to do with the rear attack platoon- at the moment they are really not in a good position to repel tanks.

The most sensible thing I can think of doing is legging it back into the halftracks and disappearing off into the night. But 1) It’s not as night as I want it to be and 2) those tanks seem to be coming in quick and it might be too late already.

Hanging around under direct mortar fire waiting for enemy tanks to turn up seems a bad idea. I could try and rush some Shermans over there for support- they’re going to be disengaging from the highway fight anyway (I’ve no intention of trying to fight big cats on his terms)- but again, might be too late already.

Withdrawal seems the best option, but there’s a good possibility that I’ve thrown that whole platoon away there for little gain by rushing.

We’ll see.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Hapless

[Hapless]

Ok then, the stab-in-the-back platoon are doing one, they’ve lost a halftrack to a panzerfaust and two squads didn’t make it to the halftracks because they were pinned down- none of that “no man left behind” crap for my pixeltruppen! They’ll either have to leg it out or die in place. I’m moving a couple of Shermans over in that direction to take advantage of any Panther muzzle flashes. The infantry might be all set to die, but hopefully they’ll die in a useful way.

Overall, I’m thinking it’s time to reorient a little.

The original role of the right hook was pretty much entirely dependent on encountering isolated enemy positions or catching them on the move, using the poor visibility to fight on my terms. Due to a combination of bad luck, incompetence and the fact that AjarmanG seems to be concentrating everything in Noville, it’s looking like that plan is out the window. And I’m coming off worse in the attrition game in these engagements.

On the plus side, I’m pretty confident I’m on top psychologically- I’m not the one getting attacked on all sides and if he wants to dig in and stay in Noville that removes an awful lot of uncertainty for me.

The downside is that if he digs into Noville it’s going to be a pain getting him out, perhaps to the point that it would be smarter for me to dig into Cobru to keep my casualties down.

So I’m considering a few options:

1 Continue Raiding and Probing:

I could keep the pressure up with the right hook, maybe supplement it with some pressure from Cobru. Visibility is better than I was hoping, but it’s still poor and exploitable. Most of my casualties have been the result of either bad luck, misinterpreting the conditions or opening fire too early and this approach is still set to produce results if I adapt. It might even be possible to lure the enemy into an ambush or two. I want to see more burning Panthers before I'm happy.

2 Pull Back to Cobru:

Sack off the right hook- it’s achieved its objective of putting AjarmanG on the psychological back foot but I’m losing out attritionally. It would be best to pull the right hook back round to Cobru and concentrate my forces to either push or defend from there.

3 Lay siege to Noville:

Noville is surrounded. Best keep it that way. Spread the right hook out into a couple of mutually supporting hedgehogs and wait for AjarmanG to attack (we’ll see how he manages!) or stand by to start identifying and destroying enemy positions by fire as it gets lighter.

4:FIX BAYONETS:

All out attack. Mob Noville with everything. It’s still dark, it’s still foggy, he can’t resist everywhere at once- he’ll have to crack somewhere and then we’re in. The faster it happens, the more confused things get, the closer my men get to those Panthers the happier I’ll be.

I like 4, but it's on that bloody knife edge between boldness and stupidity. I've probably got a few turns in hand before I have to commit to anything and AjarmanG might do something that opens more options or closes some off. Plenty to be considering...

[Hapless]

Another little engagement- a German halftrack came in behind the platoon retreating from Noville. One of the squads had detached a scout team to spot the sound contact coming in, but the Germans saw them first and nailed one with the 42.

That lit up the German halftrack and it got rinsed from the front by one of my halftracks (all hail the mighty .50cal!).

Then lead Sherman moving up spotted it and blew it away. That’s how its supposed to work- blind infantrymen aside.

One of squads retreating on foot has made it to cover, the other has taken a casualty to MG fire from Noville and is now panicking and running around out in the open like headless chickens.

I was tempted to open on the enemy MG team with some halftracks, but there’s a couple of tank sound contacts lurking about and I don’t want to attract their attention until the Shermans are in position.

Apart from that, not much has changed. Still no activity over Cobru way.

[benpark]

This is great. Really good narrative sense of what is happening where, and a good use of the camera for compelling screenshots.

I'm following it, and thinking how interesting it would be to see something like "save games" for download from other people's games. So one could jump into the action and play it out with variations on what we are seeing. I don't know how this would work as far as AI vs HTH, but it would be interesting to have some basic "AI" that was simply another player's plotted moves in any given turn.

[Heinrich505]

Hapless,

  Great action and lots of fun to follow.  Your narrative and descriptions are great and nicely accentuated with the screenshots.  They give us a real feeling of being alongside you and your pixeltroops. 

  Let us know how the squad of "headless chickens" do.  I've had many of those myself, but the "chickens" usually get "fried."

  As for Option 4, you'll need to get the modders going on this for fixed bayonets.  I believe c3K was lobbying for this in the past. 

  Thanks for posting this.  Very enjoyable to follow.

Heinrich505

[Hapless]

Cheers guys, glad to see everyone is enjoying it!

Nothing much to report, the MG42 team lighting up headless chicken squad has stopped shooting, the GIs have recovered and they're staggering away to relative safety.

Two of the Shermans have crossed the stream near the burning German halftrack, but I don’t think AjarmanG is moving any of his Panthers forward to try and capitalise on my withdrawal behind Noville so they might not have much to do. Speaking of Panthers, I can pretty much pin four tank sound contacts down:

Add the destroyed Panther to them and that makes five- a full platoon- that seems a reasonable number of Panthers to bring along so I might have a location for all of them. If that's the case, he's reoriented them all away from Cobru and that makes me want to at least give him a prod from that direction. Of course he's on interior lines though so he can reshuffle his tanks very quickly.

There is an interesting issue I'm running into here. To tick off the victory conditions here I've got to at least get a few men inside the objective in Noville to contest it and tip the balance of victory points in my favour (attrition isn't going to cut it- I'm attacking so I'm losing on that front).

But if we were to place the game into a larger context then I'm on a winner already- it suits the Allies to have a German force pinned down like this. If the Germans are attacking then they've stopped and the Allies are gaining time to reorient and reinforce, if the Germans are defending then the Allies can apply their overwhelming resources. So in a wider context, it doesn't make that much sense for me to try and get into Noville.

Not that I'm trying to self-legitimise any ideas of staying out of that place or anything...

[Rinaldi]

5 hours ago, Hapless said:

But if we were to place the game into a larger context then I'm on a winner already- it suits the Allies to have a German force pinned down like this. 

 

The picture you just provided makes this pretty self-evident. You are definitely dictating the pace and place where combat's occurring. So long as you don't over reach and break your neck you should be able to win. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast right? Once you get a better picture of what's going on you can put the pedal to the metal.

Your infantry has had a rough time of it though, the squad that is extricating itself, how many losses did it take?

 

Needless to say, I'm loving this AAR - keep at it.

[niall78]

Great battle report! I'm eagerly awaiting the next instalment.

It will be interesting to see what you opponent thinks of your spoiling tactics when this battle finishes.

[Hapless]

Little update- my opponent AjarmanG is having some technical difficulties, so it might be a little while until the next update.

In the meantime what do you guys make of things so far? Is there anything you would have done differently? Would you have brought a different force along? Should I have picked the Germans?

On 29/07/2016 at 4:17 PM, Rinaldi said:

how many losses did it take?

Headless chicken squad just lost two men to the MG42 fire there, but they were already down four or five from the mortar fire from earlier, including the platoon commander. Not ideal, but if the mortar hadn't been there then I'd have a decent size force holed up over there so I maintain it was worth the risk. Even though it didn't work it was clearly a psychological victory (*cough*).

[Artemis258]

Valuable lesson for me here - I think I need to be much more flexible in my approaches! I tend to not take one step back - even to re-evaluate a plan or idea that's going poorly, and I get very conscious of time limits... Its a good reminder for me and many others I'm sure, that tactical withdrawals are always an option... 

One thing I WOULD have done differently (if this is a qb) is artillery _some 105's with TRPs in Noville to level the joint... buut without sufficient recon and in the dark that might be a lot of ammo burnt for nothing too :S

[Artemis258]

-double post-

Edited August 1, 2016 by Artemis258
double post

[Aragorn2002]

Nice way of showing this battle, especially with the moving icons.

[Hapless]

@Artemis258 Yes its a QB and yes, I'm missing artillery! If I had some 105s and TRPs in Noville like you say I could lay down some barrages to try and isolate German forces in the town and stop him exploiting those interior lines. And to pound any strongpoints I find. I very very nearly took some mortar halftracks with me (if they could pop flares up then it would have been a no-brainer!), but went for more infantry. I'm missing the artillery section of the combined arms triad here and that may come back to haunt me as the game goes on.

 

@Aragorn2002 Thanks man! I would actually recommend people to make little gifs of their own battles- its surprisingly helpful. The bigger picture kind of degrades when you only see a minute's worth of whats going every turn.

[Hapless]

Ok, we are back on track! Our technical problems have been sorted and AjarmanG and I solemnly return the cursed sceptre of the forum DAR to its place of rest while it contemplates its next victims. So, good luck to the Aussies :P!

Its been a while, but luckily I've got this thread to remind of what the hell I was up to. Got the first rejuvenated turn last night (File 55ish) and... nothing exciting happened. I'm still sloppily surrounding Noville, I think I have a fix on four Panthers, I know his infantry is dug into the town and that at least for the moment, I have the initiative.

Despite having a good few weeks to think about it, I'm not really any closer to coming up with a solution to the problem of administering a kicking without receiving one. And its getting lighter all the time...

 

[Holien]

Good news, glad you are back on track and thanks for the reports. 

[Rinaldi]

Ditto, good to see this active again.

[DavidFields]

I am very much enjoying this AAR.

 

In general, I am not a big fan of splitting my forces, at least not very widely.  I would have taken that "right hook" much less right, essentially down the middle and just to the right of your other forces.

But I know I am cautious.

Pushing your Recon 1 in jeeps forward so fast was breath-taking to me.  Kudos.  I was just praying you would then unload them quickly and put them in a quiet, observer place.

 

Your position on the right grows stronger as the light improves and your units attack distance increases.  Again, this is my bias: never move when you can stay still, particularly if you have fire superiority.  If you actually do not have fire superiority on your right flank, I think you will be in trouble.

 

 

[Hapless]

Cheers guys, it’s good to be up and running again!

@Randkorian: Glad you’re enjoying it man, it’s always fascinating to see how other people approach Combat Mission.  I did think about keeping my force as one big sledgehammer and just smashing straight from Cobru to Noville- it’s got a lot going for it (secure flanks, concentration of forces, simplicity etc) but attacking from just one direction is also going to let my opponent concentrate his defence. We’ve got evenly sized forces so a stand-up fight is risky: I’d rather stab him in the back or shoot him than have a fair fight! I’ve basically split my force in two and each half is chunky enough to manage on its own until the other half can take the pressure off by attacking somewhere else.

Caution is invaluable, but at the same time sometimes being cautious can be risky as hell. I wouldn’t say I’ve been very cautious in this game so far, but the risks I’ve taken have probably made me safer by giving me the psychological upper hand- I can be fairly certain that all enemy forces are confined in a relatively small area and I can manoeuvre my forces around the rest of the map with impunity.

Fire superiority is an interesting one here. Simply put, as far as I’m concerned I’m not going to be able to build up any kind of fire superiority while the enemy Panthers are still kicking.

 

A little bit of activity over the last few turns. AjarmanG is shuffling his Panthers around a bit- one tank contact has moved up through Noville and another appeared a little later, pushing down the top road to Cobru. It could be that he’s seen a lot of activity from the right hook and is probing towards Cobru to feel it out and see if I’ve left it uncovered. Early days yet though.

I’ve had this squad in an ambush position on the edge of the wood between Cobru and Noville and started probing forward with it to see if the woods were clear. Guess what? They’re not. A bit of Mp40 fire, an MG42 and a rifle shot gives means these guys are probably stand-up infantry rather than scouts. I’d guess they were lying there waiting rather than advancing, but the rest of the squad is going to hold up and keep their eyes open just to see.

I’m still not 100% on exactly what to do with the right hook. They're busy loitering in a semi-menacing kind of way at the moment. What I really want to be doing is chipping away at AjarmanG’s armour- more burning kitties please- but pulling it off is going to be risky. At the moment I’m thinking about creeping some Shermans up into good keyhole positions where they can see one of the (presumably) Panther sound contacts and then driving a halftrack forward until it gets spotted and blown away. Hopefully then the Shermans will be able to spot and nail the offending Panther and all I lose is two men in an ugly taxi. Assuming that the Shermans can actually spot, engage, hit and penetrate the Panther…

[DavidFields]

Hapless, you make some excellent points.

Part of the difference, and it is a huge one, is that I essentially always play against the AI.  The "psychological", then, never comes up--and I am a poorer "player" because of that. 

I also play scenarios, not competitive meeting engagements.  If you know it is a meeting engagement, and that both sides (or, either side) can or should rush for the middle, I can see where that would alter many calculations.  In most scenarios, you would have to put a gun to my head before I would run anything up a rode like you pushed the jeeps.  (In particular since I like to play in self-imposed "iron" mode--and am disappointed in myself if I ever redid a move after I consciously gambled and lost on moving something)

 

It is like watching someone play a completely different game than what I play.  It is excellent.  You are describing the play well, and I commend you for your openness in doing this.

 

[Erwin]

I try to think what would the RL guys do if I ordered them to run down the road at full-speed towards an enemy.  Would they simply obey like our pixeltruppen, or would they find a way to be more "careful"?

"...driving a halftrack forward until it gets spotted and blown away. Hopefully then the Shermans will be able to spot..."  Again, that's playing a game - I have a hard time seeing RL guys doing that.  Nothing wrong with that in this game as it's all entertainment.  But, it kinda spoils the point of CM2 trying to be an accurate sim.