Bil Hardenberger

This turn Ken stopped his advance and conducted area fire across the line... I started to pull my 1st Platoon back to the next line so only suffered two casualties to his wild fire. Look at all of the sound contacts in this image... it sure appears to me that Ken might have concentrated entirely on the right side of the map.. right where I also concentrated. I am moving the squad I have on the left forward to see if that area is indeed devoid of troops. 2nd Platoon is moving forward to seek out the flank of Ken's force.. hopefully he will continue to move forward as 2nd platoon moves to the flank. I also have my two HMGs that had been deployed very deep on the move towards the action.

I'd attack into them versus SMG troops too Steve... or rather I'd tiptoe around them.. that's a form of attack right? Exactly right.. and I know what I'd do if I were in his shoes as well... and it was the one thing I was afraid of happening. However after a turn like that I suspect he will lick his wounds for a bit before coming again. That should give me time to redeploy... I do not expect this tactic will work until the end of the game so I have to stay creative and flexible. Bil

On cue Ken advanced into my kill sack and proceeded to suffer at least seven casualties throughout the turn... I suspect there were three or four more that I didn't see as there were a lot of grenades going off. I suffered two casualties... the action is so close and the LOS is so tight that the two sides were often firing at point blank range. This composite image shows all the identified casualties along with the time-stamps of when they occurred. Down in the weeds, towards the end of he turn Ken's troops were running for the rear... a few more dropped getting shot in the back. However, there was one tough enemy team, surrounded by enemy dead that was returning fire and grenades as time ran out...

My forward team immediately displaced and ran for its second position, and not a moment too soon. Ken area fired its previous location for practically the entire turn... burned a lot of ammo. I expect an assault next turn.. he might think he has them suppressed enough to risk an assault. There were no sightings this turn, but several sound contacts, as can be seen in the image. Note how my line has morphed, it is primed to counter any assault by Ken's SMGers into that kill sack... I am slightly nervous about the Platoon HQ being so far forward so will be displacing them next turn. Just in case the above image made you forget the terrain we are in... here is the view from the ground, positioned behind the team that repositioned this turn. That will leave my right most squad out on a limb, but we'll see how it develops.

10 to 15 meters, the far left team is 30 meters off. He is covering the open area between the woods and has pretty deep LOS through the edge of the woods. I'll try to answer some of the other questions tonight. Bil

Ken in no chicken. Just for you here is a link to my floating icons for CMRT. One word of warning.. these work well in war-movie mode, but the Russian icons will need some color adjustment if you intend to use them in normal mode. Bil

Heh, Ken, my last turn has been posted for over a month now. I figured real life took over for you on this one. Bil

Fighting in close terrain with extremely limited lines of sight can be challenging and very frustrating. Especially when taking on an enemy armed with SMGs. My goal with this little AAR is to discuss a few principles, namely defending against a better armed opponent in very close terrain, and performing a Delay operation. Though this little game, which was really just a test against c3k as he had stated that the Russian SMG formations could not be beaten in the woods. I called him on it and this is the result. It only went a few turns before we abandoned it, but I think it can be used as a handy instructional tool. I hope you find it informative. The First Minute: Though Delay Operations are normally a Battalion level task I contend it can be performed just fine at the Company and Platoon level and that is how I approached this little fight. On my left (from 2d Platoon) I have one squad that has been split into two teams. Their role is to not engage the enemy, but to identify any enemy movement, paying attention to numbers of contacts. On my right 1st Platoon is on the line, all units except the HMGs which are back covering the open areas between the wood masses. Their goal is to engage the enemy as he appears, then fall back in stages, attempting to kill more than I lose. 2d Platoon (minus the one squad on the left) is setup as my maneuver element, as soon as I identify an enemy flank they will go into action and attempt to flank the enemy advance. My HMGs are all back in support, they are deployed in depth to cover all of the open areas (amber outlines). Action: Not a lot of action this first turn, but the setup areas were next to each other so first turn action was possible. Ken moved what looks like a recon team forward, and my center team (1st platoon) took down the lead man. Next: I intend to immediately leap frog this team back next turn. I expect Ken will place massive area fire on this team’s location and attempt to overrun it now that he knows where it is. Pulling back will give me a nice kill sack for Ken to move in to. Note in the following image the saw-toothed pattern of my deployed infantry teams. the idea is for the forward teams to break contact as required and re-position behind the second line.. when the team in contact (amber circle) pulls back a nice kill sack will be formed on its previous position with up to four teams overwatching the area. Stay tuned. More to come.

IMO you made that awful easy for the T34.. this is not the game's fault, but your orders that caused this behavior. Those narrow covered arcs are only useful when at long range,. One other thing.. never group your armor together like that.. spread them out, use one or two to cover the move of the first, then when it is in position, move the others in, but do not place them right next to each other, that's asking for trouble. Bil

I saw a driver man the gun in one of ChrisND's videos... the halftrack took damage that immobilized it and the driver jumped up to man the gun. So possible, but not under normal conditions. Bil

Michael, no AI at all.. only was setup for H2H between Elvis and I. Bil

One of my favorite tactics is to move to the opposite side of a ridge where I know an enemy unit is located... giving a target order as far as you can over the ridge (make sure you have a gray targeting line, if blue they will fire their weapons) and within 30 meters, your unit will toss several grenades. My most recent opponent who suffered from this thought I had a light mortar targeting his unit. Spray and pray wouldn't do you any good if that was what happened. Bil

The ill-represented infantry is the main reason I dropped that game a few years ago. From what I remember the engineers, at least armored engineers were very well represented though. Bil

Sounds like you gave a reverse order by accident.

It was custom made for this battle by George. So not an official QB map.

I have uploaded the map used for this battle here: CMRT_Bil_Elvis PBEM_v3.btt Enjoy guys. Bil

Often it is impossible to plot in to a perfect hull down position, that is why I said partial was sufficient, but of course full hull down is preferable. I believe the 3.0 improvements have mostly fixed a bug or two that effected spotting a hull down tank. Following the directions on that page will still work in the game, and you want to have your tanks hull down. Bil

This page should help: Hull Down Procedure

As I have stated previously in my AAR thread I also agree with Redwolf.. also remember that prior to every tank having a radio all tank to tank communication was sent via flags.. only way to do that is while unbuttoned. So unbutton all you want and lay waste to the Germanic hordes and feel good about it. Bil

This one has been hard for me to find the time for... I hope to get back into the AAR and finish it in the near future. Baneman answered this one... but yes the Germans with their LMGs and rifles do have better performance if you keep the large US squads at arms length... in fact against any type of opponent, keeping the Germans at arms length is a good rule of thumb when you can, conversely, seek to close with them if you are the US, Brit, or Russian player. Yes, this mortar fire was direct lay. I actually prefer my mortars to be on-map and used directly rather than indirectly in most instances. They have much faster reaction times and can be devastating because the enemy does not have the spotting round warning you get with indirect fire. There are a few spots on this map from which the mortars have great visibility into the enemy's rear area. Don't forget that mortars can actually see a little deeper than other units, this is to allow them to direct lay some local indirect fire... so though the mortar might be able to spot this unit, another unit probably would not be able to. Actually the person I played in this battle is one of my better opponents.. he had a bad day in this game, but in most of the games I play against him he plays me very close indeed. I think the initial turns in this game unsettled him and he had trouble recovering.. he would be the first to admit that his battle drill was not up to his normal standards. Thanks for reading the AARs and I'm glad you are getting something out of them. Bil

Or you could follow one of the links in my sig below.

Good job Johnsy.. you beat me to it. I have had my floating icon mod ready for CMRT for a while now.. just waiting for the game to release before I upload it. The more options that are available the better IMO. Bil

Many will work. I am currently using my CMBN gridded terrain mod and my marker mod, plus I have modified my floating icon mod for CMRT.

The way I work when playing a game in CM is to use this decision process: Note that my Tentative Plan is just that, very loose and very flexible.. I keep the majority of my combat power back to react to enemy threats or to take advantage of any potential enemy gaps or mismatches. Reconnaissance for me continues the entire game.. I always try to have a scout team (or several) leading the way even when I am going into the assault. Note that recon feeds the Situation Estimate, which is what will help you make your decisions and finalize your plan. That Recon --> Estimate the Situation loop should never end. My final plan might not actually get "finalized" until very late in the game. The pre-battle terrain analysis looks like it is missing from this graphic, but that aspect is included in the Estimate of the Situation. See: The Decision Process and Estimate the Situation This is a very interesting subject, and I want to emphasize that there is no single way to play this game. The beauty of it is that you can use it as a test bed to try different tactics and techniques.. so experiment. If a two man scout team works for you and you are satisfied with it then that's great, press on. For example, I continue to use tight armored cover arcs for tank combat because they work for me, or seem to, so I stick with it even though most will say that covered arcs have little effect on spotting.

I rarely use the two man scout team split off from the squad. I normally scout with a squad in mutually supporting teams (when enemy contact is probable I try to only have one team moving at a time to increase spotting ability). When splitting the two man scout team from the squad, the rest of the squad cannot then split again and is forced to stay together as a lump and is very susceptible to mortar and MG fire. I, like Scout find the two man scout team to be a little too weak on spotting and prefer to have more eyes and firepower forward. Bil