Andrew H.

It's pretty good, but the plural of "Fallschirmjäger" is "Fallschirmjäger"; it's a little grating to me for the English plural to be just kind of stuck on.

It would be interesting to see another AAR on this same map, but with different equipment.

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I think the biggest issue is the armor: give GaJ another Pz IV and two...I don't know, Pz III's? and the game would still be winnable even now. But if he has them from the beginning, he doesn't have to be as cautious with his tanks as he was (remember, he spent most of the beginning moving his tanks around in cover, rather than using them against enemy troops). One effect of this would be that Bil's intel wouldn't have been as good because more tanks means more of his teams get shot up.

That's true - and I just looked at my Sherman book and the aiming telescope is near the midpoint of the turret. So it kind of comes down to how far out of the hatch the commander is. But it looks like the difference would be more like 3', and not much different between tanks. (Unless US TCs were taller...)

I wonder if the problem is worse in the Sherman because it's so tall - i.e., there are more situations in which the commander can see something from 10' above ground level that the gunner can't see at 5' above GL than there would be if the commander were at 8' and the gunner at 5'. Concerning the battle itself, it seems like there are three important elements: 1. The terrain. The terrain has little cover and little concealment. It's also difficult to move in, although there are a lot of mountains to hide behind. 2. Armor. Bil has (well, had) more than twice as much armor as GaJ (now he only has twice as much). Because the terrain is relatively open, armor will be particularly effective, and somewhat safer than would be the case if there were more trees and more covered approaches. 3. Spotting. Bil seems to be doing a better job than GaJ at spotting, and it seems to be a more of a priority for him. GaJ bought artillery, but is having trouble making effective use of it, in part because his spotters keep getting spotted. I think this battle will end not in a big decisive battle, but with GaJ's forces being picked off squad by squad by Bil's tanks (maybe the Stuarts) while the Pz IVs are bottled up by the Shermans. However, the terrain is so unforgiving that a little bit of bad luck could change things - if Bil lost another Sherman, or wandered across a TRP with too much infantry, or GaJ got a good bead on vulnerable units with artillery, things could change dramatically. But right now I'm expecting GaJ's forces to be whittled down by armor in places where he won't be able to respond effectively.

Well, to be accurate, it's not something we see everyday when we read *your* AARs. :D

I agree; it's time to show some "moral fibre" and charge. I just wish that CM had a separate "Fix Bayonets" command; I'm not sure that the AI does it as I would wish.

I hope not followed by Bil leaving on an extended business trip.

I think that this is not *at all* true as a general rule. It was true in WWII to some extent, in some areas, although I can't really think of any other war in which this has applied. I also think that it's worth pointing out that a lot of what appears to be weapons tech in WWII wasn't really - the Germans started the war in '39 with Pz IIIs and Pz IVs, and ended the war with Pz IVs and StuG IIIs. A lot of the German developments in tank tech were just seeing how much armor and how large a gun you could stick on a preexisting chassis. The most revolutionary tank in WWII was probably the T-34, but it was a pre-war design and its improvement over its predecessors (BT series and T-26's) is as large or larger as any increase that happened during the war. Radar was improved; aircraft improved somewhat; ships stayed basically the same, small arms stayed basically the same (the StG was an incremental change). Bazookas were developed, which was significant, as were recoilless rifles, which weren't. The V-2 and the atomic bomb were probably the most significant developments.

This is true in the open (in fact, the SAW would probably put significantly more holes in them). But the .50 has a significant advantage against troops in buildings, and it also has a much greater range, which can allow you a bit of stand off room.

This is true, but it's not true for computer games generally. No computer game has a meaningfully better AI than it did 15-20 years ago. The problem is not the power of the computer; the problem is that no one really knows how to make a computer think like a human. Chess programs got better not because computers got better, but because programmers got better at explaining the rules of chess to the computer. None of this has much application to actual AI, which is why Big Blue wasn't really a success from that an AI POV. Even if BF had 100 times the staff and budget, they couldn't make the AI better. Billion dollar AIs in robots have problems with fundamental things like telling a window from a door - they are just not very smart. They could not have improved the AI. No one could have. For the record, I don't think that CMx2 is a backward step at all. The details is much better, and the AI in scenarios is also much better, due to triggers. The troops in CMx1 never counterattacked or set traps, for example.

Weren't you invited to the monthly forum parties in Maine? Scotch tasting, Weasel rides...good times!

I think the real issue with this is that it wouldn't be as interesting at CM's squad level scale (with maybe a few exceptions). You want to play a wargame at a level where the decisions you make make a difference in the battle. With a small handful of exceptions (late war infiltrations, maybe tanks), what your company does won't make much difference at all. You need to be at the battalion or regimental or division or corp level to be able to really affect things in WWI. (This would also be generally true of the Napoleonic wars or US CW - Pickett's charge was, after all, an attack by 3 divisions). The reason, of course, is that by WWII (and this is even more true today), smaller elements had a lot more firepower, but were also forced to spread out more because everyone had more firepower. Normandy had lots of company level battles in the bocage, for example, and the Bulge had a lot of instances of companies (but also platoons and even squads) fighting independently in significant battles. And despite the larger scale, this also happened in the East as well - Pavlov's house was held by a platoon for two months.

The other factor is shell/armor overmatch. I've forgotten the details, but because the diameter of a 75mm shell is 3x larger than 25mm armor (3.75x larger than 20mm armor), the armor (or slope?) is effectively reduced by some amount which may be significant in this context.

Remember the Fionn 75 and Fionn 76 rules? And he was the first guy I remember with the strategy of very aggressive scouting...often followed by a massive artillery bombardment if the scouts could pin the main enemy force long enough.

Rematch! Rematch!

The Tiger 2 produced 700 HP. An Aston-Martin (a new one) produces 750. :-)

60 mm mortar works well and is hard to detect.

The US suffered 90,000 casualties in the battle of the bulge. Every casualty has a story... :-)

Nah, it's just 75 feet - that's less than first to third in little league!

So we can assume the beta testing has begun? :-)

My favorite way to play since CMBO! :-) With the right scenario and terrain using green troops are a lot of fun; ideally you manage it in such a way that you *aren't* rallying panicked troops. This does require a more cautious strategy, which is easier to manage in infantry only battles where you have a little more control.

I'm actually a big fan of Battlefront's new pricing system. Although it's kind of strange to say, you should always be worried when there *isn't* a way to pay a company that makes a product you like...since there is literally no other way to insure that they will keep making the products. And as others have pointed out, the price is really very low for any kind of hobby - if you go skiing for a week, you will easily spend much more than $500 and spend much less time doing the activity than I have already spent on CMx2. Of course there is the question of value...but I have played CMBN, CW, and CMFI more than any other Battlefront computer game I own, and will probably continue to do so. I've also discovered that I really like the tight focus of these titles. CMBN was, in many ways, all about the bocage. Something that I had read about for decades, but didn't really appreciate until CMBN. If battlefront (BTS was much easier to type...) had come out with a Normandy-Bulge title, I probably would have played a game or two in the bocage and then moved on to play mostly standard open games. But because they didn't, I spent months in the bocage (as it were) and feel like I have a much greater appreciation for the issues it presented. (There are some scenarios, in particular, that demonstrate this quite well). And then there's the CW module. Again, I don't think I would have appreciated the real differences between the troops and equipment if I hadn't spent so much time with the Americans...but as it is, it feels like a completely different game: it's more open, and the troops have different equipment. (Setting ambushes in wooded areas with the three man recon squads armed with two stens can be devastating; I can't wait for the later war german squads with a larger number of automatic weapons). And CMFI is again completely different - more primitive equipment, generally; Italians!; and far less cover than before means I have to use different strategies again. (Ones I haven't quite figured out yet. :-() So I feel like bf continues to give great value for the money, and I'm happy that they are providing me with the chance to get value by spending money. :-)

True enough. Although to be honest, there aren't a lot of good places for men to be when unexpected arty starts raining down.