Beta1

Exactly. The best anti-HT weapon is light armor of your own. Daimlers will happily kill any MG only, Mortar or FT HTs they encounter with very little risk. But then you have the problem of the assault HTs and ACs whoes autocannons are a real danger to your Daimlers. Stuarts are another good anti light armor vehicle, and unlike daimlers they are also effective against infantry

AA guns can and do shoot down fighters very effectively, esp the quad 20 flak. However their other important use in CM is in the light AT role. The 37mm flak eats ACs, HTs, thin skinned TDs, etc for breakfast due to the high ROF, and very high muzzle velocity. They are also good at harrasing infantry, and drop light buildings quickly. These uses can be "contriversial" and many players dont like it.

My general feel is that BO is still more fun. Dont get me wrong I think BB is an excellent game and I really enjoy playing it against huma opposition. But for games against the AI I always go back to CMBO. Its like the previous poster said, the eastern front semms to be more depressing. The improved MG modelling is excellent but while the increase arty delays may be realistic they effectively make arty so unresponsive that I rarely use anything above 105mm in a game. Also while there are more units a lot seem to be the same (eg loads of very similar T34s). Its all just too much slogging around with infantry and blasting away with tanks. It doesnt seem as "tense" as CMBO. In CMBO you could be pushing forward and never know if a unspotted 6pdr was going to knock out you armor or a hidden 150 IG flatten your lead platoon. In CMBB if an ATG reveals itself most of the tanks are so thick (and the guns too light) to be of any danger and as a result most IGs meet a messy end under a barrage of T34 shells.. They are both excellent games but agasint the AI the simplicity of BO wins in my book

OK calm down. First problem, if you give a wasp a move - reverse command that sexactly what it will do. It wont hang around between the two. as far as I know the wasp will not fire while moving so if you dont let it remain stationary for a bit it wont fire. A better orders sequence is to give it a move command in one turn so it arrives on station with about 15 seconds remaining in the turn. This should be time for it to fire. Next turn give it a reverse command with a bit of delay if you want it to fire some more. Second problem a wasp has a crew of 2 (I think). One gunner one driver. If you lose a crew member the wasp can no longer fire, just like if you lose a german HT crew it loses its MG. Best thing to do is stick it somewhere safe for the rest of the game. Wasps are lethal if used correctly. For clearing buildings you cant beat them. Just park them 50m away and you can BBQ germans all day.

The "tapping" of MGs was told to me by my grandfather when I was much younger. He was a machine gunner (I assume a vickers) on the southcoast of england when invasion fever was at its height. He told me they used to drill firing into the sea. The CO would be shouting distances which they were expected to be able to target then "tap" the guns to adjust the distance/range.

Never let armor advance ahead of infantry either. They end up dead. Infact never let anything advance ahead of your scouts unless you are planning to lose them. Something I should learn - I have a terrible habit of scouting with things like ACs and getting them shot up by enemy light guns and armor.

yeah the standard brit infantry are rather poor but thats no reason to rule them out. As previously pointed out the 3" mortars have massive ammo loads and the PIAT is a superior weapon to the bazooka. When playing as brits I rarely run into the "what the hell do I do agasint that cat" problem. You either PIAT it, or avoid it. If you want to leave you tiger/panther/whatever out in the open shooting at me I'm quite happy to drop smoke on it or just bugger off somewhere else on the map. Anyway the americans dont have anything as good as a firefly for killing cats, and the brit 6pdr at vet level almost always gets a coupe of T rounds, the 17pdr kills anything with or without T. Compared to this the american guns are crap - the 56mm is lucky to kill any decent axis tank. The Daimler is another brilliant weapon,very fast, very cheap and with a mean 40mm AT gun. The big fat churchills are almost indestructable if hull down. And the medium arty is good too - the 3.5-4.5" guns are cheap and come with plenty of ammo. Sure the germans and americans have plenty of toys but the brits can easily take the germans on. You just have to play them right.

maybe not a bad sport, perhaps just a little dull I like the odd heavy forest map but to only play one type of map is rather boring. Your basically saying you dont want to play open maps because HE chuckers and arty is too dominant but instead want to play maps where the SMG is totally dominant. Learn how to use you HE and infantry together and those open spaces stop becoming so hard to cross. Raise the points slightly (I normally favour 2000) then its much easier to push a flag rusher off a flag. Look at it this way. If you play 1000-1500 points on a realtively open map then even if like you say the other guy rushes the flag and sits on it (say in a wood) you are a little stuffed as its going to be hard to apply enough pressure to shift him. If you play 2000 points you can now afford an extra FO or/and some direct HE chuckers (shermans/pn4s etc). Now if he rushes the flag all he's done is provide you with a target. He rushes, you suppress his support elements and apply HE/arty to the flag until his men bug out. OK thats making HE more powerful buts that the point of HE - heavy firesupport. And if your that worried that non-symetrical map will benefit one side get CMBB and just load up a symetrical map for your QBs.

I agree with Zimorodok, go armor light/infantry only and deprive him of a target. He has to kill huge numbers of infantry to recover the cost of 3 KTs. Go for types with demo charges or flamethrowers to take out his armor. Make him play on maps with lots of cover and hills to prevent the KTs shooting you up at range, play in wet conditions to make them bog down. Combine that and overwhelming infantry numbers and you should take him down easily - after all while his 3 KTs are stuck in a field somewhere your infantry will massively outnumber him. Failing that dont let the git play the germans all the time and see how he likes it. As a final are there any planes that can take out a KT?

Quick comment on using view 1 to check LOS. Make sure you have the unit scale set to normal size - otherwise your sherman (and its target) appear bigger than they are and you will think you have LOS at an earlier point than correct

I saw this too running a microsoft ps2 intellimouse under win98 - the mouse would occasionally jump to one corner of the screen causing the view to swing around madly. When I swapped for the logitech USB mouse from my laptop the problem goes away. So yup its almost certainly a mouse driver thing

so really small battles then - I normally go 1000-2000 rather than 3-600. At that size you can take 150+mm FOs and pretty much always have a good target to drop it on. I guess you have to ask yourself what you're going to be facing in a battle this size. The most infantry you'll see is probably going to be about a company of rifle squads and they wont have much else to back them up (at the 300 point end of things). Probably two decent squads and a little backup, maybe a HT or two, one tank at most. Because of this arty is not really going to be as much use as in a larger battle - in a 2000 point you can bet your going to run into a couple of companies and will get the chance to hit a decent concentration of troops with your big 105-150mm FOS. As your not going to see that number of men in this battle is you really want arty it will have to be fairly small calibre due to the price. In this situation I would probably prefer to use direct fire HE from shermans/M8HMC/Priests etc + 2-3 on board 88mm/3" mortars (yes I know I said I dont use them much but this is different setup than I normally play) Greyhounds are great little units, and are very good halftrack/light armor killers. If you want anti-infantry though a sherman has a goof 75mm gun, 3 MGs (including a 0.5 on the roof) and enough ammo to sit 250m back from the enemy and pound away all day. The reall killer at this size (if you can afford it) is the brit churchill croc - its very well armored (not much can kill it as its unlikley you'll see Tigers or heavy TDs in a 3-600 point game), has the same HE capabilities of a sherman, 2 MGs and a 100m range flamethrower. Stick one of these behind you infantry and when you contact the enemy roll it up to your front line and thats it. Use it properly and it can break most defences(just dont leave it without an infantry screen - you dont want to let it get ganged up on by a group of shrecks)

To go back to the infantry question As allies I tend to go with the sturmkompany/Volksgrenadier combo for lethal short and good medium/long range firepower (although you dont realy want to fight at long range). I dont play much as american airbourne but as brit airbourne I always take 75mm pack howitzers, they seem to be man portable at a decent rate, one game I lugged one halfway across the map and up a hill into a wood. Suprised the hell out of my opponent to suddenly get flanking fire from a gun halfway across the map in a ME. The 105 gives a bigger bang but if you cant get it anywhere its not worth it. Supporting MGs are always good but I have started not bothering with large numbers of on board mortars in MEs- I now prefer an extra FO. you normally get a couple of mortars thrown in with the infantry companies but I wouldnt buy extra. I do like the lighter brit mortars though esp the larger one (not the 2", might be 3") as it has a huge ammo load - they are great in defence for dissuading SMG squads from closing in. If you want big bangs dont bother with the gun and get another FO

Bit of topic but there was an obituary in todays telegraph (UK) of a James Brown (Armored Irish Guards in ww2) who took out one of the first KTs in normandy in a vanilla sherman. Realising he hadnt a hope with the 75mm gun he charged the KT from 300m and rammed it, knocking out a track. Both crews abandoned their vehicles successfully excpet for the shermans forward M-gunner who managed to end up sharing a ditch with the KTs crew (although apparently after saluting the enemy he then legged it back to rejoin his team). Brown returned on foot to the rest of the tank group and returned with a sherman firefly which destroyed both the KT and the wrecked sherman. So the question is wheres the "ramming speed" command in CM [ September 12, 2002, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Beta1 ]

Like the guys said- dont engage it at range. 17 pounders will sort it out quite well but to make certain try and get it in the flanks. Also the turrets on these things are sloooowwwww. So engage with two guns/TDs from either side Ideally pop a TDout of cover on one side of the map so it sprints into cover again by the end of the turn then open up with a second positioned on the other side of the KT with the same trick - the turret will track to the first one but as soon as it gets behind cover it will change to the second and slowly rotate back. It can take so long to track between them it may never get a shot off. And one of them should be able to get a flank/rear aspect shot - if the TDs are greater than 90 degrees apart for the KT it cant be facing both!

How many points are you playing? I normally spend about half-2/3rds of the combined arms allowance. For 2000 points (axis) I find a single 150mm and a 81mm is more than enough (although I am beginning to be swayed by the 2x120mm option)

For QB 2000 points as axis I normally take a 150mm FO and a 88mm mortar FO. Basic tactic is to form a block with my infantry to hold the enemy infantry back at 100m-150m then bring down the 150mm arty to break them. The 88mm is used to supress other areas of troops/mortars/guns or provide smoke if needed. I normally have a couple of on board 88mm mortars too for anti-gun/MG duty. Just as an aside in a battle against the AI (3000 points I think) the AI openned up on one of my AT guns with what looked like about 4 88mm FOs simultaneously (at least there was about 4-8 shells per second coming down). Looks very nasty but still took 2 turns to actually take out the gun. Wouldnt like that on a concentration of troops in a wood though. [edit - should be 81mm fo Doh!] [ August 28, 2002, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Beta1 ]