CM:FI AAR SLIM versus Bletchley_Geek

[Bil Hardenberger]

19 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Care to ellaborate why is this video relevant to the discussion? 

Thanks.

Yep.

Edited April 16, 2018 by Bil Hardenberger

[Rinaldi]

I am not exactly sure why I was tagged or plugged in this, and hope @BletchleyGeek and @General Jack Ripper will carry on with their AAR and discussion - which I've been enjoying quietly. Let's move past this banal distraction.

[sid_burn]

1 hour ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

Yep.

As I stated, it was an obvious jab. Miller obviously isn’t going to say it was an insult. But come on people, you don’t need to put your forces in guerrilla to see it was meant as an insult. 

 

Edited April 16, 2018 by sid_burn

[BletchleyGeek]

Thanks for that @Rinaldi, I am still more bemused than anything else. I will try to post a couple posts describing my force in detail and the initial plan. That changed a bit as things didn't happen.

I know the General is a very busy man, and I am also too very busy.  

Thanks too @sid_burn for the comments. Rest assured that I don't suffer fools gladly, but I think giving the benefit of the doubt to people is for the better.

[General Jack Ripper]

6 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

It's a shame @General Jack Ripper has deleted the video of his CM:SF match against @IICptMillerII. 

I have not. It's right here: https://youtu.be/6TQ6fRLaGec

 @IICptMillerII. Please keep ancillary discussion to a minimum. This is an AAR thread, not a general discussion thread.

I openly admit in my video I completely screwed up my attempt at scouting, yet was still able to generate some accurate intelligence.

If you're expecting an error-free battle, then you'll have to find some thread over in fantasy land, because as anyone around here can attest, even the best among us make mistakes.

The next video will be posted on Saturday, perhaps @BletchleyGeek can fill the time with some writing?

[Sgt.Squarehead]

That's odd, it wasn't showing up in your channel for me. 

[BletchleyGeek]

I will try @General Jack Ripper, my usual evening quality time in the man cave is been squeezed out of existence by work

[General Jack Ripper]

22 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

Here's a cinematic, entertaining video of someone who knows how to scout and attack properly. Highly recommend emulating.

Also, I am aware of Rinaldi's video, I have been subscribed to him for some time:

^ See?

Now, enough of that nonsense.

[General Jack Ripper]

5 minutes ago, BletchleyGeek said:

I will try @General Jack Ripper, my usual evening quality time in the man cave is been squeezed out of existence by work

Understandable. I myself am wearing multiple hats at work this week.

Edited April 16, 2018 by General Jack Ripper

[sid_burn]

2 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Thanks for that @Rinaldi, I am still more bemused than anything else. I will try to post a couple posts describing my force in detail and the initial plan. That changed a bit as things didn't happen.

I know the General is a very busy man, and I am also too very busy.  

Thanks too @sid_burn for the comments. Rest assured that I don't suffer fools gladly, but I think giving the benefit of the doubt to people is for the better.

No problem, you can’t let the haters get you down. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

8 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

You're in luck! I've been trying to get into cinematic AAR video making. I've been playing around with recording and editing recently. I have the files to Halt Hammerzeit that I'm planning on uploading. Unfortunately all the save files are on my desktop, which is currently under repair, but I'm hoping to have it back in action soon and start recording. Stand by!

I look forward to picking up some advanced scouting tips. 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I look forward to picking up some advanced scouting tips. 

In another thread, of course  

Steve

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Naturally. 

[BletchleyGeek]

Time for an update. It's been a hard, very busy week, and finally I found a little moment to add some comments about the force I brought to this game, and my initial plans.

 

 

Force

 

The force I brought to this battle was a full 1943 CDN Infantry Bn, with its full complement of support weapons. I bolstered the "Carrier Section" (a bit of a misnomer really) with a few Bren MG Sections and added another section of engineers to the Pioneer Section.

 

Bringing along the AT guns was sloppy QB purchasing on my behalf: I just forgot about them. On this weather and visibility conditions they could only be marginally useful as I would need to carry them pretty much to the thick of it, Napoleonic style. The Canadian guns come with a few HE rounds allotment so I wasn't going to be pulling my hair just yet. At least they could shoot at stuff.

 

Commonwealth Infantry Battalions are interesting for various reasons.

 

First, they are made up of 4 rifle companies. Other than the pre-1944 Red Army, which eventually dropped this off and rarely kept their establishments up to their "paper" strengths, I am not sure any other combatants with 4 coys in their infantry battalions at all throughout the war. I find the 4-coy structure to be significantly more flexible tactically than their 3 coy counterparts. Not that this matters much in CM other than for the purposes of sharing intelligence more effectivel. If you wanted to deploy 4 coys, say, with the German army, you'd have involved 2 different battalions requiring certain arrangements to make sure those two command structures share spotting information etc.

 

Second, they have a pretty comprehensive support company tossed in there, with AT, Mortars, Machine Guns, Engineers and Scouts.  It is a very convenient arrangement.

 

In terms of equipment, this is 1943. So my guys are bringing to the battlefield the Enfield, the Bren MG, those iconic watercooled HMGs, their 3in mortars and hand grenades. And optical binoculars. That I think imposes very specific constraints on how to conduct reconaissance or do battle, which are very different from other titles by Battlefront.

 

Initial Plan

 

As is the usual case with QBs you start with pretty much 0 information about the enemy dispositions. This requires to conduct battlefield reconaissance to "feel" the enemy positions. In the real world, a couple platoons would have engaged in some aggressive patrolling in the hours before the main gig started. Chris setup the game in a fashion that such a thing could be played out.

 

So the first part of my plan was to learn where Chris forces were. For that I detached 1 platoon from each of A and C Coys, which would sweep forward through the avenues of approach that Chris identified in his opening video. On the map below, you can see my initial moves:

 

•   The scouts of the "Carrier Section" + Bren specialists would be screening the left flank. I had no real intention to be very aggressive on the extreme left, as I had instinctively prioritised the other four targets.
• 1 platoon of A Coy would advance towards Casa d'Antonio
• 1 platoon of C Coy would advance towards the general direction of Casa Fanella and stop at the ditch

 

 

On the map I indicate where I suspected Chris to have deployed forces. The map is cut in half along the West - East direction by a ditch, which I expected to be Chris' first line of defence. I wasn't sure whether he would try to setup some LPs/OP's on the orchards on my left, it felt to me like an ideal position to stall any advance and threaten the flank of any advance on the targets on the rightmost half of the map.

 

Coys D and B, and the guns, would be kept in reserve. I split the HMG platoon into two groupings, augmenting the firepower of  coys C and A, which I had earmarked to be the tip of the spear.

 

And that was all the planning I did initially. I was pretty much convinced I would have to change it quite soon.

Edited April 21, 2018 by BletchleyGeek

[c3k]

Great way these two are showing each others' perspective. Nice!!

[rocketman]

On 2018-04-14 at 6:59 PM, General Jack Ripper said:

The next video explores my attempt to gain some intelligence about enemy intentions.

[snip]

To that end, I send my scouts out, "NormalDude Style". In proper fashion, they get brutally murdered, due to a mistake I made planning my movement.

[snip]

That brought fond memories to life. I hope we again some day in the future will see NormalDude (ChrisND) on Twitch doing his now infamous scouting. 

[General Jack Ripper]

21 hours ago, rocketman said:

That brought fond memories to life. I hope we again some day in the future will see NormalDude (ChrisND) on Twitch doing his now infamous scouting. 

Funny enough, that's exactly what came to mind.

Anyway, I'll have a video along soon. I managed to get some time to myself this afternoon and recorded video showing the entire fight for Casa Fanella and Casa Riposa.

I'm going to focus on that side of the battlefield first, then I'll cover the other sectors.

[General Jack Ripper]

We open with a lecture of sorts about night fighting, barbed wire emplacement, and move on to the first minute of real action.

From now until the end of the battle, fighting will be bloody, violent, and without much letup.

Edited April 23, 2018 by General Jack Ripper

[JoMac]

On ‎4‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 5:10 PM, General Jack Ripper said:

We open with a lecture of sorts about night fighting, barbed wire emplacement, and move on to the first minute of real action.

From now until the end of the battle, fighting will be bloody, violent, and without much letup.

I have always thought that Units Spot & Return Fire way too fast, especially in Bad Conditions...In RL, with the Confusion of sorts, it should have taken another Minute or two for that "Peel Back Effect" to fully take place. 

Just your 2 Cents...

[c3k]

So, you're saying Truman was right about "the domino effect"? 

Great video and lesson.

[Bil Hardenberger]

I finally had a chance to watch these videos last night.. very interesting, and I love the presentation @General Jack Ripper and I'm very impressed with @BletchleyGeek's tactics.  In fact I would say that the assault on that objective is the best example of infiltration tactics that I have seen in a CM game.  Well done Miguel.

I would say, as far as the scouting goes that you made two major errors:

1.  You left way too much distance between waypoints.  When I scout I move forward two, maybe three action spots, then pause for 10-15 seconds.   It is better to move in short segments more slowly, than to give your teams long movement paths.. that is very dangerous in the face of an unknown enemy.  You can assign long movement paths if you feel relatively safe, but as you start to get closer to probable contact you need to slow down and shorten your movement.
2. Your lone scout team had no support.  You should always try to scout with at least two teams... I know I don't always follow my own advice.. but with at least two teams you can have one team moving while the other is stationary. 

This is good stuff.

[BletchleyGeek]

Another terribly busy week... just barely managed to watch @General Jack Ripper excellent video. It's a shame we can't work out the name of single privates. When I saw him being mowed down I remember jumping on my chair.

 

Thanks for that @Bil Hardenberger! Tthat's perhaps the highest praise I could expect. All those battle drills that you painstakingly curated in your Battle Drill blog are being put into (good) use

 

Over the weekend I will come along and post some pictures and video capsules to illustrate the overall (both at the macro and micro level) attack plan. Which was inspired by the following passages of a famous book:

Quote

316. A flanking attack (umfassender Angriff) is more effective than a frontal attack. The simultaneous attack against both enemy flanks requires great superiority. The envelopment of one or both enemy flanks, reaching deep into his rear, can result in the destruction of the enemy.

A flanking movement is easiest to execute when the forces intended for the envelopment are committed from a distance against the enemy flank or wing. It is more difficult to initiate an envelopment in close proximity to the enemy. The troop movements necessary for such a maneuver are only possible on a battlefield with favorable terrain or at night.

The envelopment must strike at the main enemy force in a decisive direction. The success of the envelopment depends upon the timing and extent of the enemy's ability to shift his forces in the direction of the threat. 

[...]

317. An envelopment (Umfassung) requires that the enemy's front be fixed (Footnote: this echoes Moltke the Elder dictum "Umfassen, Einschliessen, Vernichten"). 

The enemy is best fixed frontally when his entire front is attacked. Such an attack, however, requires strong forces, which must be withdrawn from the enveloping wing. The attacker, therefore, often must be satisfied with conducting limited or feint attacks. 

The advice one finds on books (or booklets, or other doctrinal pamphlets) rarely can be applied verbatim. Rather than a method to do something, like drills are, they  actually are heuristics. That is advice compiled by trial and error by those who came before, which is expected to facilitate the work of others. They're the basic ingredients to guide the formulation of a plan, but not a template (necessarily). Figuring out when they are applicable, and how to get a handle on how their advice can be used with the resources at hand and negotiating the constraints the environment imposes is a hard problem. That is, you will rarely solve it entirely to your satisfaction, and very often, things will go very wrong because you drew the wrong conclusions, formulated the wrong plan and implemented it wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

I have almost always learnt something from the games I have played... and this one was no difference. If I manage to get 50% not wrong, I consider myself a happy man 

Edited April 26, 2018 by BletchleyGeek

[Bil Hardenberger]

1 hour ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Over the weekend I will come along and post some pictures and video capsules to illustrate the overall (both at the macro and micro level) attack plan. Which was inspired by the following passages of a famous book:

The advice one finds on books (or booklets, or other doctrinal pamphlets) rarely can be applied verbatim. Rather than a method to do something, like drills are, they  actually are heuristics. That is advice compiled by trial and error by those who came before, which is expected to facilitate the work of others. They're the basic ingredients to guide the formulation of a plan, but not a template (necessarily). Figuring out when they are applicable, and how to get a handle on how their advice can be used with the resources at hand and negotiating the constraints the environment imposes is a hard problem. That is, you will rarely solve it entirely to your satisfaction, and very often, things will go very wrong because you drew the wrong conclusions, formulated the wrong plan and implemented it wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I have almost always learnt something from the games I have played... and this one was no difference. If I manage to get 50% not wrong, I consider myself a happy man 

This is brilliant Miguel.  I should have you post this attack and your inspiration on my blog as a guest poster.  Interested?  

[sburke]

2 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Another terribly busy week... just barely managed to watch @General Jack Ripper excellent video. It's a shame we can't work out the name of single privates. When I saw him being mowed down I remember jumping on my chair.

I have asked for it, but there was some technical reason why it isn’t done in CM.  I’d love to be able to see a full roster of my units.  The only way you can get it is by killing pretty much everyone in your unit one team member at a time.  

[Warts 'n' all]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

 The only way you can get it is by killing pretty much everyone in your unit one team member at a time.  

Think I'll pass on that one, .