Frunze

Wait, I tried to put stuff on the islands, but couldn't. I thought they were out of my setup zone. Well, I did put a TRP on the last one, which paid off big-time... Combined Arms wrote: I was afraid my opponent would do something like that in Petroskov...or sit on the hill with the little flag and shoot stuff moving down the road. (I made sure to have both 88s with LOS to my side of that hill.) How close did you have to get to have LOS to the bridge?

OK, guess I was running on hindsight there.

Did Finnish political leaders consider whether Finland might have a better chance of a long-term independent existence bordering the USSR than bordering a Greater German Reich stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals? Is that a possible factor in their decisions?

Yeah, I went after the forest first, too. But if there had turned out to be too much infantry there, I could have bypassed it. A shreck in the village shot at my tanks across the stream, but the range was a bit long, and then it got hammered. Like Mike says, I did lose two of my tanks from the across-the-stream force, to a shreck and AT gun that were right next to where they started out, in the scattered trees. I don't know if my plan would've worked as perfectly with some other defensive deployments, maybe it just happened to hit the weaknesses in Mike's setup.

I went between the stream and the forest. There's plenty of space, shrecks in the forest would be firing beyond their optimum range.

Sure, except if you can't stop the Soviets at the bridge behind that village, they can do a left hook all the way across the back of the map. The Germans could hold the forest flag if they commit enough infantry to it, but the other two large flags don't seem defensible. Y'know, that's what I was expecting to happen, so I wasted my arty firing preplan at empty forest.

Even more than the small amount of Soviet infantry, the problem is space and time. Walking is just too slow to get you to the objective. But I figured out where the edge of the defender's setup zone was...actually, that's another thing that should be changed. It shouldn't be a straight line across the map. And I didn't go through the woods or the town. I stuck to the open as much as possible...and most of the map was open. By going fast through there, I had time to let the inf. go first through the closer terrain.

Petroskov is definitely an original. Having the defender exit...a real puzzle, figuring out what you need and what you can spare each step of the way. Axis probably needs to be weakened a bit, though. Based on the averages, as well as my impression. Anytime things start getting tough, the Axis player can just feed a few reinforcements into the battle instead of taking 'em off-map...then when things are under control again, load 'em back in the trucks, or in different trucks (ya got plenty.) More defender-exit scenarios could be done, I think. Wouldn't necessarily have to be reinforcements marked to exit, either. BTW, the Panzergrenadiers aren't padlocked in the halftracks. But I guess there's no way to do that. The High Road is pretty much impossible to beat if the defender covers all routes, I think. I made some mistakes, for example putting a bunker in the village where JPS could get to it from the side (I thought the cliffs would protect it.) And generally not protecting the front of the village enough. And not putting enough infantry by the bridge - I was going to put the pioneers there, and they never showed up...and I still managed a draw, and kept him from crossing the bridge. Time is a major problem for the attacker in that one - so far to walk. Maybe if setup options were changed a bit to let the attacker start more troops closer to the objectives? Koltov I didn't like so much. I have a hard time seeing how a German player could win it, or maybe how a Russian player could lose it, even though I know some did. I mean, the defender can't even try to hold the line of the stream, because the attacker has the option of starting on the far side of one of the bridges. If the infantry holes up in thick cover - the factories or the woods - the tanks can bypass 'em and take the rest of the map. (Mikey did that, and held the center flag in the town, but that's it.) Possibly the attacker should not have that setup zone on the far side of the stream, and the defender's briefing should give some warning that an armored attack is expected. These changes might moderate the wide variation, reduce the random element of it, if combined with some similar pro-Allied changes to keep it balanced.

Clearly Deadly-88 in Section III. Possibly yours truly in Section II. I'm guessing mPisi in Section I. That one's the closest, and probably the toughest - I know Holien and Juha, who're at the bottom, thrashed me in RoW II. 'Course that was CMBO. I got a draw Juha in a CMBB game once. Maybe the champions, once the results are announced, could informally play a couple games to check this out?

Lebanon and Syria were both French colonies at the time. Don't know if they were administered separately or as a unit, but don't see why it'd matter. Yeah, Leopold -who, IIRC, was CIC of the army - surrendered to the Germans against the wishes of the elected government. The Congo had been under the control of the monarch. Which, at a wild guess, might imply that it wouldn't have been part of the allied war effort. That would be the French Congo (Congo-Brazzaville, Republic of Congo), not the Belgian Congo (Zaire, Democratic Republic of Congo, the one that's in the headlines more nowadays.) Part of French Equatorial Africa, colored Vichy on Dorosh's large map. [ November 03, 2003, 02:16 PM: Message edited by: Frunze ]

Only with AP mines, and only when the infantry unit is actually on the tile. AT mines can only be discovered with vehicles. It's in the manual. If you suspect mines somewhere and must go through anyway, send a cheap vehicle ahead.

Webpage? Well, if someone will host screenshots, I could post 'em here...I took one of the map, so far.

OK, the game is underway. The parameters have been renegotiated a bit - it's 400 pts, and my force is infanty-only...I think the attackers are combined-arms. A common matchup, historically. The map's got plenty of woods, some trees, and some small light buildings. Also plenty of open space, a bit more than you might expect with the "heavy" trees setting. (More open than you'd get in heavy-trees rural, for example.) The map is fairly flat, with a few minor dips and rises. There's a road running right down the middle, with a few houses on either side close to my end. One large flag and one small one, on either side of the road. W.N. should have some possibility to use longer-range weapons. [ November 02, 2003, 08:55 PM: Message edited by: Frunze ]

I could serve as your opponent if you want to give a demonstration of your methods of taking apart a SMG-based defense, Walpurgis Night. I'm a pretty good player, at least I've done well in RoW III. Whatever parameters you consider fair would be fine. I'd only ask that it be a small battle. And I usually prefer to play Soviets, if that's OK with you. Redwolf's suggestion, of terrain too close to allow much HMG dependence, would also be fine with me.

Yeah, exactly. Against tanks you usually want a close-range defense - make 'em move to a range where your AT guns have a better chance. The SMG squads counter that. With a less tank-heavy attack, it might be useful to have a SMG reserve to carry through the heaviest assault. Also useful: cover arcs to keep 'em from using up their ammo too soon. I don't usually use cover arcs on offense, but with SMG squads you gotta have 'em.