Spanish Bombs

A few quick points as I recall them. As Germans, I couldn't quite take the village on the right, the number of French in the town was too much, and some pretty well placed artillery broke up my initial advance, and the reinforcements were not quite enough. I never spotted Sodball's mortars, hidden in the treeline on the hill, until the game was over. They did a very good job at keeping my troops broken on the advance up the big hill in the middle. I was able to take the hill, but I suffered a ton of casualties, and the troops there were not capable of doing anything aside from hugging the dirt and hoping to avoid the continued barrage. Personally, I was pretty happy/impressed with the abilities of the RCLs. Given the extremely long ranges in the scenario, I found them relatively accurate. Finally, I may have scored a little better with the rockets than some other German players. The first barrage was sent into the big town in French possession, as I think the briefing suggested. Sodball debarked his infantry from the convoy, and sent them scrambling through the woods while my ambush wiped out empty trucks. Anyhow, I took a guess at where and when the French infantry were going to reappear, and I guessed right. The last rocket barrage caught some of his squads in the open, and caused a decent amount of casualties. Great map, btw. One could almost design a whole campaign based upon the hills and villages.

Has anybody found a scenario with a Sturmtiger in it? Like everyone else, I played around with it a little in a QB, but I'd really like to use it in a (preferably) historical scenario.

I'm playing Full against the AI as of right now, at least for the first few games. I intend to switch to Extreme only at some point in the not too distant future, and will probably only PBEM with extreme, but I sorta want to become acclimated to the new commands and units somewhat before fully immersing myself in EFOW.

I would also be willing to play the finals if there is room/need. One last hurrah for CMBO before taking on the Ostfront full time.

There is a whole screenshot with a scenario list. It's strange to see so many different Country insignias. I assume the light blue bordered Soviet star means paratroopers, but any guesses on the white, black or red borders?

A bump to save this thread from falling to page 3, and I'm wondering if Treeburst is close to 75% yet?

A bottle of New Glarus Belgian Red Ale. Am hoping for hand delivery of some Russian vodka, but that will wait for December.

Same here Treeburst, all five games completed but not sure which game you don't have. Is there a preferred method for resolving the completion/reporting conflicts?

Go ahead and go on strike August 30th, jerks. Come September 1, MLB won't be missed. My baseball watching time will be surplanted.

Sent off my last email of the tourney last night, each scenario was fun in its own way, thanks to all involved. Now off to finish up my AARs, and await the results!

Some good ideas here, but I was thinking about starting near the end, maybe the Seelow Heights or something inside Berlin, even. Or something with an Elefant -weren't there one or two of those at the very end?

Somewhat tangential, but nevertheless, I was wondering the other day whether perhaps rivers were modelled any differently. I mean, wouldn't a river current be an interesting twist, and certainly realistic, too. Maybe it wouldn't be worth it since actual river crossing scenarios are so few and far between, but, smoke drifts in CMBB, so couldn't water too?

I didn't think it was as good, but The Price of Admiralty deals with maritime subjects and is similar in design. Worth the read, certainly.

Alright!! This day, is a very good day!!!

That's "Daley" not Daly. But then what do you expect from someone who lives in a state where Jesse Ventura reigns.

LOL, Barrold. 10 hours in the car over two weekends, plus leaving the wife alone for a few hours on Saturday near all that shopping. That's impressive.

Damn, stuck at a family reunion all day, but thanks. Highly recommended to anyone who can make it.

A couple of points about covered arcs that I recall: 1) they were easy to set, basically just clicking and dragging into whatever size/shape/distance you wanted to make and 2) for AT weapons, you could do a covered arc for armor only. In other words, a covered arc area in which infantry would be ignored, but armor would be fired on if it entered the area.

Lest I forget - for me there was an inherent thrill to playing Combat Mission within Stalingrad, at the Dzerzhinsky Tractor works no less. It might have something to do with the fact that the first WW2 board game I ever played was the first 3 original Squad Leader scenarios which were set in the identical location. Or it might be the nature of the battle itself: all those doomed soldiers fighting in such an epic struggle. Whatever it was, the brief taste I had led me to believe that BFC had done the subject justice, and I can hardly wait to get my hands on it again.

A few factory points, as I played about 4 turns of the Stalingrad scenario that barrold was mentioning, set in fact at the Dzerzhinsky works. First off, IIRC, I was told that the map was extremely accurate and was made using photos of the real buildings. And, these buildings are big, real big, and there were three or four buildings on the map, maybe more. This is not a fair comparison, because CMBB will kick Close Combat 3's ass, but the map was somewhat reminescent of the CC3 maps set at Stalingrad, meaning there was a series of huge buildings, and fighting through one was only going to lead to fighting through another. Visibility was not a problem, meaning one could see within the factory just fine, and even out of the factory at the Russians between buildings. There was the use of doodads within the factories, portrayed as stacks of boxes, but not machines or the like. As for the combat within the factories, I didn't really get a chance to experience it, however, I will say that I did very quickly eliminate 2 Russian squads that were caught between factory buildings, while my Germans were still in the one building. One moment that was really cool also happened in those few turns I played: I had a PzIVg (the same one that I mentioned in an earlier post) moving between buildings. As it moved into the open, I heard the crash of glass, and a small fire started right next to the tank. Seconds later, the PzIV was drilled by a T-34, so it took a few replays to figure out all that had transpired. The glass and small fire was a molotov cocktail attack from a Russian squad in another factory building. It may not sound like much as I write it, but the effects were all very cool when it was happening.

OK, here's another cool feature, that I don't think has been mentioned: the ability to create "fallback positions" during setup. What this means is that, in certain scenarios, you can create foxholes, alotted to you during setup, as ready-made fall-back positions. Again, pretty nifty, IMHO, and speaking as someone who looked out over the field and saw a mass of Russian armor and human wave candidates, the prospects of falling back into some sort of dug-in cover is a welcome addition.

A couple of answers: re: smoke drifting, that PzIVg I mentioned above was brewed up rather quickly by a T-34 (albeit after escaping a molotov cocktail attack), and I did look at the smoke for drifting, but did not see it. The reason it was not drifting, though, is because apparently there was no wind in that particular scenario. Later on, there was a smoke column that was drifting in another scenario. re: wire FOs having the wire cut by arty or other means, I asked the same thing myself, and as I understand it that is not modelled, or perhaps it is included as a possible calculation in the inherent time delay. I saw the post here describing 20 hour work days on CMBB, and Rune attested to a similar burden including his RL job. All I can say is that the work is really showing, and thanks for the effort.

Oh yeah, wire/ radio FOs. In the factory scenario I mentione above, I had a rocket FO who had a decent target of massed Russian infantry (contacts, mostly as I was playing extreme FOW). Falling back on my CMBO habits, I was moving the FO to a place where he could see his targeted building before issuing the targeting order (with the help of a commander). The next movement phase, I hit the 'T' key for targeting, and hear the error sound. Hey, Rune, what's this? Anyhow, the FO was a wire FO, and not a radio FO. Therefor, whenever I move him, I have to account for the time it takes to move the wire, reconnect and make contact with the offboard artillery. In other words, there is another delay that has to be taken into account for the wire FO that is not inherent in the radio FO. Pretty nifty.

Wow, I hadn't read through this thread thoroughly after yesterday, but it appears to have taken a few twists. If I could jump in here, since I was one of the fortunate to make it over to Rune's yesterday, although my stay there was not as long as some others. First off, thanks much for the hospitality Rune, it was even extended to my wife and daughter (who loved the dogs BTW), when they arrived a little earlier than planned to pick me up. (For the record, I used the 'Honey, I just opened a beer, can I stay a little longer' technique to extend my stay - worked like a charm.) I think it bears reporting that CMBB is far from CMBO in Russia. For example, when I jumped right into a scenario I used the "run" command to move some infantry within a factory building, which was a mistake. Even though I was just looking to precipitate some action and get some firing going, it is important to remember that there are a slew of new movement commands available, and as far as I can tell, the use of the wrong command could have devestating results - think of running into a mass of Russian infantry without firing your weapons necessarily, as opposed to advancing to contact. The visuals were stunning, most noteworthily the T-34s (which are available in some of the screenshots) and the doodaded wheatfield. I was playing with a PzIVG at one point, and like Rune mentioned above, it appeared to be out of some '60s hallucination because the textures were still being worked on. I had a taste of a second scenario playing with Barrold (hey, did we win?) that was set up as a Russian counterattack in 1941. I'll post some more details later, but suffice it to say that surviving the prep barrage, then facing an onslaught of infantry (I suspect this was where the 'human wave' was implemented), and T-34s and KV-1s? contacts was going to be a daunting task, especially when one comes to grips with the limitations inherent in the German AT-gun selection. Finally, my overall general impression was 100% favorable. I will say that there will be a 'learning curve' necessary, with all the new commands and techniques available. It won't be a steep curve, but it will still take some adjusting to, as the number of tools in our respective toolboxes will be greatly enhanced. I've been playing CMBO for about 20 months now, and I still find new and really cool things in the game. From what I saw yesterday, I completely suspect that we will all be saying the same thing about CMBB for years - the scope, ambition and performance are all breathtaking.