Stalin's Organ

Y're on buddy. Good on you for putting your game where your scenario design is! I'm away from home for a week from the 26th, but am on holiday until then too. But of course if you win then maybe you're just a better player than Dalem??!! More spoilers follow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I just counted the squads - 31 German vs 54 Russian - it certainly seems there's enough Russian infantry, but then 18 of those Russian squads are green, and 6 are conscript - one whole company consists of platoons that are each half green and conscript (one such platoon with a crack leader which seems a bit odd....) The remainder are regular. All the German squads are veteran. The Germans get a fairly sizeable artillery compliment too, which easily neutralises any concentration of infantry moving, plus they have half a dozen MG34's which never helps infantry these days!! I'm not sure what my current score is - we're up to a about T24 I think and IIRC I think I've secured 3 of the 4 major objectives and I'm not about to panic about getting the last one unles I can neutralise the remaining Russian heavies (there are no BT's or T26's left of course!!) IMO one of the "joys" of playing as the Germans in 1941 is solving the tactical problems posed by the Uber tanks - I have killed one in this scenario with side shots from short-ish range (200m) - setting it up took 7 or 8 moves and was an exercise in hidden movement.

A word of caution - I'm playing Dalem at "Breakout from Borisov", and it's a bit of a walk over for me as the german. Spoilers below.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Looking at hte forces involved it's no wonder - the Russians get 2300 popints, the Germans 4300!! The Russians get some KV's and a T 34 or 2 which could be game breakers of course, but the Germans get 3 Stuka's and a Me-110, so the heavy Russian armour simply gets smacked by airpower (KV-2 destroyed and KV-1 immobilised) making it..er....somewhat less overwhelming! So please, please, please think about play balance when doing these conversions - as Dalem said - Russians in CMBB aren't quite so flash as they are in ASL (which I barely remember from playing a little 15-20 yrs ago!!) A simple conversion of numbers might not quite work!

Thanks Mak - I'll get o look at it when the boys are in bed later!!

Yep - but I think it's probably a good idea to have a look at hte rarity factor too. For example 2 KV-2's and a KV-8 with 3 T34's isn't a real historical mix of tanks. KV-2's were pretty much museum pieces in 1942 - a few may have been around somewhere tho. Flamethrowing tanks were deployed in brigades of their own! As were T34's. So I'd expect to see a force based around a single tank type (usually T34) with a platoon or 2 of supporting heavies or odd-balls. The Germans seem to have a lot of the top notch gear for the scenario dayte - Pak 40's an Marders. No doubt a good thing given the weight of the Russian armour, but overall you'd expect to see Pak 38's (50mm) AT guns rather than Pak 40's. Simlarly the artillery given may be available, but I'd expect to see 81mm mortar observers rather than the 337mm artillery rockets, and Russian with only some sort of heavy artillery - fine for prep bopmbardment - except they can't see anywhere where the germans are likely to be from their set-up zone. The terrain is extremely 3-dimensional, with a couple of very large hills and bucket loads of cover. I don't know how reasonable that is, but it makes for fairly boring play in some respects - it's difficult to manouvre, much of the map is superfluous (ie it's too big!! ), and the big guns of both sides are constrained to get closer than you'd really want them while artillery has a hard time because it can only start being effective when the enemy comes into sight at fairly short range. Also it seems like the Russian attacker really needs to have a bigger point advantage - I don't know how big thesizes are since it was tournament saved but I'd guess they aren't much bigger than the germans - which makes life touogh for them!! Like I said - it gets a pass for first effort - just

So, like....how the f**k do you get those Nashorns to work properly? If I shoot & scoot they run out of ammo without hitting anything, and if they stay put to shoot - even hull down, one or more of them gets smoked every turn by the return fire from the assembled massed T34's and their armour is only paper even against the mediocre Russian 76 at 2km!! I can't see that letting the Rusians get closer would be much use, and the terrain doesn't exactly give them keyhole arcs of fire to pick on only 1 or 2 T34's at a time.

bump

Snarkers & I are drawing to a close in ourself inflicted agony - I think it's fair to say that MG's first scenario lacked a few things...like balance, thought, historical forces....and a few other minor things. Overall there has been far too little HE flying - but that' probably just my opponent's fault - he's the one with the 152mm guns!! So it gets only a GRR rating - a single :mad: .

What this is telling you is that htese squads can have fausts - but it doesn't make htefaust available in 1041! The squad type exists to 1944, so it will get fausts when fausts become available. It's a difference between availability (fausts become available in late 43 or wheever) and abilty to use.

damage level of a map without redrawing it? I don't see any way of doing it, but I'm happy tobe corrected.......

It's an option that is only available when constructing a scenario or operation (ref pg 35/6 of the manual). You can't do it in QB's at all.

Does anyone know what the limitations are on the time fuse for 88 Flak ammo? Airbursts were time fused (except for hte sallies after the proximity fuse was invented), and there's probably a minimum time they can be set for hence a minimum altitude. Below that altitude teh gun would have to get a direct hit to do any damage - ie it wouldn't be any better than a tank gun firing HE! There were basically 2 zone aircraft flew in - low (say up to 1000m??) and lower for ground attack and target aquisition, and 10,000 ft and higher for level bombing.

HE shell weight is 38kg (83.8 lbs) for the sIG 33. I suspect if the 150mm regimental observer is supposed to represent these guns then it may be an oversight that gives them a blast of 299. The sIG's had a range of 4700m, which is short but still gives them plenty of scope for off-table use at the scale of CMBB. 43.5kg/95.7 lb Which explains whey the sFH 18 has a higher blast rating overall, but not why it's different on/off map of course. [ December 17, 2002, 07:49 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organ ]

Who is this twit? any one know, any one care?</font>

Pulling mines into the path of tanks is a known tactic, but isn't catered for in CM - diasy chain mines are nte nearest it gets. Hand held use of mines - like teller mines apparently fitted with time fuses instead of weght ones and wedged under the turret overhang of T34's - isn't covered - the nearest thing would probably be to equip your troops with demo charges.

Anti-tank mines are not abstracted - a squad or team carries a specific number of them. I'm not sure what the "mushroom" mine is, but the magnetic mine is a specific weapon - tank hunter teams up to 4 - usually 2 or 3. Close assault using ordinary weapons - grenades and guns fired into open hatches or vision/pistol ports is abstracted.

Why would you want to replace either? Only in Australia.

I don't think a 20mm strafe would bother a KV much - 30mm maybe, and as for KV-2's - well their rate of fire is so pathetic that you can rush them with almost anything and be guaranteed of getting close - so Pz-II's with tank hunter teams on their back might be a good bet!! lol

Sounds like good **** to me!

Because if you're going to throw TNT (or HE) about the place it's good to be able to do so in peace - or at least without having to worry too much about being shot back at. Deal - a possibly well balanced scenario is on it's way to you as we speak - pick a victim! [ December 10, 2002, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organ ]

Now now MG - I hardly think that it's apprpriate to play someone at a scenario you've designed!! That's hte sort of thing that goes on in the Peng thread - bunch of gamey bastiches that they are. Instead I think the 2 of you should "test" one of my own completely unbalanced efforts!! You wanna be Russians or Germans in Dec 1941??!!

Err...well the guys inside the tank are probably not too keen on opening those hatches!! Basically - 2 minutes is a VERY short time to finally KO one of these things - thereare cases in 41 where it took a lot longer - your guys did good - stop whinging!!

Yep. Don't suppose you bought one did you? The Panzer-wurfer mine is pretty good too - but a little short ranged and also in short supply in 41 IIRC. Stuka's are also sometimes effective, but a little inaccurate and 1-shot only. Another possibility is jsut mobility - attack everything else and run away wherever the KV's are. They're pretty slow and ponderous and if you have tanks on both sides of them you can sometimes play KV-tag using shoot-'n-scoot from behind cover. Otherwise hope for a gun hit!! [ December 10, 2002, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organ ]

He can't win against human beings at that either.

Thiswould be why I'm tearing you a new one while you ait around for someone to flip your switch. And you still haven't.

If you're not going to do it yuorself then you bleedin' well have time to send me the turn you owe me!! Messiness is next to rapid turn-times!!