Wreck

The Ranger Challenge I have not much to say not already said. With only 12 turns and no reinforcements, the American's strategy is pretty clear: go fast and immediately. I did that, and it pretty much worked, enough to win the scenario anyway. Flag Rush Hill was actually a very cool scenario IMO, but there were nuances that had to be grasped to get the most out of each side. In particular the German has to know to use his arty on the Hellcats, or he is gonna be hurt by them. Warren did not do this, and he was indeed hurt badly by my 'cats. But there was also the matter of overall strategy. As a battle hardened tournamenthouse.com vet, I know how to do "fair" meeting engagements. One of the keys is to take terrain ASAP when it is cheap. I came out of the blocks charging, moving up most of my men via tank or 'track via covered routes, then running forward. Warren did not come out charging at all, so by about turn 3 I had secured half the map as mine, with a quarter or so his and the other quarter in between. This gave me much more maneuver room, which is very important in tank battles. The more area you have to move around safely in, the more hulldown, wooded, flanking and/or keyhole lines of sight you can construct against given enemy locations. And those things are what you must do to fight each tank battle unfairly. The key battle came early, on the left, where both of us had set up our main strength. One of my platoons had run into one of his in a woods in a depression. I had one other platoon in range, but it would have to charge over open to get there. And only he could see the area with his tanks. So I could either retreat my platoon with losses, or commit full bore but take the tank fire. I committed, suspecting that the infantry fight would draw out his tanks. It did, and I was ready for it with my tanks. This resulted in several two or three on one tank battles, most of which I won. One of his Panthers had something like 6 shots bounce off the front before finally getting whacked. Gotta admire the hull on those babies. I ended up losing a platoon more or less, but he lost his platoon also. And he lost a MkIV or two and three Panthers, while I lost a Hellcat or maybe two. After that it was a matter of pushing the advantage. There are many tricks in the armor-armor book, and I swear I used every one of them in this battle. Perhaps I will write up an illustrated armor how-to some day (I have most of the turns saved). [ May 01, 2002, 11:41 AM: Message edited by: Wreck ]

Regarding the Berg, I had not really meant to attack right off the bat. Actually, I was just trying to move up to better fighting positions. The Germans are limited in setup with half their units to setting up way back in the rear. This is apparently the scenario designer's way to try to force the defender to fight in stages. Well, this is CM, and WWII tactics don't always apply. So I put my "reserves" out on either flank, where they could charge forward to positions that seemed like the Americans might come through them. (A side note: I hate it when the scenario designer tries to micromanage my setup! Hey, *I'm* the player here buddy!) Little did I know, that the American setup was actually very close to mine, especially on my left. So my guys almost immediately had contact. Greg had put important support elements out on that flank. It is hard to call this a mistake, though, because I probably would not have attacked if I had known where his setup was. In any case, I quickly figured what was up and overran them. By that time I could tell the flank was weak, and so I kept going. I figured this would deter him from pushing that flank too hard, which it apparently did. I don't think he could have easily maneuvered more force over there in any case; it was not his main attack route. His main route had to be the center, if only because that was where the road went. We both knew that the road was vital if he was going to be able to use most of his tanks; the ground was damp or wet and therefore using tanks offroad was going to be dicey. (I saw a lot of bogging going on, but only two immobilizations resulted, even though he was offroad a lot of the time on my right.) But the center was the easiest to defend, because I had been allowed to set up there. I had foxholes, and a secondary line, all of them on the reverse slope (effectively). The mountain is so steep that the military crest was halfway down the mountain, mostly, in open ground. This suited me fine. His attempts to crack the center did work, finally, but only after he brought up the tanks close enough to force me back. (This gave me several half decent faust attempts at about 50m, but unfortunately none of them worked.) On my right, very early I could see his guys moving forward across open gaps so I knew how many were in the woods in the valley. And I knew my troops would beat his, in close, if they could get anywhere near even numbers. So I went for it. That was a nice slaughter; two of my platoons killed two of his losing about one of mine in men (but not in MG42s). I was feeling good about it until an entire company charged down in hot pursuit. Naturally I ran like hell with my survivors. They escaped cleanly, and were enough to prevent the company from being able to advance quickly. He brought over some tanks, though, and gradually pushed me back. By the midgame he had taken enough control of the center that he could get tanks past the roadblock. And I had very little back there to hold him back from charging up the road; however, he did not know that. In the end he went for it anyway, and I could not stop his two tanks from running around to sit near the big flags. (I did have one faust shot at the first tank, which missed at ~20m.) Then I had squads coming in from all directions in the last two turns to try to kill his tanks; I sneaked carefully up so as to see them at reasonable distances in the last turn... and... only a couple men fired their fausts! One tank was killed, but the other survived to neutralize the flag. Grumble, grumble. Anyway, a good, hard fought battle.

And it certainly looks like I will win Flag Rush Hill as well. In fact I hope to force the surrender, as Warren is down to a single JpzIV and about two platoons worth of fleeing survivors. So I suppose it is OK to talk about Flag Rush Hill too, given that it can no longer change the tourney? In any case, to all my opponents in the tourney, I want to thank them for interesting fights, especially the guys in the finals. Playing good scenarios blind really is a cut above the vanilla meeting engagement for excitement and tactical challenge. But my biggest thanks I save for last. A great big thank you to Treeburst, WineCape, Wild Bill, and Nabla, for all their work in making the tourney happen in the first place. It is a rare and precious thing to have community, even such tenuous electronic community as we have here. It is rare because it takes time and energy, often for little recognition or reward. It is hard work to make things like this happen, and I really appreciate it. And I will appreciate that wine, I am certain. I will have an AAR on that, I suppose, in good time...

I consider splitting squads for foxholes fine. Unfortunately I am defending a city where it is not remarkably useful.

I already sent the setup, but I noticed the water-bump too and it is not going to be a problem. Or anyway, the chance of it affecting the scenario in any way at all is slim, and the chance of the effect being more than miniscule is also slim. So don't worry bout it!

Holien, America is great because it is large, and being large we contain multitudes. And that includes multitudes of beers. We got English beer, German beer, and even American beer here. When you get over to Baltimore, let me know, and you will have some very nice beer. We also have crappy beer for sale here, but that's just part of our greatness and charm. BTW: as to whether or not Redeker scored higher than me, I ain't tellin'. I was using "beat" only in the sense of "did damage to". Now, go beat Warren some more.

In my game with Warren it is about turn 22 or 23. As I predicted before I drove him off his side of the hill with much loss. I am now maneuvering to make sure that he cannot steal a flag at the last minute with his two remaining JpzIVs. His arty, as predicted, is now hitting the hill, and I plan on running away. Also as predicted. Regarding the wine it looks like one of two things is going to happen. One is I win all three games; then the wine would be mine, mine ALL MINE! But I think there is also potential for me to lose the Berg, in which case I think we would have a three way tie for first. I asked Treeburst earlier about tie breaking, and he has a scheme, but I cannot say for sure what would happen. I am hoping Holien fights hard and beats Warren (worse than Redeker beat me), in which case Holien and I win the Berg and I win the wine. Go Holien!

Ditto Nabla and JPS on unbalanced scenario count. It should definitely not be known the players. Keep us on our toes.

I have thought about playing double blind, and while I like the idea a lot, I also think that Holien's objections to it have a lot of weight. Namely, (1) that it would make TCP play difficult (though I suppose still possible using pseudonyms...), and (2) some people like to talk a lot while they play. I, for one, don't. But some do. Anyway, how about if we can set up double-blind remailer, we make it optional? I don't see any big advantage to playing double blind or not. The only way I can see it giving much difference to a game is if you happen to know specific strengths or weaknesses of specific players that you plan to exploit. But surely when I set up to play someone I don't change plan any differently except if I think him the rankest newbie.

I also second the notion. Also if we do this, please don't make it possible for us to determine which scenarios are which! If boots and tracks do all of them, great; otherwise please remove the designer and tester credits from all the scenarios. The idea here is, that *every* scenario we play we don't know for sure if it is a balanced B&T job or a horrid setup from the beginning... like those wonderful/awful nordic scenarios. So we will be forced to take all of the scenarios more seriously.

As you might guess... #1.

Redeker: I think it is very likely that it would be safe for you and Holien to start talking now. But, I also think that it is at least possible (albeit very unlikely) that Warren might turn the game around, at least enough to cause the score to possibly be near whatever you guys got. For instance if he manages to get a JpzIV onto the hill at the end and thus all flags are neutral, the score would be 66:34; if he managed to get all the flags for himself (admittedly very improbable), it would be 42:58. Given that, for Warren or I to know anything about the outcome of your game makes for problems. Even knowing there was a late rush gives me information -- it means your game ended up pretty close. And that info may yet prompt a rush from Warren figuring "all or nothing". But I will be ready. Just a bit longer and we can talk. Of course Warren and I can talk all we want, because your game is done and therefore we absolutely cannot influence it. And similarly Holien and Warren can talk about their game, if they want. Sadly the silence must fall mainly on you, the most diligent player among us!

A bumpdate on my last game. It's now turn 20 or 21 (don't recall offhand), and the flag rush, such as it was, has happened. The past few turns saw me losing my last hellcat (to a schreck, oops). But I killed Warren's last two PzIVs (one with a rifle grenade!), and got one of his JpzIVs. So his armor is now just three JpzIVs, which are all located in the center of his starting zone. They dominate a few thin lines of sight, and with my last hellcat out I don't have any immediate threat to run behind them. But I control (by unopposed Sherman LOS) most of the map, including Warren's side of the hill. Warren seems to have gotten perhaps two or three platoons on the hill. However, because I have won the tank battle cleanly, and I still have a zillion rounds of 105mm arty, these guys had (and/or have), no real chance. Four halftracks were KOed out at the base of the hill, and the infantry routed by 105mm, tank, MG, and mortar fire. The next few turns should see them ending as hamburger. Warren is currently shifting his own 105mm to ... somewhere, probably the hill. But he has only 80 or so rounds left, in my estimation, and my tanks can hold the flags on their own just fine. So I don't think he can prevent me from claiming them all. He can, certainly, hurt my infantry, and that's probably what's about to happen. I expect it, of course, and will run in terror accordingly, as I have throughout the game. It is possible Warren will make another rush in a few turns with the jagdpanzers, but I doubt it. He knows more or less where my tanks are, and they have lots of decent lines of sight on the approaches to the hill. Rather I expect the last few turns to be a low intensity conflict, point optimizing affair. Right now I have inflicted perhaps 3000 or so points in damage to him, and he has done perhaps 1500 to me. So my victory stands to be (3000+2700):1500, or 79% to 21%. That means that Warren gains in standing if he can do 100 points in damage to me for every 26 points he takes, i.e. he gains with an almost 4:1 loss ratio! So now it pays for me to be very, very cautious, although never being so cautious as to lose a flag.

I agree with Combined Arms that Treeburst "should" set the rules the way he wants them. The man that runs the tourney makes the rules, and if we don't like them we are free to play somewhere else. But! I think Treeburst is honestly undecided as to what he wants to do, and he is using the debate here to clarify his thinking. So the debate is useful in that regard. I hope nobody debating is so stuck on his position that he would quit the tourney over it, and I really don't think anyone is. BTW I agree with the point about dropouts. As we saw with the Nordic Wannabees, dropouts are very bad for the tourney if they happen late. But this group are proven fighters who play for the fun of playing. I don't think we will see many dropouts, and I don't think we will see any dropout for no reason.

Mike: I love the idea of blind email play. But the load on you is going to be too much. Also I am not so keen to lose days of play if you get sick, take a vacation, etc. I suggest it is not really feasible except if fully automated. If you can find an email server with a decent connection that we can use, then it should be relatively easy to write a script to automatically strip off headers and redirect the mail to the real opponent. To determine the opponent we might do a few things. One is, as you suggest, to put that information into the subject line of the message. Another would be to have people standardize the naming of their attachments. So for example if I am playing someone in Flag Rush Hill, we would define the standardized name for the scenario as "flag rush hill", say. Then I send an email with any subject I like to the mail forwarding address. As long as there is an attachment named "flag rush hill XXX" then the program can look up me, and Flag Rush Hill, to determine the unique address that is the opponent. It then composes a new message and sends it, attaching the same attachment but otherwise completely standardized. It should also probably send back an ack to the originator. It should definitely send a nack to the originator if for some reason the mail did not get forwarded -- no turn was attached, or it could not read the turn, etc.

I disagree. To me, a "fun" match is one in which the players are of relatively equal playing skill </font>

Reading MrSpkr's last post, I realized there is a larger issue before us here. That is, do we use information gained from the results of previous tourneys or not? If so, how? Random grouping is the simplest way: use no information. It has the advantage of being simple and fair. It has the disadvantage that it does not use any information, which seems wrong from the point of view of generating good games. Also, players who know something of past tourneys can feel left out before it even begins. On the other hand, using information from previous tourneys has the advantage of making evener matchups, while making the selection of the overall winner much less fair. In the (lack of) system at hand, it also has the disadvantage of being subjective, and the disadvantage that the chance of winning can be strongly affected by the grouping. If the objectively 10th best player somehow gets switched with #11 and therefore gets to be the strongest player in the second section, his chance to win the overall tournament is quite a bit better than if he were the worst player in the uber section. Using a more ladder-like system, it might be possible to mitigate some of the disadvantages of preseeding. But not all -- fairness (of one sort or another) is always a problem.

As Treeburst points out, there is a tradeoff here between quality of the average game played, the accuracy of the resulting rating, and the "fun" factor related to chance to win. If the uber players play only each other, they get best games since they have the closest opponents. But the resulting information makes it impossible to compare them to others. And they also lose "fun factor", since they know that merely by being placed into the uber section, their chance of making the finals is only 1/10 or 1/5 or whatever. The lesser players *gain* fun-factor. One more thing to mention -- the playoffs then have less good games; we would expect to see more blowouts there as the uber section winner(s) knock out the winners of lesser sections. On the other hand if the ubers are mixed into other sections, then there is good a-priori reason to think that the games will be worse (more one sided affairs). But the playoffs will be better -- mostly uber players will go. The "fun factor" from chance to win it all is high for the uber players and lower for everyone else. Anyway, my opinion is that I would prefer the random distribution into sections, which should be more fun for the uber players. I am one, after all, and that means fun for me -- very selfish. But I am pleased to play no matter what, really. The talent spread here is not *that* huge, and luck can play a big role in some scenarios. But with wine riding on it... nope, I like it random. BTW as to "uber" it doesn't bother me. We do need some way to label the section with the players that are prejudged as "best". And "uber" works fine for that. Four letters -- nice and short. Perhaps "top"?

Some of us are long winded. Some aren't. Especially when playing I fall in the second category because I do not want to give anything away. Treeburst: playoffs good! Seems to me it should be easy enough to determine a winner out of section 1 (offhand I suspect redwolf), and then we can play along with the Nordic champs, or we can do something else. WIth section one it seems reasonable to me to just set the scores for unfinished games to the average, for the purpose of computing the section winners.

Interesting thread. First, on BadMonkey's estimates. I would tend to agree that M16A2 is reasonably comparable to the MP44 and SAWs are comparable MG42. But his firepower for MG42 is off; it is twice what he shows (50/45/30/18), though using two men which SAW does not. So the firepower for a modern squad would be: 9x M16A2: 216 108 18 3x M249SAW: 150 135 90 54 total: 366 243 108 54 Ammowise, a modern squad is shooting much less per bullet, but with three times the machineguns it seems likely that it is also eating ammo much faster. Just guessing, I would give a modern squad the same load as a CM rifle squad. (The CM SMG squads should be given considerably less.) One other thing to think about is training. Modern armies are trained to do things like area fire that WWII armies were not, and modern soldiers are conditioned to fire in ways which their grandfathers were not, either. A "green" American now would be something like a "veteran" or even "elite", I would suggest.

My game of Flag Rush Hill is now in turn 17, IIRC. I have Warren practically cornered and I am starting to twist down the screws. But I am trying to be very cautious when doing this, because his PzIV/70s are all alive and very dangerous. He also has two vanilla MkIVs left, including one lucky mofo that just got penetrated by a 76mm in the lower hull with no effect. I have lost most of my Hellcats. The flag rush, when it happens, should be very interesting. BTW I think this is a great scenario, although I think the Germans probably have an edge. It definitely tests one's tanking abilities.

Present and accounted for, SIR!

Wreck's Rule designed to make your purchase screen a living hell: (1) no flame vehicles (2) no flak trucks Just thought you'd like to know.

I volunteer. Um... am I in section 1?

Treeburst: another thing we might do for these games is to convene a panel of judges, cease-fire the game then let the judges assign scores based on what the score is, where the forces are, how much time is left, etc.