Bil Hardenberger

Hey Ken, how's that attacking going for your troops in those woods?

Hey Scout... I'll take you on in CMBN if you like, I love playing the professionals. Sadly I don't have CMSF loaded anymore. I'll shoot you an email. Bil

Or, use the The Four Fs

John, Ken's force is a 1943 SMG Company of three platoons, plus one extra platoon, just because. He has a good force mix I would say.

The nature of the battle: Wooded and close terrain, approximately 600m wide by 1km deep Germans (defending) = two Fusilier platoons. This force will be commanded by me Soviets (attacking) = four SMG platoons (SMG company, plus one extra platoon). This is Ken's force The opposing force is the objective, there are no terrain objectives. The intent of this little scrap is to explore defensive tactical options for a German player against Russian SMG troops.

I'd love to see a WW1 game.. but I'd like to see the Battle of the Frontiers in 1914.. when the war was all about movement and counter-movement. Although... the late war with Allied tanks and the Germans with their Hutier tactics would be awesome too.

Remember SMGs were invented in WW1 as "trench brooms" to sweep trenches clear at close range. They are meant for close range combat... if you allow them to close then you are asking for trouble.. they might be a little over powered, but I would say not by much, they do the task they were designed for very well.

Heh, okay I'll send you an email and we'll get this going this evening, recall those three fellows, you might need them.

Remember in my AAR my main concern was at the linear danger areas, the open areas between the wood masses. That is where the Germans need to be with their high ROF LMGs and their rifles... the SMGs have to close to be most effective. Ken, I'll take the Germans, you take the Soviets and we'll do a little test game to explore some of this theory. Two German platoons on defense v a Soviet SMG company on the attack. Up for it?

Umlaut, awesome work!

Sorry for the delay on this (been kind of busy).. I continue where I left off... The Fourth Minute I had an enemy HMG team spotted last turn, I dropped a bunch of mortar fire on it this turn.. no idea what the effect was, but it must have hurt. 1 Zug on my right is taking a lot of fire.. no casualties yet, but B Team/1st Squad, the HQ unit (mortar) I sent to the hedgerow to help, and A Team/2nd Squad are all pinned. A/2/1 Zug in particular is not a good development.. this could allow my opponent to come up the treelined road and I have little to stop that move. I really expect the hedgerow that holds the HQ and B/1/1 Zug to be assaulted very soon... with those two teams pinned I cannot pull them out. I am going to try to get my mortar supporting this platoon to drop some smoke in front of them to see if I can save them.. otherwise they will be lost.

Scout, yeah that was my impression as well.. BTW I believe they do carry a HEAT round... those shouldn't make the large holes shown on that Panther though. One more thing, I love your CMSF blog... look forward to seeing what you do with Black Sea when it gets released. Bil

I was planning just such a deep move from the very beginning... if you had the road mined or defended the objective with a tank or an ATG it would have failed spectacularly... but would have been a hell of a show. People usually do not defend deep objectives like that too well.. I flipped a coin and got lucky. Elvis, I think you played a terrific game... a few things that would have helped from your perspective: you had to know that your armor was superior to my ISUs.. if you had kept them near Blau to deal with them and let Gelb go.. then tore up my infantry assaulting the objective (and kept your infantry in place on Blau as well) I would have been forced to come to the rescue with my T34s which would have played into your hands. Was an interesting game.. and despite what some say I think there were many tactical options open to you, I liked some aspects of your strategy... the only major error you made was move forward with your armor at the end. But I had them flanked so you had to do something with them (not that you knew that ) I still say great game, you held up your end very well. Bil

Here are some screenshots of the two Panther penetrations showing the hit decals... it does appear, even though the first penetration is the one that killed the Panther that the second did indeed penetrate the upper front hull. I'm a battlefield effects and tactics guy, not a technical expert by any means... so I leave the debate up to those with the slide-rules and the large sized hats.

I suspect the hit text was incorrect as the hit decal was on the lower front hull.

Ah, no nothing new.. in the case of the OT-34 the kill stats called out two captured along with the number of killed.

Yep, also in CMBN, CMFI, CMSF. They show up as missing in the other side's AAR.

You are safe John, I don't play tournaments.

Here are some of the notable kill stats from the game: German: - Elvis's flamethrower team: 14 KIA - Elvis's Panther: 12 infantry, 1 OT34, 1 T34-85 (#1) Russian: - OT34: 12 KIA; 2 captured - T34-85 #2: 12 infantry, 1 Hetzer - T34-85 HQ: 4 infantry, 1 Panther - T34-85 #1: 4 infantry, 1 Hetzer - ISU-122 (the one that was NOT hit): 15 KIA, most in the last two turns - 1st Plat with support mortar&HMG/5th Company (on my right flank): 18 enemy KIA and captured while suffering 5 casualties (seemed worse at the time), BTW a total of 12 enemy soldiers escaped from that killing ground on the right out of a platoon of around 44 individuals (Straggler Plat= 4 squads of 10 and an HQ of 4).

Was finally able to upload the rest of the AAR screens, here they are for your enjoyment: Can anybody spot my math mistake?

Well its about 1.5:1 casualties in my favor which isn't bad considering I was the attacker. Sorry I meant to look at the flamethrower team.. and now I won't have time for that until tonight. As Elvis said he really would have surrendered, so the Tactical victory doesn't really reflect the end game where his units, at least those on my left were in a closing vice. The German units on my right I had no contact with and did not know what he had there (about 2 platoons worth of infantry it turns out) but they were out of the fight, and in reality would probably have broken out in another direction.

Having trouble uploading to Flikr today for some reason.. so this will have to suffice for now:

I did see that very early in the planning phases you had determined that I would go for Gelb before Rot.. that was pretty damned good analysis Elvis and was spot on. You might have been set up correctly in the woods for an infantry advance, but you really left Gelb itself open to another route of advance... the road or a swinging left hook (from my perspective) would have worked for me.. I opted for the more direct route and HOPED that you did not have AT mines across it. I can see why you didn't, if you expected me to stick to the woods... Regarding your defenses in the woods.. I don't know if you realized it but most of my maneuvering through the woods (until I was sure they were empty) were along the edges, I avoided the interior as much as possible. This would have bypassed your defenses as I moved my infantry toward Gelb.

Elvis, just read this entire thread... I think you were at a disadvantage about half way through the game with all the black UI icons.. sorry about that. I never thought it would be that bad for you. It makes a huge difference being able to ID which units are armor and which are infantry. Regarding the battle.. I think with what you fielded you did extremely well, it could have gone either way until you moved your tanks forward at the end. We'd still be playing if you hadn't done that. I am very curious what the kill stats look like for this one. I lost a lot of infantry, but so did you. It looks like you had a huge portion of your combat power in the woods leading to Gelb.. that might have been a mistake, and if you had kept several units in Blau instead of evacuating it then I would have been forced to fight for it and it could have been uglier for me. That would have been better for you in the end than having that combat power out of position and easily bypassed (or shelled from afar from my ISU-122s). Still, outstanding game! Thanks for facing off with me.

That damned flamethrower was ridiculously well positioned.. in the two buildings which were behind a hedge.. so I could not get any ranged fire into them and had to close to engage, it was the perfect setup for that team armed with flamethrower and MP40.. and I wanted that bastard dead. Got him in the end, but man Elvis you did a good job with that team. Bil