Christian Knudsen

I totally get and respect that attitude re: ASL, and it's why I can't convince my gaming buddies to play it - they just don't want to spend that much time trying to learn the rules when they could be actually playing games that are also fun but involve a lot less time investment. I once joked that one would need to attend a seminar held over 12 weekends just to properly learn the basic rules for Chapters A-D, and like all good jokes it has a kernel of truth. I'm currently being mentored back into the game, we've played 6 scenarios now, and my mentor figures I'm almost ready to move on to scenarios involving vehicles. It does take a bit of effort, and there's a reason that ASL is less a game than a lifestyle. I'm a bit of a masochist though, and have always been attracted to more complicated and "simulationist" games, for some reason. And I wouldn't be playing ASL today had I not both bought it cheaply nearly 30 years ago, and managed to keep it all this time, through many a move and much pressure from the wife!

I like both computer and boardgames. When I play ASL online I do it over skype and VASL, so much of the social nature and banter of ftf play is preserved. And I have friends that I play actual boardgames with, although to be fair they have resisted the urge to try ASL so far. Rules lawyering is an issue, but there are several ways to avoid it. The first is to play a well-tested game that has a ruleset that minimizes confusion. It gets to the point where you can see pretty quickly which games have been shoved out the door without enough testing, just because there are things in the rules that are commonplace occurrences within the game that don't work or are unclear as written. The second is to be a bit picky about with whom you play. The guys I play with regularly all have the guiding principle that while winning is nice, fun is the goal. If we have a disagreement over rules, we apply the common-sense test - would the application of a rule as lawyered make sense in the real world? Or would it lead to a situation that strains credulity? Then we go with the interpretation that seems to lead to the most realistic result in our eyes. If someone wants to make a federal case out of it, and it happens too often, we just don't invite that person to play again. One thing I will say, though. If you have a ton of boardgames that are in good condition that you are not going to play, then make some $$$ off them! There are LOTS of people out there who will pay good prices for games. EBay, the Boardgame Geek marketplace, and the Facebook Wargamer's Marketplace group are all great places to find new homes for your unused games, with people who will pay well for them, especially if they are rare/out of print. You will likely make far more than you spent on them in the first place!

I got out of ASL for the same reason you did - lack of ftf opponent. But now there is the VASL program for online play, and a big community that uses it, with guys that are willing to teach the game to new or inexperienced players. I'm very very glad I kept all my ASL stuff all these years. The best thing about ASL is the tremendous flexibility the game offers. There are scenarios covering any theater, any time, and any situation. And for the dedicated, a wealth of historical campaign games are available. Plus, it's fun!

All the material I was able to find for 2 ID indicated that the prongs were not as effective as the cutters, because they tended to snap off or bend. There were a bunch of different stopgap solutions that were being tried in different units, although 29 and 2 IDs seem to be going with the prongs/pipes. I don't think it was until Operation Cobra kicked off that the actual Culin (and the Rhino) were used in any great number. If there were some way to make the Culin fail to breach, or damage it, I would consider it appropriate for this action, but as it is now I think it gives the Amis a bit of an advantage that they did not necessarily possess historically. Of course, it's only a game, so while I enjoy this sort of research (It's fun to put my degree to use for once), it's more of a "nice to know".

IRL the Germans defended this sector in two areas. The first was the infamous "Kraut Corner", which was a hedgehog defense of the large wheatfield by where IanL has placed his 2 Platoon E Coy in his most recent post. This was manned by about a platoon. The rest of the defense was anchored around the hamlet of Cloville and stretched East along the main E/W road up to where the road bends around to the north, with a bit of a refused flank guarding the pathway pointing south toward the summit of the hill. The sector just to the east was based around a hedgehog defense of six connected fields between the road and the forest near the hill summit. The American attack pulverized the German defense, inflicting over 50% casualties on forward German companies. A great resource for this battle is a monograph by the commander of 1 Bn, 38 IR, LCol Frank Mildren, available at http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/ref/collection/p124201coll2/id/429

One minor quibble on this one - No Sherman Rhinos were present in any numbers in this action. The Culin hedgerow cutter had not been adopted by this date (11 Jul), although some trials had been conducted. It wasn't until after a demonstration for Gen. Bradley on 14 July 44 that the device started to be manufactured in any relevant numbers. The 29th ID and supporting 747 Tank Bn had experimented with devices similar to the Culin, but these were not effective and were prone to breakage. Instead, these "prong" devices were used to make holes in the hedgerow so that engineers could place charges further into the bocage embankment. So my advice is that Sherman Rhino should not be available until about the 3rd week of July. Until then, demo charges should be the sole method used to cause bocage breaches.

I would agree with Sailor Malan2 on the digging in point, even to his timetables. However I would say that a line infantry unit should have to entrench in stages, but that this should take place in any "posture" aside from attack. So a unit that is not moving or attacking automatically gets foxholes, 1 per team, after 2 hours, but may not build any other fortifications in this time period - the first thing any infantry unit that stops does is dig in, and this takes 2 hours on average. Guns also emplace during this time, if in suitable terrain. Line infantry in a defensive posture and in supply can start building further defensive works at the fol rates: 2 mines OR 2 Wire lengths OR 1 trench length per platoon per hour. A platoon in this sense is as given in the OB, and teams don't count. So a full OB American Coy gets 4 platoons worth of work per hour. Rates are halved after darkness. Engineers are the only ones who can build vehicle obstacles. They do not need to dig in like line Infantry (although they can if they want to) and build at the following rates: 1 mine OR 1 wire length OR 1 trench OR 1 vehicle obstacle per squad per hour, halved in darkness. Out of supply troops can build only foxholes or trenches, at the usual rate. Just spitballing here, obviously, and this brings with it a bit of bookkeeping that may be undesirable, but I think it is a bit more realistic in terms of timelines.

I made that map several years ago by hand, based off aerial photos and some other sources. it depicts the ground literally 500m or so east of the engagement area being represented in the battle, in fact if you look in the original map in the top post, this map depicts the area around and south/southeast of the hamlet of Cloville, which area was in the AOR of the 38th IR of the 2nd ID. Coincidentally, I am also the guy who did the Theater of Operations ASL playtest that IanL talked about! Incidentally, I can't see your map image, IanL. - nevermind, there it is...

For those interested, my ASL battle has finished (with an American victory), and we have learned A LOT about the process of translating a separate lower-level game system like ASL to Theater of Operations. Here are the links to my AAR (for those really interested in a blow by blow solo ASL game by an inexperienced player, lol), the lessons learned from the playtest, and a good discussion regarding how to integrate the two systems. All of the above are on the Gamesquad ASL forum, btw. Of course those here are likely far more interested in porting CM to Theater of Operations, but keep in mind that the more systems we can concretely mesh with Theater of Operations, the broader the appeal. The broader the appeal, the more prospective customers, and the more customers, the greater the chance that Battlefront will make a system to automatically inject force levels and extract battle results to/from Theater of Operations. Just think what we could do with that!

Since I started reading JasonC's posts, over the last 15 years or so, (I've been lurking here a long time, I guess) he has pretty unwaveringly (and at times, to be fair, somewhat brusquely) advocated an attritionist stance, both operationally and tactically. As an attritionist, he argues that efforts that do not aim to reduce enemy fighting power are at best an inefficient way of winning, and at worst a waste of resources. Therefore he argues that terrain has no value, unless it imparts an edge when it comes to destroying enemy power. A bridge that crosses a major river is just a bridge. A bridge that is the only supply route for an enemy formation, the destruction of which would leave them unsupplied and cut off, is a valuable target. The minute the enemy finds another MSR, that bridge is less important. So his position is that any piece of terrain has only relative value tied to its ability to affect the reduction of enemy fighting power. Great, sounds good. But the current question (and we are far from German tactical doctrine now), has become one of scenario design. As I understand it, JasonC is basically saying that a scenario designer who ties the balance of victory to terrain locations is handcuffing the player by forcing them to go after ground, not go after the enemy. Now I'm not knocking scenario designers - I've tried designing some, and I know it's really really difficult to do, much less well. My hat goes off to anyone who gets one finished, frankly. But I see his point about scenarios that overvalue victory locations. Why do I have to put boots in that village when I can just drive around it because I have killed off everything outside of it, and it is now totally isolated, all the ground around dominated by my fire? The enemy there is powerless, and I can kill him whenever I want, because he can't move without being blown to smithereens. Yet achieving this, I have lost the CM scenario, because I have not physically planted my flag on the enemy strongpoint, as it were. I can, however, see two situations where one would design a scenario with a patch of ground that absolutely must be taken. The first is that you as the scenario designer provide a reason that makes that village an important piece of terrain. Maybe it is the only good option for an MSR for forces advancing past it, or it has an important bridge crossing that you need to use. Maybe the important VP location is the hill that allows your FO to see the the road going through the village! The other reason is to create a scenario in which you have to take that village because your commander thinks that ground has intrinsic value in and of itself, and you are just the poor schlep following orders! But even then, I think that victory should not be solely or largely dependant on holding that ground at the end of the scenario, in terms of victory points. If all the defenders are dead or shattered, they will not hold that village for much longer. As a final point, one of the big reasons I am hopeful that choppinit's operational layer project succeeds is to reduce that sort of terrain VP based mentality. One almost never sees defenders withdraw in a CM scenario. They stand to the point that they break or die, and it is rare that a scenario awards a majority of points for defender force preservation. I realise that it is very hard to do from a design and balance standpoint, so there is that. But in a dynamic campaign, force preservation can become huge, and the idea of living to fight another day can have some real merit, so long as the campaign itself is well designed. Of course, I'm sure we will see the same arguments repeated then, with "campaign" substituted for "scenario". I look forward to it!

Backed, to the best of my admittedly limited financial abilities. While I enjoy CM, like many others I have always wanted an op layer, mostly to draw me in and give me a sense of story - this is why I prefer campaigns to missions, and have followed both the attempt that was CMC and the various efforts to meld CM to various game systems, whether home-made, boardgame, or computer. Anyways, I hope that people back this - to those that are hesitant, back anyways! If the funding level is not reached, you lose nothing, and if it is, you have probably the only remaining chance to create that op layer for CM that we have been wanting for the last 15 years or so. Even a small pledge now can surely be added to after the kickstarter is over if you like what you see in the coming months. And if at the end of it all it does not work out, you are only out a few bucks - I think missiing one trip to the pub (or a movie night, or whatever) is worth it to take a chance at what could totally remake the whole CM experience.

The Zen of maneuver warfare, Wehrmacht style - I love it! I always read that the german concept of infantry attack involved infiltration and "nailing down" the enemy. I always wondered what exactly was meant by that, and now I know. Another great thread JasonC, my thanks.

*Cough* I would be very happy to read such a thread, if anyone could be persuaded to elaborate...

Lt Bull, I actually disagree with your premise that these types of "looping" was not that common, but with a couple of provisos, which I will address. The amount to which a unit is "dug in" is directly a function of time spent on position. And there were periods, especially when the Amis were busy clearing Cherbourg, that the Germans had plenty of time to improve positions, as First Army did not really turn south in any strength until the first weeks of July, giving German units almost a month to prepare positions in some cases. When a unit occupies a defensive position, there is always a priority of work that goes on. This usually looks something like this: 1. Deploy OPs/LPs 2. Dig slit trenches - these are usually just big enough to lie in and still below the plane of the ground, and can be dug in a very short time. In this case, I agree with you that it would have made sense to start with the ditches at the ends of the fields, assuming these were not waterlogged. 3. Prepare range cards. 4. Dig fighting trenches. 5. Lay comms wire all over the bloody place. 6. Begin constructing defensive obstacles according to the obstacle plan. 7. Dig overhead protection and shelters. 8. Dig depth/fallback positions 9. Dig communications trenches between positions. Keep in mind that this is off the top of my head, I am probably missing stuff, and things like defensive fire pre-registrations for direct and indirect fires would be started early and continue throughout, in increasing complexity as secondary killzones are covered. The point I am trying to make is that the development of a position is a very planned and organized affair that is done to a timetable - for instance I expect that fighting trenches will be complete and overhead protection started no later than six hours of troops arriving on the position. After a month, I would expect that fighting positions, obstacles, shelters and comms trenches would be extensive, which is what we see on Hill 192, and, I would expect that to be repeated in any position that was occupied for any length of time. In fact, a competent unit should have a fully developed position, with strong fighting positions, some fallbacks, and a developing obstacle network, after only a few days on position, with this time getting shorter the further away from the enemy the unit is. So we can see that time is less of a factor than one might think. Of course a unit might lack some sorts of defensive stores like wire and mines, which would lessen the obstacle plan. But digging can be completed very quickly, even while manning the MLR, maintaining outposts, and conducting standard administration like eating and maybe even sleeping once in a blue moon. Your main argument against "looping" and digging "into" the bocage (where possible, of course), seems to be that it was too hard, what with all the rocks and roots and such. But there are several advantages to doing it that make the effort really worthwhile for the defender versus fighting from the top of the embankment. First is that you have more overhead protection, thus removing the need to jump into a separate foxhole, from which you can't put fire into the adjacent field. Second, you are much harder to spot, as you can camouflage your firing slit quite easily. Just these two factors increase survivability quite a bit. So why would you not, especially if you had time to do so? It's what I would have done, and I value my skin quite highly. And to those who object that the firing slit would have restricted field of view too much, this actually is a bonus. You dig the slit just wide enough to cover the arcs of responsibility for that weapon system, and trust your flanks to your comrades. While it is good to be able to see, whatever you can see can potentially see you too, which is why you never occupy a position that has longer lines of sight than you can engage with your own weapons systems, and why reverse slope positions are so valued. Anyways, I want to stress that the level of fortification encountered was largely a function of how long the defender had to prepare, and there were plenty of occasions where the defenders did not have time to do much more than dig a few foxholes behind the embankment and then fight from the top. But digging in does not take long at all, especially when you are motivated to stay alive, and the advantages to digging IN to the embankment far outweighed the disadvantages.

I agree, but unfortunately this raises the issue that I talked about earlier regarding scenario design. I.e. you end up with puzzle-like scenarios that are designed to be played only once as Allies vs the AI, or you have to create maps that either put fortifications and gaps EVERYWHERE, allowing the defender to pick where they want to actually place the defence, or you put fortifications and gaps in places that make sense to you as the designer, and thus totally limit the scenario defender. I have a depressing feeling that we will have to wait until CMx3 to see the mixing of fortifications and linear feature tiles, or else the ability for defenders to make map adjustments prior to setup.

"During the period 1-10 July plans were made for-the capture of Hill 192. Aerial photos showed us that the enemy had certainly transformed the hill into a major strong point. Deep communication trenches were observed behind most of the larger hedgerows, but due to good camouflage and well concealed positions the exact location sof firing points, machine gun and mortar positions, and anti-tank positions could not be determined. We found out after the hill's capture that some german dugouts were as deep as twelve feet with underground passageways to concealed, firing positions within the hedgerows. The firing slits from these firing positions were covered by vines growing out of the hedgerows. Machine guns were located under hedgerows at junctions in order to cover all possible approaches." This is from a paper written in 1947 by the CO of 1 Bn, 38 IR, 2nd Div, available at http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/p124201coll2/id/429/rec/1. ""I snapped the turret to the left and put an HE on delay into the corner of the hedge. It passed through the bank and exploded in the middle of a machine-gun nest. The Jerry gun that had been pointed through a small slot on the bottom of the hedge fired no more." Taken from: Yeide, Harry. The Infantry's Armour: The U.S. Army's Separate Tank Battalions in World War II, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, 2010, Pg 165 There is also a great picture of a German MG position dug INTO the embankment on pg 81 of the War Department's Historical Division's St. Lo, published in 1947, and available at https://archive.org/stream/St-Lo#page/n89/mode/2up. Too lazy to try and post it, though. Also some good ones on pgs 83-84. I'm not saying that all hedgerow positions were so constructed, but certainly some were. And as for the power of the entrenching tool, I was in the infantry for over 15 years, and have dug many a hole, all too often in rocky and root-filled ground. Given several days, I could certainly dig at a bare minimum a fire position (and living quarters, and communication trenches), in thick embankment, As c3k mentioned, I too would be more than happy to demonstrate! But again, it is sort of a moot point, as the engine will currently not allow us to co-locate fortifications and linear features. So how do we, in the game, give hedgerow defenders the protection from small arms that they seemed to enjoy, to the degree that the winning formulas devised for cracking such defences ALL involved large amounts of HE, both direct and indirect?

And even then, it is really easy to see trench lines in the terrain if one knows what to look for, as they seem to deform the terrain anyways.

For me the real question is, as a first-time scenario designer, how does one replicate the types of defences that the Germans had in the bocage? It does not take long to dig a hole, and I have no problems in seeing riflemen digging the sort of loops that c3k describes in a few hours, tops. These positions were very hard to see, and it seems that locating the enemy was a big problem, hence the smoke and spray tactics that evolved for assaulting these fields. But in the current engine it is too easy to spot fortifications anyways. I think addressing that issue would go a long way towards helping in general. But to do it properly, we either need to beef up the bocage tile significantly, giving it indirect protection similar to a foxhole, while making it a bigger spotting hindrance, or we need a "fortified bocage" square that gives those benefits. Unfortunately, a special terrain tile creates the same problems as putting a foxhole under a bocage square; it means that either the defender has to have access to the map editor pre-battle, or have the defences laid out by the scenario designer. This either constricts the H2H defender, or creates scenarios that are only meant to be played as the attacker vs. the AI. A "bocage" fortification would be good, but it would, I suspect, be hard to code, as it would have to be able to be placed on a linear feature, unlike all other fortifications. On the other hand, it would be great if we could have all sorts of fortified linear features - looped bocage, walls, and buildings would be fantastic. I am experimenting with just giving the defenders more mines and TRPs, in an effort to attrit the attacker in the approach to make up for the increased fragility of the defenders relative to having more "realistic" positions from which to fight, but it is still an experiment.

I love this forum, I learn something new every day. How can you tell (besides going into the scenario and looking, lol) which assets are FO only? I am glad to hear your opinion re; leaving it up to the player. I guess if someone wants to use all the arty to break the scenario, that is their problem. I had originally planned to use TRPs to indicate all the barrage lines, but I guess you are right in that they are not really necessary. I will use 0-point touch objectives, instead.

Work continues, I have just to finish the briefings and then I can start my own testing. Struggling with building a rolling barrage that does not tax the player too much, and is not too open to blatant player cheating. I wish there were a way to limit access to certain batteries to specific FOs. I currently have a "barrage" FO that is locked in the back, and if I could assign batteries to him in such a way that only he had access, that would remove a lot of potential for the player to call in fires meant for the barrage.

Funny enough, I am struggling with this very issue for my first scenario for my Hill 192 map. I am leaning towards convincing the allied player to put in the barrage himself, scout's honour. It would be very nice to have more flexibility on the preplanned barrage timings, as even the savegame workaround described above only takes one out to 15 minutes. For the assault I am trying to re-create, the Amis had a barrage line that lifted 100 yards every 5 minutes. For the length of map I am working with, that means I need 7 seperate spaced barrages. But I worry that this is too much micro-management for the average player. I essentially need to use the designer's notes to tell the player exactly how to lay the barrage, including how to make the various types of arty present fire a barrage that lasts just about exactly 5 minutes, so as to fit in with the arty plan. Or do I go the other way and limit the amount of arty present, especially the heavy stuff, and allow the player to do what they want? This would be more acceptable if I could limit the "inorganic" support so that it was only accessible to the FO, and make that guy very low quality to handicap on-call reaction times. But I don't think I can do that, and I don't want to go and handicap every American leader just to spin the indirect fire support. Lots of testing required, I suppose.

Ok, the regimental battle is RIGHT OUT. I spent some time today trying to figure out what artillery units were allocated to the 38th Infantry, and came up with a minimum of 3 Bns of 105, 2 of which were M7 Priest Bns, (48 tubes) two Bns of Corps heavies (although I was not able to figure out which ones) (24 tubes), a company of 107mm mortars (6 tubes), plus the regimental cannon company (6 tubes) and the regiment's integral mortars (18 tubes). This is a total of 102 tubes, and I figure that there may have been another 2 - 4 Corps level heavy Bns allocated - there were 8 such Bns in V Corps at the time, and since the 38th was the Corps schwerpunkt on the 11th, I can see more having been used. This is all way too much to handle, especially I can't see a way to allocate FOs to regimental level HQs, as no such beast exists. The heavies seem to have been used mostly for depth targets, but even so allowing the US player access to 6-18 heavy batteries, plus the smaller stuff, seems a bit much, both in terms of effect and in terms of organization. Especially when you consider that American ammo stockpiles were such as to allow an allocated battery to fire about twice what the game considers "full" ammo. So each offboard battery would have to be purchased twice, once for the prep fire, and once as a reinforcement. I am a bit of an obsessive perfectionist, but even I know how to pick my battles. So I am working on the Kraut corner scenario, an American company attacks a FJ platoon with some support weapons and artillery. Experimenting with making bocage defensive positions work, and wondering how to stop a human player from being able to bypass the Germans entirely, without resorting as a designer to putting a great big artillery target - er, victory location, on the place where Kraut corner was actually located. Great fun!

I agree, basically, on the larger battles issue. Even on battalion sized battles, I occasionally forget whole platoons while focusing on those elements that are in the thick of it. But then again, I am a terrible player... Basements, eh? I assume you would Ditchlock a 1 or 2m depression around the building, and then put a 3 story building into it in order to simulate a 2 story with basement? I found a thread detailing how to place foxholes over top of hedges which I am ambivalent about using, as I can see it causing some issues around a) forcing the defender in a scenario to use the foxholes I put out, unless I put them absolutely EVERYWHERE), and creating an easy to spot fortification on the "enemy" side of the hedge that automatically becomes a target. Bugger, I just found LLF's building types post. Now I have to go and take out all my windows... I agree on the american artillery, although I worry that prep barrages will be TOO effective. It is really surprising how thinly spread out the Germans were here. They have for this map a 1500m frontage that they have to cover with essentially 3 platoons in the front line, and another 1 or two in reserve. We know that about a platoon was at Kraut corner, and I would assume that another was at Cloville, although it is possible that this was from the depth company. This leaves a big frontage for a platoon or two to cover. I know that the defense was non-linear and based around mutually supporting strongpoints (I assume at section level), but that still is pretty thin. I want the prep fires to pin the Germans, the question becomes then how much on-call arty to allocate to the Americans.

Ok, expanded map is submitted to the repository and has also been posted at GaJ's CMMODs site. Now to start working on the Kraut Corner scenario...

Through selective laziness and the lack of the 23 IR in the St Lo game, I am only including the area of 38 IR. This "limits" the map to only 3 3/4 square km. Yours must be close to twice that! For elevation I used the google maps "contour line cheat", as I call it. This gave me 10m contours, which is plenty fine for me, and matched very closely the engineer study. The engineer study is good, but matches the 1947 photos less the further south one goes. In fact, you can pretty much chart the front line by where the bocage gaps stop being indicated. I keep expecting to see "HERE BE DRAGONS" south of Le Soulaire. Perils of working from aerial recce photos taken at times under much less than ideal situations, I guess. I should be done the expanded map this weekend, and will post it to the repository when it is done. Then I will work on scenarios. I hear what you are saying regarding CMBNs being less suitable at and above Bn level, Broadsword, but there is a big part of me that wants to do a regimental action, if only to get a better sense of the flow of the actual battle in terms of time and space. We know that II/38, with only 2 rifle companies available, was held up first at Kraut corner and then at Cloville, but that progress was steady thereafter. I/38, deprived of tank support for most of the day, was slow but steady, but had to commit its 3rd rifle company up the middle after its 2 assault companies started to stall and separate a bit. And what of the Germans? We know that the hill was held by III/9 FJ, but my map is based on American, not German boundaries, which extended from approximately the D59 road running N/S between St Andre de l'Epine and Cloville, all the way to roughly Purple Heart Draw. American intel estimated average German Bn strength at about 500 men. Since the OOB bayonet strength of a June 44 FJ Bn is 489 men, we can assume that the Germans were basically at full strength, although an argument can be made that this should be adjusted to somewhere betwwn 70-90% to allow for REMFs, etc. But in my case, the area east of the hill is not depicted, so we can safely subtract a company (with a portion of supporting arms) from the Bn OOB. As well, the depth coy should probably lose a pl or more to reflect it being committed to the St Georges d'Elle area, not the hill itself. So our FJ Bn becomes a FJ company, with 2 additional Platoons in depth. We are also told that the 12 FJ Stug Bde, the 3rd FJ Aufklarungscompanie, and the 3rd FJ Pioniere Bn were committed to the 2 ID area over the course of the day. We know the armour was committed early, as there are reports of armour duels at Cloville. But FJ Stugs were also present in the 29th Div area, although no mention of German armour is present in accounts of the fighting around Purple Heart Draw and St Georges d'Elle. Various sources tell us that the Bde was down to a strength of 11 runners on 27 Jun, and that a month later it had 10, but that the unit had been "badly mauled" on 11 Jul. From this we can guesstimate that the Bde certainly had no more than 15 or so Stugs on the 11th. With the knowledge that Bde was split over several areas, I feel comfortable allocating the Germans no more than 2 platoons or 6 Assault guns for the Hill 192 fight, and probably more realistically 1 platoon/3 guns. We can similarly pare down the Recce coy and the Pioneer Bn. The American advance went furthest in the valley between St Andre de l'Epine and Hill 192, reaching the St. Lo-Bayeux highway at La Calvaire and to the west in the 29 ID area. We can therefore expect that 3 FJ div would have used its last reserves in these areas; 5 and 8 FJ Regt, and I/9 FJ were not so much in crisis as II and III/9 FJ. But again we need to do some guesstimating as to what portions of these units would have been committed to the hill directly. Based on the fact that 29 ID was driving hard and threatening to turn the flank of the St Lo defence, I would say that no more than 1/3 of these units were committed to the battle for the hill, so a Pl of FJ Aufklarungstruppen, and a Coy of FJ Pioniere, but these last only very late in the battle. Three other issues are notable. The first is artillery. This was the only use of a rolling barrage by the 2nd ID in the war, and American ammo expenditure was prolific. The effect was not so much to annihilate as to pin the Germans quite badly, but how to model this without resorting to use of an actual huge rolling barrage over the entire time and space of the scenario? On the German side, all accounts mention heavy use of German mortars and artillery firing at preregistered targets throughout the depth of the German defence system. In fact, it seems that German artillery at times contributed as much or more to American holdups than did the Fallschrimjagers themselves. But how to space reinforcement batteries for both sides is an issue that will have to be tested. The second is German fortifications. I would argue that CM is fairly bad at depicting the sort of dug in bocage defences that the Germans used - fire positions, communication tunnels and essentially bunkers and dugouts dug right in to the bocage itself. So how to make the German positions more formidable? We can safely allocate TRPs and mines in quantity, (and wire - why not?) as both are mentioned, but this does not do it justice, so far as I can tell. The third is battlefield damage. I have not applied any to the map thus far, but it is agreed that at a minimum Cloville was heavily damaged by artillery both before and during the 11th, and that by the end of the battle the forest near the hill's summit was basically totally destroyed, as reflected by the lack of trees there in the 1947 photos. In fact it wasn't until doing some digging after looking at the 1947 photos that I realized that this was a wooded area at all. So I need to apply some damage, which will unfortunately up the load times. Maybe I will have to let users damage the maps themselves, or just do it for the smaller scenarios...