Ghost of the 90th

"And remember short arty rnds kill so dont be directly in fromt of a barrage but be off to the side slightly to avoid this." What I meant here is how to avoid getting hit by rounds that fall short on fire missions you plot. Clearly you can't always predict when you will be hit by the enemies arty. I am talking about ways to avoid being hit by your own.

Biggest one ever... To sit still is to die. Move it or lose it. The longer you stay in one place against a good player, the more likely he is to bring a world of hurt on you. Basically, the moment you feel safe, means that you are probably not Others... 1. Keep squads of the toons in command radius of the Platoon HQ's. I have seen many newbs make this mistake over and over. Squads in command perform way better then out of command. Never ever let your squads go out of command. Move units as whole Toons, except for the odd scout. 2. Never, ever, shoot arty without los to the target. Laugh if you will, and I know some are, but if you guarentee los to the spot of the barrage your accuracy will be ten fold better and twice as fast. Most people never learn this and it is the biggest mistake I see made. 3. Hide your guns in trees never leave'em in open on a hill just for the los. Use hide command with guns. 4. Use smoke when you have to move up over enemy gun covered or open terrain you suspect to be. 3inch mortars or 81mm mortars provide good smoke, guns of some afv can provide smoke too. 5. If your opponent insist on allies and clear weather you will see Jabos! Buy lots of 37mm flak guns (4 would be good) and shoot the sucker down. Then you can be almost positive he aint got squat for arty and you can move up with impunity. 6. Learn how to manipulate the time on expected arty drops. You learn this and you will be up in the rare air among the best CMBO players. Few ever get there. I always here people say how do I get my arty to the spot needed at the right moment. Well let me tell ya, it aint luck. Everytime you retarget beyond a certain area from the initial targeting the timer may completely reset or partially reset. Keeping your arty from resetting all the time you need to learn how far you can go with retargeting. This takes lots of practice and most never figure it out. Any top ladder player has mastered this, thus they are on top. 6. When a spotter round lands, run!!! And run sideways and never forward or backwards if you can help it. 7. Learn how to make it so a spotter round does not fall the round before the actual barrage. Spotter rounds warn your enemy that it is time to run. Very few ever master this. Spotter rounds suck. Figuring out how to avoid them is again a function of arty clock management. 8. Using hidden HQ units to spot for mortar parks. Figure this out and you wont believe the number of uses. 9. Study the pattern of eenmy falling arty to deduce where mortar parks and spotters are. This is a super advanced skill which most never think of, yet it can be done. I have killed countless arty spotters this way, and had many a charge that I somehow cheated to pull this off. You figure this out and I will fear playing you 10. Learn how to read a map. 1st thing is remember the opponents setup zone is the same depth as yours, this will help you in figuring wether a gun is covering a certain area of a map. Basic logic yes, but often not utilized. this can help you move forward undetected. Moving forward undetected is huge. Play extensively against yourself as both opponents and figure out when to hide, sneak, crawl and how much trees you can see through. Do this alot until it is second nature on what the right command should be for any given situation. Lastly overwhelming firepower is the way to go, learn how to bring craploads of force to bear all in one turn rather then piecemeal. And remember short arty rnds kill so dont be directly in fromt of a barrage but be off to the side slightly to avoid this. You learn these and you will dominate CMBO...I win in excess of 80% on ladders and 90% non ladder just pick up pbem and games I get at CMHQ. Arrogance usually defeats me, so even if you get good with all this, it is wise to never underestimate an opponent.

lcm1947, The mistake you, and many make in CMBO is they become enamored with armor. They think they can't do anything without it. If you want to dominate in CMBO master inf and Arty. Armor is nice but if you consistently want to win, master inf and arty. And when taking on the Germ armor just dont crest the hill, blast and pray for a kill from 1000 meters. You will get spanked as the allies. Set them up for side shots..smoke them and flank em..they have slow turrets. Germ armor is superior head to head at range..you need to develop different strategies for killing them. Germ armor verse Allied generally just keep em hull down and deal doom. Good allied opponents know how to overcome this.

Which side has the advantage? Well...this depends on a couple of things, most importantly the date played. At different times, different equip is available, this greatly affects the balance of the game. For instance the VG SMG are not available until Nov 44 and American VT Arty is not available before Nov either. Brit VT arty is not available until sometime in 45. Late war (anytime in 45) the allied tanks and ATG's will likely have more "t" rounds available to them and this can make a huge difference when going up against the Big Cats. A nice little 6lb with 6 or so "t" rnds can pop a Tiger frontally from pretty far out. 54 point ATG killing a 178 point behmoth is a quick way to even things out quickly. Seems here that people believe in the points to cost ratios that the Germans have the advantage. This maybe so, but if you want to even things up pretty quick buy some VT arty. VT, when used right (75% of people dont use it correctly)can tilt the overall game toward the allies in a big way. Another very sweet piece of the allied arsenal that has been left off some of the Uber/Gamey lists posted here is the British 3"inch On Board Mortar. That is a powerful weapon and the amount of ammo you get is usually 3 times what an American or German mortar crew get. Late war German inf also rule, because their Fausts have ranges up to 100 meters! So look out late war with Allied AFV's keep em away from Germ inf! When VT is in the mix I would give the edge to the Allies. Otherwise the Germans.

Sorry Treeburst, I should have checked in here more often. I will send in my purchases this weekend. Sorry to all for any problems my delay has caused. I will speed things up and pay more attention. Ghost358th

Thanks Broken. Ya I could never bring myself to wade through that morass from the earlier posts. I just read it all finally. I now understand. It does not matter if the defender wins, draws or ties verse his attacker. What matters is how he does relative to others in his same position (other defenders same scenario). Interesting. Attackers need to win big to gain points, as they are going against other attackers. Ok, I am sold. This will be a game of minimizing your loses and maximizing your vics. Who ever does this the best wins the tourney. Ok, I finally got it. Lets start placing wages. I will put big cash on Wreck. He is the best at minimizing loses that I have ever played. Ghost358th [ July 02, 2002, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: Ghost of the 90th ]

1st off thanks Treeburst, you are doing a helluva job. Very impressive. Now to my observations: 4 Attacks out of 7. 3 I am defending the other I am attacking verse Swamp. DOH! Don't put money on me. Guess we were not into Meeting Engagements. People are not into equal points verse equal skill, really to bad. Attackers should win every time. An attacker who loses in this tourney, did not belong here. Figure out who is doing the most attacking and crown them the winner, do we need to continue? Do points matter or just winning the game? If points don't matter then defenders are porked. People are kidding themselves if they think they are going to out right "win" these defenses against the assembeled talent here. So my question is, with all these ATT/Def what are the scoring we are using. If it aint points, we may need to revisit scoring. ATT/DEF no fan here. Attacker big advantage. Ghost358th

I have taped the oral histories of 2 WWII vets. One was the grandfather of a friend and he served in The 4th Rangers in Italy and later with The Devil's Brigade (1st Special Service Force). It is unlikely that you would ever meet a tougher man then this Ranger Vet. My friend described his grandfather as being messed up from the war. And said the only thing his grandfather had ever been good at was killing. After a 5 hour interview with him, I agreed wholeheartedly. He described killing civilians, both by accident and on purpose as well as killing prisoners and surrendering Germans. One story he told was of a group of civs that approached them in some dug in positions. The civs(Italians) offered haircuts to the men. The men obliged. Later that day once the civs left, they were hit with insanely accurate mortar fire on their dug in positions. It did not take a genius to figure out how the Germans figured out where they were. A few days later the same civs approached the same unit in some more dug in positions. Well, you can guess what happened next. Their was definitly extra linguine at a few Italian homes that night. You people spouting off "rules" of war and articles of engagements yada yada. What would you have done? This was not covered by any rules the Geneva convention ever foresaw. It is easy to sit in judgement of such things. Acting like you would take the high road. Put yourself in the soldiers position, risking your life and limb every moment, under maximum physical and mental stress, the likes of which most of us will never encounter. Friends dying around you, death all around you, so much death that you become inurred to it. The vets we talk to today, our grandfathers, are here today talking to us and holding there Great Grand Children on there knee because they did what they had to do to survive. In many instances it was not pretty. Some still bear the scars and mental anguish from there actions. Both vets I interviewed cried at one point or another when the emotions came rushing back in. Bad mouth them if you will and some may deserve it, but I think a jury of their peers would understand. We may never understand, and hopefully never have to. Ghost358th

Treeburst, Sorry, been away on vacation for awhile. I will fill out my form and send it in ASAP. Ghost358th

Cool, I am in. Username: Ghost358th email: jfc23@hotmail.com For the record, I play both TH and BoB. Lately though it has been really hard to get TCP games at BoB, so I been playing TH more and more. TH is the TCP spot, always has been. I have the attention span of a knat, so it should be interesting to see how I do in a PBEM tourney. And as far as 3 TH players; well, Wreck has not played there in a very long time. Also, TH is the undisputed toughest ladder. (No knock to BoB) I have played everywhere and everyone(under many names) on the net and can say without a doubt, TH is the toughest. This is not bragging or chest thumping, it is just plain fact. The top ten there are a murder's row from CM hell. Try it sometime to see for yourself. Well, thanks for including me. Anyone posting odds yet? Side bets? etc... is their a link somewhere that I missed to all this ROWII stuff? Ghost358th

Since I apparently represent everything "bad" at TH, I think it only appropriate that I throw my hat in as well. Everyone needs a villain. I will happily play that role. I play both BoB and TH. I do well at both. I look forward to playing Wreck especially. BURRRRNNNN! BEAVVIIS BURRRNNN! hehe. OOPS sorry. I say QB's, pick your own, TCP format. PBEM is for cheaters and bores me to death. Ghost358th (When I registered here way back I used Ghost of the 90th, then some putz stole my identity on ez board so I changed my name)

After reading this makes me wish the Germans had liquidated the BEF at Dunkirk. What a paper tiger the brits were, they certainly were not fighters. Ahh, but for a skinny peace of ocean known as the Channel the world would have been rid of the likes of them forever. Pax Britannia indeed. How are you Brits enjoying the current reign of Pax Americana? The view from up here is lovely, it is the stink from below that is bothersome. I can't imagine a Brit actually winning a game of CM. If I ever lose to won, I will be the laughing stock of my circle of CM friends. Ghost of the 358th

Very Interesting. Would stop people from min/maxing in QB's. Some of the buys were no brainers for each side. Germs always should get 300 MM rockets, KT, Strumkompanie and at least 3 or 4 Puppechens at 26 bucks each. Plus a tom 75 guns from vehicle list. The Allies should always get Pershings and Jumbos and probably a 90mm gun or M36 and if they can afford it some Glider Inf preferably a company. That is roughly the standard min/max procedure. This would snuff that out. We could find out if people can win without their Precious KT's No wonder all the Gronnards are ignoring this post. They will have prove they are capable of winning with out their standard min max fare. Very Interesting. What maybe more interesting is everyones silence on this idea. Ghost of the 358th

Wow, everyone jumped down poor Jumbos' throat! Jumbo,I was going to post something very similar. Glad you were here to catch all the flak I have had no success so far with the Allies. I have managed 2 draws and lost approx 8 times. I have never played a human opponent with Axis. Here are some of my observations: 1 US tanks need to stay way the **** away from any Ger squad. Those damned PZfausts make every GER unit basically an Anti-Tank unit, unlike the Allies. 2 Although Ger squads maybe smaller they generally possess more firepower upclose due to there amount of machine guns. 3 In quick battles the GERMANS vehicle list is quite superior to the USA's. Thus they have more 75 mm guns running around then the USA. The 251/16 are nasty too. At least in a town and in the hands of an intelligent defender. 4 Ger armor is superior and without those thinskinned TD 76's and Tungsten rnds the Allies can forget it. One KT can dominate a whole QB. Shermans are only good from the flanks. And if you miss, goodbye. Now all that being said, I maybe losing for other reasons, like; 1 I maybe to new, and have not climbed the learning curve yet 2 Maybe I am not using the USA units correctly and in their proper roles. 3 Maybe this game is better as a true historical game. Hey the USA had inferior ****, just more of it and the Germans were already defeated and did not have the resources to withstand our onslaught. Had they never tangled with the USSR and got sucked into that nightmare, their is probably no way short of nukes the West was going to be able to defeat them. Hey, I am an American who lost family in WWII Euor theater and I admit this freely. 4 the guy I play is a vet at this game and has a ****ing Genius IQ and knows more of military tactics and history then many. Makes nice scenarios too. 5 I got to find some opponents who is as bad as me Then I maybe I will learn to win with Allies. Till, then anyone know anygood essays for HOW TO WIN w/ALLIES I am sick of getting spanked. Maybe I should try Germans. FlamPanzer me at will! Like a Jumbo I got thick skin. ------------------ Ghost of the 90th ---------------------"The boundries of a country are marked by the graves of her soldiers."-Napoleon