grunto2

the americans can really surprise you with fast-moving firepower. the way to defeat stuarts and stuff is with 20mm aa, 37mm aa, aa halftracks, cheap recoilless rifles and pupchens and panzershrecks. use the aa weapons to hit them in the side when they try to sneak through your lines. use the recoilless rifles from any angle. a 50mm AT gun can also deal with a stuart. in defense king tigers (any tanks, really) have to have this kind of support on their flanks or they're toast. the best situation for a king tiger is on a large map where they have good los. if there are stuarts crawling all over your positions then i would expect you to have problems. your friend must have had a great time, taking out 3 kts at the loss of 7 stuarts. ...wait a minute... i was just looking at the 37mm and it says it 'does' 68 mm inside 100 meters. on the other hand the king tiger's minimum armor is 80mm. are you sure there weren't some bazookas lurking around? they 'do' 90mm. andy

edit hi peiper, i will send it later. i have playtested a bit and the 60mm mortars are a bit 'too much.' the americans have no 'grunts' to take and hold the woods patches and buildings. the best they can do is use MGs for close assault. there's a webpage which calls for a recon platoon to have 3 greyhounds and 6 jeeps. according to the web page, the jeeps didn't come with mgs but the recon troops often field mounted either m1919s or .50 cals. the jeep crews carried small arms and rehearsed bailing when under fire, then fighting on foot. they had mines and demo charges too. the 6 jeeps carried 3 mortars and 3 mgs as well. well with the jeep .50 no longer being able to transport a mg in the game, i was left with plain old jeeps and in game turns those simply get in the way after they've offloaded their passengers. a jeep with a .50 cal is good for 2-3 turns of intense combat. so i'm going to replace two of the jeeps per platoon with an m3a1, and then have 1 jeep .50 for sniffing out enemy units and quick close fire support. and now i'm going to remove 2/3 of the mortars and replace each 2 with a squad, so a platoon will be 1 platoon hq 1 mortar 1 squad 1 baz 3 mg 3 greyhound 3 m3a1 3 jeep .50 the plan is to split the squads into teams, then max out their demo charges and rifle grenades. i might use airborne squads for more close-in firepower. ...i have looked into it and will use u.s. airborne companies with 2 squads per platoon taken out. they will still have 1 mortar, 3 mgs, and 1 baz. the squad in each platoon will have 2 smg, 2 carbine, and a bar. to represent 'mines and demo charges in the jeep crews,' i'm going to give the airborne squads max rifle grenades and demo charges. so i figure it's late in the war (feb '45) and some recon/cav units must have gone to halftracks instead of, or in addition to jeeps. using the platoon structure described above in a cmbo scenario will hopefully give the player a 'sense of u.s. cavalry as it might have been.' possible spoiler info... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the germans have an interesting mix of volksstrumm and volksgrenadier; about a battalion of each, with an ad hoc 'assault gun' detachment, sharpshooters, panzerschrecks, light guns, and mg42s. it looks as though, with the airborne (3-man) m1919s being put into the mix instead of the standard (5-man) m1919s (and standard .50 cals), and with the chaffees and m8 hmcs as the main armored support, that the combat will have to be quick and sharp in order for the americans to succeed. they don't have unlimited ammo. if the germans can snare them into a series of prolonged firefights, the americans might not have enough ammo with them to take the last town. there's this story about one cavalry squadron whose commander - when he was told to turn in his stuarts for chaffees - sent 17 greyhounds instead, and convinced the req guy that they were tanks. so that squadron must have had 17 stuarts and 17 chaffees at some point. i was thinking of modelling a scenario around that. i'll send it to you when the updates are done. andy [This message has been edited by grunto2 (edited 03-19-2001).]

one simple rule is to occupy each building with just 1 unit. if the heavy stuff starts coming down, i'm not sure if i agree that trying to run is the best idea. in any event cmbo is like a game of 'hammer, rock scissors' in this regard. you can set your units up apart from each other, so large blasts don't effect multiple units, but that has its own set of drawbacks. you can 'scrunch' the units together for maxiumin infantry-combat firepower but then they're more susceptible to the artillery you're tring to avoid; fire which every cmbo player is probably leery of to some degree. personally, i stick to the 1 unit per building rule, and keep them spread out. on a related subject, you want to occupy the interior buildings of a town, not the outlying ones; someone here alluded to that. aside from enemy artillery barrages, there is the problem of enemy direct fire at the outlying buildings of a town; direct HE fire collapses buildings into rubble very efficiently. in any event, incoming heavy caliber artillery fire is not good. you're pretty much hosed whether you stick around or try to run, at least in my experience. one other thing you can do is to fight fire with fire; on defense, as part of your force buy a trp or two and some heavy artillery spotters. if you put a trp at a likely enemy staging area or route of advance, and your opponent actually sets up or moves into that area, you can lay heavy artillery down 'from the get-go.' if you guess right this could stop 'his' attack before it even gets started. it might even take out his heavy artillery FO(s). if you guess incorrectly, your defense will be that much weaker. case in point: once a pbem opponent, as part of his force on defense bought a bunch of rocket spotters and some trps. my lightning cavalry advance foiled it that time. basically he guessed incorrectly as to my areas of setup and routes of advance, so the trps weren't in the right places. he did take out a couple of m8 hmcs, but everything else was a disaster for him. my jeep .50s quickly overran his 'FO nest.' they bagged something like 6 rocket FOs. that sort of made up for the time i had umpteen 20mm AAs and 75mm recoilless, all limbered and in transport, and he hit me with airstrikes... probably 20 dead guns and kubelwagens... see, 'hammer, rock, scissors' =grin= andy

feb, 1945: here is another 'huge scenario.' as the american commander ('rp' duke) you have a cavalry squadron and must clear a section of the autobahn (heimat). there is a chain of 3 towns on a 880x2400 meter map. it is night so the visibility is about 250 meters. your orders are to clear the towns in this area of resistance. your squadron is: battalion (squadron) hq with m3a1 halftrack a, b, c, d companies (troops) each company has: 1 company hq 1 sharpshooter 3 platoons, each with: 1 platoon hq 3 greyhound 3 m3a1 halftrack 3 60mm mortar 3 mg 1 baz e troop: 8 m8 hmc f troop: 17 m24 chaffee so you have: 1 battalion hq 4 company hq 12 platoon hq 36 60mm mortar 36 mg 12 baz 4 sharpshooter 37 m3a1 halftrack 36 greyhound 8 m8 hmc 17 m24 chaffee the ground is dry and it is snowing. can you clear the towns of german resistance? you can send an email or post here if you would like to test this one. andy

thanks for the compliments ss peiper. spoiler info: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . i like to take one or two of the tigers and steer them into positions where the woods are broken on the crest of the hill. that way they can provide powerful overwatch support. the rest of them take off across the fields to move up amongst the infantry and support their advance. those stuh42s which arrive with the pioneers are also excellent close support for the infantry advance. allied infantry melt under that 105 fire. i like to think that this does represent armored operations pretty well. there may be a lack of infantry but the scenario _is_ trying to represent operations of a panzer division (12th ss) so that's probably how it should be. i find that having a shortage of infantry forces me to mix vehicles in on the point of the attack. i played hotseat 'both ways' and did a rudimentary canadian defense. they have some 7.2 inch spotters and with those i totally lit up the german gun positions on the top of the hill. those 7.2s took out the 120mm spotter and a slew of vehicles as well. as germans though what are you supposed to do with the guns? those hilltop positions are perfect. maybe it's worth it to draw out all of the allied 7.2 assets. if those hilltop guns remain operational, the battle is miserable for the allies. anyway, even with the guns mostly knocked out the germans pressed the attack and got into the town. now the candian armor is counterattacking with the infantry battalion and the tigers are hard-pressed. it's a great battle. i find that the ai is not very good on its counterattack though. that's why i played hotseat; with just a few simple moves a better allied game plan was put into effect. it's so huge that it's probably not good for pbem. i'm with you though; battalion-level action over large maps is a blast. the movies are incredible, because you're looking at platoons and companies of tanks acting in concert, along with companies of infantry. the constant allied air attacks add to the action in this one. those sdkfz 7/1s are really important. one thing i've brought away from this one is a fondness for the sexton. that 88 is a good all-around gun. the tactical problem with the mg42s is an interesting part to the puzzle; you can't set them up in your starting areas because their range won't effect where the canadians are probably set up. so you have to take some forward positions, then run the mg42s up. it's an interesting dilemna. i like to take the embankment and the town, just as the mg42s are arriving on their trucks, kubelwagens, and haltracks. then the mg42s dismount and occupy shellholes and rubble near the embankment. from there they can basically sweep everything they can see up to the highway. often they can see to the other side of the highway as well, but not the higway itself of course. the infantry squads fan out into the town. i find that the pioneers can't easily get into the town in time for the allied counterattack. in the latest one i'm playing, the pioneers are in positions around the flags on the train tracks there at 'the opening.' the mg42s are placed around them as above. it's about turn 40. i was thinking about taking enough spw251/1s out of the starting force to carry the pioneer reinforcements. 10 or 12 spw251/1s could be taken from the starting force and be added to the pioneer contingent. this would probably help the germans out logistically. thanks again for the compliments. andy

i wonder if that pearl harbor movie will show any glimpses of female leg in seamed stockings... that would be realistic for the time period. so if they can throw in some seamed stockings (with reinforced heel) in with the romance angle, it should be ok. =laugh= andy

a mess of sdkfz 7/2 or 7/1s usually does the trick too =grin= andy

yes i have this habit of trying to turn scenarios into operations. i did find a bug through all of this and reported it in the 'tech support' section. basically, if you have all of the unit slots filled (you can't add any more units to a side in the editor), and if you play the scenario, then try to 'up' (+25% or whatever) the side whose 'slots are already full,' the game hangs. 'company level' is sometimes just too boring.... it has to be a battalion... a heavily supported one at that... or how about two battalions supported by 40 or more tanks? maybe it's a 'cm jones.' maybe you should call me, 'mr. operational-level.' =laugh= andy

'putot:' the panzergrenadiers left their jumpoff points along the sunken road and laden with weapons and ammo trundled out into the fields, toward the town. Behind them on 'their' hill the guns opened up from the woodline on the crest. rocket artillery spotters contacted the batteries. spw 251/1s dashed ahead of the advancing infantry, not on the fields but along the sunken roads running between the fields. by using the sunken roads they could avoid enemy antitank fire from the raised railbed (embankment) outside of the town, 1500 meters away. the sdkfz 7/1 and 7/2 halftracks meandered in the scattered trees, covering the force against any allied air attacks. allied planes attacked anyway, bombing a vehicle here and there. one plane scored a hit on a company of pioneers loitering behind the 'german hill.' ouch... two spw 251/1s knocked out... flamethrower teams diminished or eliminated. So much for having transport for _all_ the pioneers' heavy weapons.... the infantry continued across the fields. here and there a british squad or machinegun would open up from a farmhouse. all the while the german guns on the hill dualled with the allied antitank guns revealing themselves by firing from the opposite embankment; the rounds going back and forth from the guns on both sides passed over the heads of the infantry advancing along the lower ground of the fields. allied artillery (3" mortars?) began pounding the 'german hill,' along with direct 88mm fire from sextants. a 150 ig knocked out here... a 75mm ig knocked out there.. an 88 knocked out... still the remaining german guns continued their fire. the wrecks of canadian self-propelled guns and the broken frames of 57mm antitank guns began to dot the embankment just in front of the town. allied air attacks were incessant. some tank destroyers from 21st panzer division showed up and worked to find firing positions on the hill. oops... a nashorn got into place before the canadian antitank guns had all been knocked out. now flames and smoke marked the spot where she rested. tigers infiltrated onto the battlefield, gunning their engines to take them down into the valley where they could assist in the advance of the infantry. hah!! those 57mm allied antitank guns were having no effect on the lumbering, box-shaped armored beasts. the aa halftracks popped out of their hiding places and began a headlong advance toward the embankment. over a dozen spw 251/1s also came out of hiding and dashed across the 1500 meters of farmland, toward the embankment. supporting spw 251/9s and 251/2s also came out of their hiding places along the sunken roads, and out into the fields where they would have a clear line of site to the embankment and the buildings of the town behind it. the 300mm rocket barrage came down all at once - 4 spotters with 25 rounds each - talk about 'beautiful....' halftracks were being lost by the remaining, yet ever-diminishing fire from an assortment of canadian light tanks, self-propelled guns, and 57mm antitank. as the lead halftracks approached within 200 meters of the embankment, more were lost to the 50mm mortars.... 'damn 50mm motars!!' finally the canadian guns were silenced... the SPs, the light tanks, the 57mm ATs, the 50mm motars. on one side, SPW 251/1s lined the embankment, keeping it clear of canadian troops. in the middle the farmland was level with the embankment... this was the only place for vehicles to cross into putot on the other side. the tigers veered in toward the 'center,' continuing to move up with the infantry. vehicles containing the battalion companies' MG42s began picking their way forward along the sunken road. from the sound of it, there were dozens of allied vehicles closing from the other side of the town. this could only mean that the germans must secure the town before the allied reinforcements would arrive. the mg42s would be positioned in and about the town once the lead elements had taken it. the infantry companies, at 65% or 70% strength at the beginning of the assault, had taken further casulaties in the minor skirmishes they'd faced leading up to their assault on the town. now they were all closing on the embankment and the town. three trucks loaded with machineguns drove up to a farmhouse and were intent upon unloading in order to provide some overwatch to the assulting infantry, while the machineguns from the other 2 companies in their transports inched closer to town, not wanting to unload until the infantry had taken the town. the 3 trucks were ambushed by a vickers just oustide of the farmhouse.... 'ooops... we didn't screen that patch of woods across from the farmhouse!' 2 hmg 42s eliminated... platoon hq taken out... 2 trucks lost... damn!! so much for that 'firebase.' a tiger and an sdkfz 7/1 are diverted to quell the ambush. the pioneer company had long-since begun moving up behind the panzergrenadier battalion... only about 700 meters to go... 5 supporting stuh 42s moved up to join the armada of vehicles, moving across the fields much like ships on the sea. a stuh is knocked out.... oh... one more canadian 57mm. throughout the attack, every time a canadian position would open up, one or more guns on the 'german hill' would pitch in to help silence the position. this made for parcticularly dicey situations when the german infantry would be engaged at close range with the target. the 105mm recoilless fire in particular had been 'iffy.' more than one german casualty had been caused by an errant 105mm or 75mm round. still the candian positions about the fields appeared to have been silenced. now a fight was developing in the 'gap' where the land was level (no embankment) and the tanks could enter the town. the panzergrenadiers were flush with the embankment. they began moving from the sides, into the center (gap, breach), protected from any fire from the town by the embankment. as they reached the center from the sides, the battle was joined. fresh canadian infantry clamoured through 300mm craters and 'rubblized' buildings in order to meet the germans at 'the opening.' an assortment of 88mm fire from the tigers, along with shots from the 105s of the stuhs, and all of the heavy fire coming from the german squads themselves; all of this drove the canadians inexorably back. now that the germans were breaching the embankment, it could be seen just how many dead allied soldiers there were, particularly in the center. on the embankment itself, 6 dead 57mm guns stood out. infantry and vehicles filtered through the breech. spw 251/1s were called to lead the way. as the panzergrenadiers would engage the remaining canadians lodged deeper into the town, the spw 251/1s would pick their way forward into areas of scattered trees, testing to see if there were any hidden canadians closer to the germans than the ones which were visible. they were in luck. only 1 or 2 spw 251/1s were lost in this role. each time they successfully 'took' another patch of scattered trees, panzergrenadiers would filter into the buildings, rubble, and craters around them. tigers would fill the gaps. spw 251/9s and sdkfz 7/1 and 7/2s took up positions. the german hold on the town was increasing, yet the sound of the approaching allied reinforcements drew closer. the germans had to take the town in order to set up defenses. if the allied reinforcements were to arrive and engage before the town had been secured, it would put the germans in an untenable position. finally the town was cleared. buildings burned and half the town was rubble from the 300mm barrage and later the fire from the 88s and 105s. allied tanks rumbled into view. from the 'german hill' one of the remaining nashorns began engaging targets. he took out a sherman before his td was knocked out under a hail of return fire. the germans had consolidated in and around the town, and on the flanks there were tigers in ambush positions, assisted here and there by an sdkfz 7/1 or stuh 42, with panzerschreck and machinegun support. the machineguns which weren't mauled earlier had since been deployed all around the town. perhaps it wouldn't be so easy for the allies to take this town back. the germans still had 6 81mm FOs and a 120mm FO. Perhaps this fire should have then been directed at the large groups of vehicles on either flank? perhaps there was canadian infantry pushing up the middle? maybe if there were to dump 'everything' into the middle of suspected canadian infantry positions, they could break the counterattack before it even got started?.... still... over 40 allied tanks and a battalion of fresh canadian infantry was not going to be easy to stop, not with 7 or 8 operable tigers, 4 or 5 sdkfz 7/1s, 3 or 4 stuh 42, and an spw 251/9 here and there; not with only a pioneer company, and the renmnants (40%?) of a panzergrenadier battalion... all critically low on ammo. the terrain made it difficult for the spw 251/2s to contribute in any meaningful way to the upcoming combat. what about the canadian 4.5" and 5.5" FOs... 3 of each? if that were to start dropping in, it could be a rough time for what remained of the panzergrenadier battalion. perhaps the approaching pioneers could indeed shore up their positions... they were only 100 meters outside of the town now. a recon battalion which had been promised at the start of the attack is just now showing up, 40 minutes into the battle. also, it's not a 'battalion' any more but more like a company. there are a couple of pumas (how come we can't get psw 234/1s in june?... is it because they're ss?), and an assortment of spw 250/9, spw 250/1 (yes 250/1), 251/1... only a platoon of infantry... what the? the battalion commander grumbled something about rather having more tigers, but reinforcements are reinforcements. the air attacks continued... how were the recon units to get across the fields in order to shore up the german positions in the town? were they simply a day late and a dollar short? andy

i for one would like to see the grizzly bear in cm2. i think that the grizzly bear would have been 'ok' in CMBO. its rate of fire would be very low, and then there would those pesky 'flanking shots' to worry about. in looking at my advanced squad leader materials the grizzly bear does indeed have 'the same' frontal armor as the tiger 1. well, two things; in cmbo tiger 1s are 'nothing special' so i don't think that the addition of grizzly bears would skew things as much as you might be arguing; secondly, according to the asl book the grizzly bear's side armor is much thinner than the tiger 1's. yes, i would enjoy taking one of these 'bad boys' out with a greyhound in the side/rear. remember the low rate of fire as well. of note, there was an improvised vehicle called the sIG 33B, 'which was a conversion of the PzKpfw III chassis to mount the 150mm infantry gun. Approximately 12 were sent to Stalingrad in 11/42; about 12 more formed the 9th Compamny of Pz. Regiment 201 in the 23rd Pz. Division, which took part in Operation Winter Tempest, the attempt to relieve Stalingrad.' in asl the grizzly bear counter is also is used to represent the 'sIG 33B.' in any event, let me put it this way; if i were playing as germans i would like to have the grizzly bear available; if i were playing as allies i wouldn't mind facing one. my units have been ripped to shreds by standalone 150 sIGs in the past, so facing one on tracks wouldn't be, 'that bad.' 'my units' would 'get to that sonofabitch' sooner or later... =grin= as an aside, i've never had any interest in the 'sturmtiger;' it simply isn't practical, apparently both in real-life and in cmbo/cm2. it is interesting how every brumbar thread seems to attract 'sturmtiger' postings. .02 Andy

ok i've got 1500 meters of fields dotted by small wood patches and laced by sunken roads. my troops have to reach and take the town before the canadian reinforcements do. the infantry is going to march. due to air attacks i don't have enough halftracks to transport my entire force, so the infantry will be on foot. even if i did have enough 251/1s, i generally don't like moving across hostile ground with infantry in them. the infantry have to 'move' because if they 'sneak' they'll both a) get too tired and never reach the town in time before the allied counterattack starts. in playing the scenario a few times, i realize that my infantry are getting 'chewed' here and there by isolated ambushes out of the farmhouses and copses of trees. using spw 251/1s on 'point' works better. these vehicles expose ambushes and sometimes can 'take care of' such with just their mg42s. i would rather lose an spw251/1 than have a platoon shredded to about 30-60% manpower strength. also, note that in city fighting the spw 251/1s are not alone; there are infantry moving up right behind them, and tanks behind that. i had a choice of leading with infantry, tanks, or spw 251/1s; well the spw 251/1s 'drew point duty.' i do think that the spw 251/1 is a great 'point man,' particulary when there is a shortage of available infantry - compared to the number of available vehicles - as in panzergrenadier and recon units. andy

Has anyone played a scenario with motorized infantry on the battalion level? In a big scenario, if you can suppress the enemy AT threats, the SPW 251/1s can act as a sort of 'shock force' and lead the attack. If there is an ongoing AT threat, the SPW 251/1s can used bounding overwatch. I like to keep the 251/1s out in front of everything. They're a bit expensive but in a scenario where you're giving 20 or 30 of them or whatever, they can be potent if they get the right matchups. If I'm fighting close in a city, I'll send the SPW 251/1s in first to see if they can draw AT fire. Then come the infantry, and after that the other armor. The infantry is probably only about 20 meters behind the 251/1s and the heavier armor is probably just behind the infantry. For some reason it just seems natural to lead with the 251/1. Sometimes it's easy to get an infantry platoon chewed. If you lose a 251/1 instead of an infantry platoon you save points. If the 251/1 doesn't get killed, it can use its machinegun in the thick of the town or city fight, while the friendly infantry and tanks close up behind it. One drawback is the relatively low ammo; only 57. Once a 251/1 runs out of ammo, you can use it as transport on a large battlefield. The U.S. halftracks really 'rock' in the roles mentioned above. Andy

The German motorized infantry are the best. They have 10-men, 2 LMG and 2 MP-44, and one SMG, the other 5 being rifles. The Panzergrenadier squad has the same thing with 8 men; 3 instead of 5 rifles. I like these the best because of their MP44s. The PIAT is becoming my favorite infantry AT weapon, simply because it can fire from inside of buildings because of its spring-launcher as opposed to the rocket propulsion used on the german and american infantry at weapons. If you split them you lose a lot of morale. The don't fight as well split. However, you can put some into a scneario using the editor, then split them in map preview mode, and give every half squad maxed out demo charges and rifle grenades (american) or panzerfausts (german). then effectively your squads could be carrying 4 demo charges and either 6 rocket grenades or 4 panzerfausts (100s of course -grin-). one tactics article out on the web mentions that there is a benefit to splitting the 9-man german squad. the 4-man team is used as a manuever element and the 5-man team with the mg42 is used for overwatch. it's not a bad idea. the worst thing about half-squads is - again the amount of morale points you lose when you split up all of your squads. i like to have a company of german armored cars with motorized half-squads riding them. Andy

Hi, I have found what appears to be a bug. I have this scenario where the Allies have every 'unit slot' taken up; that is to say that if one were to load this scnenario into the editor, no Allied units could be added. When playing, if I set the Allies to +25% units or more, the game freezes. It runs fine if the Allied strength is not adjusted upward. Andy

Hi, I've reworked the "Putot" concept and now have a scenario based upon the 12th SS versus the Candians on 8th June, 1944. The map is 1200x2000 and the Germans must cross the length of it - through farms and wood patches - to reach 'Putot,' astride the Caen-Bayeux road. It is about 13000 German points versus about 15000 Canadian points. The Germans are further weakened by having a lot of vehicles which are expensive in relation to their usefulness in combat. It starts out with a reinforced (yet itself understrength) SS Motorized Battalion assaulting a Canadian Battalion in the town. After the Germans take the town, they must withstand a large Canadian counterattack. It is 90 turns. It appears to be a fairly good one to play against the computer - you as Germans against the computer Canadians. It might be good for TCP/IP and PBEM as well. Post a reply here with your email, or email me directly at andyt@pacifier.com if you're interested. Thanks for your consideration, Andy

i put this ted nugent quote from double-live gonzo in for one of the 'grunt' wav files. it said, 'anyone who wants to get mellow better turn around and get the f*** out of here right now!!' what was funny was that whenever it would play in cmbo, it would be _really loooww and sloooww_ so i tweaked it in sndrec32 and tried again. from then on it was really HIGH-pitched and fast. so much for that. and no i don't know which wav is the tweety bird.... i just had to share my ted nugent .wav (mellow.wav) story. =grin= andy

in low visibility (fog or night) the m24 chaffee. in high visibility the m18 hellcat. both are very fast and have decent guns. the m24s don't carry much ammo so aren't good for prolonged engagements. they're great though for moving fast and taking flanking and rear shots. another great vehicle in low-visibility is the m8 HMC. point for point this 'ag' rocks against german armor in the night or the fog. it's quick, has 'decent' armor, and the 75mm is great against infantry; with a couple of 'c' rounds it can stalk axis heavy armor. it runs out of ammo fairly early though. in high visibility the m8 hmc suffers because of its short gun (bad accuracy at longer ranges). at short range though its nasty, especially if it has 1 or more 'c' rounds. the sherman 105 is arguably the best all-around american tank, especially with 'c' ammo. for the british i like the 95mm infantry support tanks... cromwell IV or something? that 95mm commonwealth 'c' ammo is deadly. andy

aircraft ramblings: i have this battle where i have 3 canadian air missions on turn 2, then 5 on turn 25. in an earlier version, there were 6 german 20mm aa guns in a row, a halftrack or kubelwagen by each one; and a high-leadership platoon hq in the middle of the row. they were in scattered trees along a road. i would think that the allied airplanes would want to go straight after the flak units, especially with them all in a row like that. wouldn't they want to clear those out so the rest of the german units would be more open to air attack? would it have been suicide for an airplane to have strafed along those scattered trees, all 6 20mm having a bead on it? what about a p-47? could it take 20mm fire? anyway, it seemed like the aircraft were attacking other targets instead of the all-important aa units. that screen of 6 20mm, combined with 2 37mm and 2 quad 20s... it pretty well kept the allied air activity down. in particular the quad 20s were in the open and perhaps should have been 'dive-bombed.' in another version of the scenario there are about 7 sdkfz 7/1 and 2 sdkfz 7/2. i do believe 1 7/1 was taken out by a strafe, but it may have been a 50mm mortar (man those are murder on german halftracks). as a side note, in the same overall scenario, there are 10 tigers crossing about 1.5km of farm fields laced by horizontal and vertical sunken roads. one tiger was crossing a field when it got straddled by an attacking plane's two bombs. it kept right on going, one of the bombs having made a crater reaching right to the tiger's tread on one side of the tank. i was impressed. i think that a panther would have been taken out. that isn't the only tiger i've seen keep going after a near-miss by a bomb. there was at least one other instance of a near-miss by a bomb and a tiger continuing on unscathed. so score a point for the tiger in the tiger-panther debate; the tiger's better all around construction is useful against bomb near-misses. i haven't witnessed an airplane rocket attack in the game. do these really happen? it seems like it's always bombs. what's the percentage of rockets versus bombs are carried by the allied aircraft? does it vary from month to month? in any event, i would recommend in the larger dyo pbems and online games, that the german player buy at least some aa units. the 20mm are useful against halftracks and infantry if nothing else. they actually do a number on greyhounds as well. the 37mm aa actually does quite well against the side armor of shermans. it definitely smokes halftracks and greyhounds. the quad 20 sdkfz 7/1 is a great vehicle, especially in shorter-in-time scenarios where ammo capacity isn't as much of a consideration. andy