Joachim

It's always a trade-off. If you fear direct fire more than indirect, go for the woods. An ATG in the woods might survive 2 turns of DF but will die in the third from a mortar barrage. In the open, it will die in the first turn from DF. Above 40mm, you usually can easily locate guns. Any decent opponent will then area fire the location and soon a bug will reveal that the unit is dead (or another marker "inf" will appear close). So woods won't conceal the position after you open up - you might just evade aimed fire (which ain't better than area fire as close counts with HE) if you hide in the next turn. Concealments of units behind walls etc is bigger than in woods. It is very hard to spot you there... until you unhide or look from high above. If there are no mortars or FOs, woods are great! Gruß Joachim

Scattered trees = death traps. Brush, Rough, even rocky terrain is better than trees... if you've got a foxhole. Walls and sandbags act a bit like a crest. If ou ever triedt to dislodge a gun from there, you'll see why. Suggest you try "A series of misfortunes". Dug in 25pdrs vs tanks. Read the comments in the scen forum about it. Gruß Joachim

We're talking theory here... there are a few pieces that improve your armor tactics in CM. In practice: In a recent game vs the AI, I had 4 Marders (green) , 4 PzIIIj (late) (vet) and 4 PzIVg (early) (vet). Defending a city, so lots of keyholes. AI had 75% bonus and was set to regular armor. All Marders died, scoring 8 tanks. No tank died - the PzIVs scored 30-40 tanks. The marders usually worked well when I applied my above tactics - even that conscript crew. As soon as I tried to engage the Soviets frontally they died. Gruß Joachim

IMHO Out of ammo refers to primary wpn. HTs with MGs only might be classed as having 2ndary wpns only.

Create a scen, lock TRPs, put a few heavies in the AI OOB then show them a few tanks on their TRPs. Then you'll know. Gruß Joachim

A handy trick to keep track of units is either selecting the whole screen - you can easily see highlighted units - or increase unit size. A piece of paper with info about your plts and hvy wpns helps, too. Gruß Joachim

Some of the things I guess about turn processing (either the green bar in the center of the screen dpeicting AI thoughts or the little blue bar in the lower center of the panel (doing the TacAI etc). CM grabs all resources it can get during turn processing. Therefore ALT-TAB etc don't work. 1) find out where these bars are. Especially the blue one is tiny. But it is the only thing that shows you CM is still doing its work. I have a PBEM where it takes up to 15 minutes to crunch the numbers (10000 pts each in the desert). The blue bar might hang for 2-3 minutes sometimes. Patience! 2) If there is arty - like prep barrages - it takes very long to calc smoke or dust. Probably cause LOS calcs are the most complex ones. 3) Units reacting to threats add additional calc time. Arty that hits their positions, Hunt or MoveToContact take time 4) Dust of any kind takes time 5) Lots of units take time 6) Lots of open space take time Gruß Joachim

If there is time, I prefer the bigger ones. Current PBEMs include one with approx 10000pts - for each side. Only a fraction of the units move each turn while most give overwatch. Vs AI I usually play a campaign with a core of about 2200pts plus aux troops, resulting in 3000 or 5000 pts defences or 2000-5000pts attacks. They take some time, but I'd rather play a big battle per week than 3-4 small ones. Gruß Joachim

HTs come in handy after you know most enemy assets. Before, they are just transport for me. They have to hug cover to keyhole and as such are better on maps with medium to heavy cover. Hills help, too Given that there are assault HTs, they must have had some offensive use in RL. Use them behind infantry screens and 200m away from HMGs. Marders have to switch firing positions often (just like any tank should). They are great for learning the use of tanks. Once you handle a Tiger in '42 like a Marder, you'll probably win almost every armor battle. Use them like HTs. Keyholed, hugging every possible cover and make sure they don't stay up for too long. If you appear twice in the same position, you might face covered arcs and die. Your goal is to move up mid-turn after closing hatches of the enemy tanks in the flank of the enemy tanks and disappear again 5-10 secs in the next turn. This way the enemy has to turn the turret or the tank to face you. He probably won't get a single shot off. Plt of 4 Marders should fire from different angles. Either simultaneous to ensure some flank shots - or alternating. T1: One pair from the left. Enemy reacts: T2: one pair from the right. T3: pause. Tx: Any pair from another location... Now to deal with the threat, he has two possibilites: a) Stay up and use a covered arc. Hopefully allows you to attack from another angle with a 2nd pair. move turret down. Tank has no use then and can't stop your attacking infantry from closing in or support his attacking infantry. It is a bit of cat and mice who is up when. Supporting attacking infantry with Marders is very hard. Just like assault HTs, they must keyhole on known enemy positions. They are no overwatch element that can protect your moving infantry. They come up next turn to take revenge. The StuGs (even the 50mm front variant) are much more forgiving. That's why you learn more with Marders. Gruß Joachim

...Plus the Tungsten of the 50L60 hits while the slow HC of the 75L24 usually misses. OTOH the behind armor effect of the HC is better. If you treat the PzIV as an uparmored Marder with AP capabilities, use keyholing and consider local odds you will have a good tank handling most situations. Most Allied tanks can kill it? So what - it can kill most Allied tanks. Gruß Joachim

SS and Wehrmacht are almost identically equipped in '42 (at least in CM infantry btns). The current setup looks good. Upgrade the Snipers to vet. Use regular tanks but veteran StuGs/Marders. For the latter the shots count. The former are just there to attract bullets. You might even afford a plt of 4 regular IIIj, a plt of 3 vet StugIIIf and 2 regular Marders at the same price than your armor is now. Drop some LMGs, a mortar or the 75mm FO (you have lots of on-baord mortars!) to upgrade the Marders to vet or buy another one. Experiment with that setup. A note on the 37mms - if one comes without HC, set it up in the rear and fire harassing shots. Sound contact only. But it might kill a light tank from the side. Do not allow it to fire freely - select the targets and use well-thought covered arcs to conserve ammo... it has a high ROF. IMHO your current force is much better than what you had. Experimented at the weekend and found it is probably the best btn solution for 3000 points. Now I am just talking about minor quibbles. Gruß Joachim

If you are advancing vs SMG heavy units in dense terrain, half-squads are better: They suffer less casualties (they are less people, so less can get killed and CMs model favors small teams when it comes to casualties: The same amount of incoming hits more men in a 10-men squad than in a 5-men team) I'm glad if the men on point stay alive. If they panic - they are at least still alive. When advancing across the open, half-squads can cover a bigger area. A squad has more eyes, but pinned squads see less than a pinned half and the other still up. If you have trouble with rally time - have some Co HQ with morale bonus support your advance. It can pick up stragglers. If you have a point plt for a company, put two halfsquads in front. They break - no problem, let them fall back and reunite with the Co HQ. Split next squad from same plt. Repeat. After last squad did their duty, let the plt HQ fall back and hand over the squads from Co HQ. If you have plts with 4 squads, you can use one of each for recce. Once they fall back, start to create an additional plt under Co HQ. Once routed squads don't have much value any more in the first line. But they are still valuable as overwatch or when following a halfway successful assault. Gruß Joachim

Second Znarf here. Mobile support in short games, mobile recce and mobile support in long games on huge maps. The real recce is done by infantry. Heavy armored cars (75mm, 2pdr, Puma etc) are effectively light tanks. Their role is either infantry support or TD duty similar to Hellcats. SdKfz 222 or 250/9 (the one with 20mm autocannon) have AA ability. They are no AA magnets so you can keep them with other assets (unlike SPAA) Gruß Joachim

Don't need to climb up. Those attic from 1894 I remember has stone walls. If they tear down one bldg you often see the exposed "brandmauer". Its just bricks. You don't even need explosives to tear that down. A big hammer will do. Gruß Joachim

**** SPOILER ALERT for Andreas In a PBEM scenario I have vets only, so I guess all of my planes are vet, too. A StuKa targetted my own PaK. Tough luck the inf plt with my best commander was close. All gone. Enemy forces consist of inf and guns (until now). My own is inf, guns and trucks. IMHO It helps if the enemy has AFVs in the open and you have none.

But I want scouts that are able to find out whether that bridge might support my tanks... Gruß Joachim

There is a discussion of Hornets nest. IIRC in the Scenario forum. The scen suffers from borg spotting, lack of memory for ranges, no cover and sheer numbers. If you face 5 times as many tanks even a hit probability 5 times higher than your opponents won't help you. While not all 88 hits kill or you pound a dying T34 for another turn, most hits on a Nashorn kill or disable the crew - at least momentarily. This increases the numbers game even more. Widen the map, place some houses on the hilltops to allow for keyholing, put some snipers ahead of the infantry, add some HMGs and 2cm AD to button the T34s and a FO to mask half of them while engaging the rest and you get a completely different scenario. The key is to avoid the numbers game. If the Nashorns are able to reduce the fight to a string of 1:1 engagements where they have the surprise they stand a chance. Of course you need lots of AP and almost no HE then as they might survive long enough to spend their ammo.

Guess he replaces arty with DF guns. Choosing from an 81mm FO and a 15cm sIG, I'll select the cheaper sIG vs the AI. If the map parameters are wide open country and I can place the sIG way back, I'd still use it vs human as most mortars won't hit beyond 800m so the sIG is rather safe - except vs DF guns which should be busy doing the armor war. sIGs are killers, arty below 100m usually just disrupts except when in woods/trees. The description of the opponent's tactics supports the use of big DF guns, too. I would not completely rely on DF - but 2 FOs could be enough to round out the capabilites of lots of big DF. Gruß Joachim

Interesting article except for the last bit which is ignorant garbage. It's not hard to find examples of TDs hitting targets at beyond 1000 meters, and there are a couple of examples of Hellcats hitting targets at 2000 meters. The triangular recticle thing is cool, and I'm sure it's useful - but there are lots of other ways to get the range without them - you could sometimes tell the range from the size of the vehicle, even without the recticles. You might know that the fence being crossed by the enemy tanks was 1250 meters away. You may be able to estimate the range by being able to estimate the distance of an object (house, tree, shed) near the target (admittely, more difficult on the Russian steppes). And as soon as one tank in your platoon gets the correct distance, all tanks should know it. </font>

If you have tanks - 75mm and above can kill wooden bunkers. 88L71 might kill concrete bunkers. Keyhole many tanks on few bunkers. The big disadvantage of the bunkers is they can't move.

Even in my 1988 training co we had just 2 officers for 200+ men. Most administrative duty was done by the "Spieß" aka "Kompaniefeldwebel" aka "company sergeant(major)". From all I read that did not change much since '39. Note that Germany does not have a class system in the armed forces like the Brits do. If a recruit has some beers with his Captain - so what. If an NCO has his duty and some officers messes with that. No problem. The officer might win the first round. Next round sees somebody higher up. Officers in the German army might get promoted from plt to co commander. But they might as well come from somewhere else. They don't stay in "their" regiment. Gruß Joachim

Suppot wpns are four categories: the infantry teams, HMGS, mortars and the guns. Infantry teams like sharpshooters, tank hunters and LMGs are very stealthy. They can act on their own with less command delay than a half squad out of command. You can have lots of eyes with small teams. LMGs can irritate the enemy as he receives incoming at medium range without knowing what is there. THs are deadly vs scouts or in close combat. If he knows you have them, he has to act differently (less aggressive with tanks). HMGs have a good loadout and are good in two categories: Long range traffic interdiction where you shot at anything moving. IMHO it doesn't matter if they are green or vet as they won't kill. OTOH greens have more ammo jams. Having more of them offsets this. Having them under command of bonus HQs increases their value. Mortars are good vs indivdual hvy wpns. FOs are cheaper for massed fire, but hitting an ATG is a job for on board mortars. I'd suggest mixed teams of greens and vets. One for hitting, the other for longer suppression: Mortar teams fire faster and hit better with more exp. Vets burn thru their ammo fast. Greens might take too long to kill. Both have pros and cons, but the greens are cheaper. Guns: ATGs are easy... 75L46 rules until '43. 3.7 with HC ammo is great value for short ranged fights. AD works good as AP and vs light armor. If you don't need them in the armor war, 7.5lIG is better. AP guns. Look at the blast value - this is criteria No.1. Rocket propelled or recoilless usually is worse in accuracy and range. Best bang for the buck is 7.5cm lIG and 15cm sIG. E.g. the 105 howitzers take 4 minutes to deploy. The sIG is definitely better as it deploys in 2 minutes or less, has a bigger blast and is cheaper. It will not hit as good as a 105mm howitzer - but this results in a bigger beaten zone per turn... and close counts with HE. Gruß Joachim

Addendum: The "Brandmauer" was not built as a supportive wall, I guess. So additional walls were necessary to bear the weight of the upper stories... no weight, no additional walls. Getting through the Brandmauer in the attic is just one wall where below you will face 3.

Wooden walls in attics? At least German fire insurance dates back very long, where everybody had to pay who owned a bldg. As a result you got "Brandmauern" or "firewalls" between bldgs - mandatory! These were made of stone, usually reached higher than the rooftiles (thus visibly separated houses) and were constructed that no flammable material of two houses were close to each other. Having wooden walls in attics would spread fire too fast. Dunno about other countries. Gruß Joachim

The AI baits for anything it can spot. Immobile inf is hard to spot before turn 1. Hm... the arty is coming down in different places in my current QB. 3 places if I count correctly. A planned rolling barrage? Several guns targetting different locations? With delays? Most times you start the scen? BRWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Use the casualty setting, different setup zones, padlocked setup and suppression/exhaustion level to simulate this. Gruß Joachim