landser

The most recent event I was describing took place in the Ciemne mission, although I have had a couple of double hits in the past. In this case it was two half-tracks that had just had the infantry dismount. So they were side on to the tank, very close to one another, and of course stationary. I can't remember exactly how far away the T34 was, but the joint explosions killed or wounded most of the dismounted troops. I was NOT happy.

It was armored cars and a haltrack, but still
 
 

Good to know.  That is not made clear in the briefing.
 
This has been the default game formation since CM1 days.  However, in CM2 that also means that an enemy hit on the lead tank can easily take out both tanks (plus any other vehicles situated along that line).
 
***SPOILERS***
 
After the T34 platoon on the left flank is killed, the path to the river on that flank is pretty open.  However, the road thru the trees next to the RR track is a bear.  Despite having a couple of tanks, 2 Stummels and two HT's pouring area fire at the foxholes, it takes time to winkle the enemy out.  (I hour 20 minutes for this scenario goes too fast.)  When you do, the enemy run back to the west (the river) and their friendly lines. 
In this action, have suffered half a dozen inf casualties - half via friendly fire.     The 75mm HE expl)osions caused by the Stummels seem to have a bad effect a dozen or more meters away on my own guys (who I thought I had placed safely far away from the line of fire).  Am at the 50 minute to go mark and I will send the left flank company of tanks and company of inf to force a river crossing with arty support while one platoon of tanks and inf plus recon grind away at the road and foxholes. One may have overwhelming force available but getting it deployed where it's needed is a challenge.  
I coulda, shoulda, woulda placed a TRP on that area of the woods road.  But, placing TRP's is always a challenge as I hate placing em and then never having to use em.  So, I put all 5 around the town and river for the inevitable crossing.

I hope that you have a lot of fun with it.

Yes, it looks like we generated a little interest in this classic Red Thunder campaign. That's cool, and I hope the players just starting on it post some reports of their progress. I doubt anyone needs my advice, but I'm always happy to give it when asked (but usually when not asked). Like Warts said, have fun and keep your heads down

Good luck Danfrodo, it's a beast of a campaign. It took me about 25 days to complete it, and that with playing a few hours each day aside from maybe two or three when real life intervened. Excellent maps, a strong opponent and long-range gunnery duels. What's not to like right?
For me the keys are
-- Force preservation. With a core force this is vital.
-- Ammo conservation.  With only a single resupply before the final battle, prudent expenditure of ammunition, particularly mortar, tank and smoke ammo, is a necessity. You can, however, freely expend your artillery.
-- Planning. With the maps so large and open it presents some interesting challenges, particularly regarding LOS and movement. I was surprised when Bozowans said that he had walked his infantry across the map in the third mission. I felt compelled to truck/track my infantry around the maps. This is what I've been talking about when saying the campaign imparts a distinctly operational feel. The right-flank force has halftracks, but the left flank force has trucks, and these require a more delicate approach. I found that getting my infantry where I needed them, safely and in a timely manner was one of the main challenges of the campaign
Terrain analysis is always crucial, and especially so on open maps with long fields of fire. Not only to find those good spots for your heavy weapons, but for routes of movement.
-- Not that I wasn't already aware, but it became clear in the first mission that the German optical advantage was something that could be exploited. Aside from the nightmare second minute in the third mission (the one where I lost basically the starting Panther platoon and then started over) I attempted to use keyholing, concentration and range on my side. I tried to inititate armored combat outside 1500m when possible. At this range the German armor has an advantage. In some of the screenshots I've posted if you look at my armor they are often grouped tightly together by platoon. In the 'wide shot' of the final battle you can see a platoon of Panthers at the bottom left-center of the shot. I used this 'box' formation a lot. Because in Combat Mission one tank's field of fire isn't affected by another tank directly in front, I like to use this formation to always have two barrels on the same line, one behind the other, so if the front tank could see a target, the tank behind can also see it and establish a fire superiority at the outset of any engagement. Sorta gamey, as in real-life the rear tank would be blocked. But in CM it works very well.

No doubt Warts. I'm usually an iron player as I prefer the inexactness of the spotting. But sometimes I want more responsive artillery, and particularly in the bigger campaigns. Honestly, if on-call times were disconnected from the skill rating, I'd never play anything but iron again. The actions feel compressed when the scenario lasts for two hours or less, so I often feel like realistic on-call times don't fit with the seemingly accelerated time scale of the battles. I hope the next version of Combat Mission disconnects on-call times from the skill rating the player chooses.

I took screens of each debrief, so yes I can help with that when you need them Erwin. Good luck in the campaign. I'd be interested in any reports you'd care to share.

I managed to complete this campaign, with the AI surrendering with 36 minutes left in the final battle.  I lost 76 men and 7 tanks (four Panthers, three Mark IV), plus a number of soft vehicles like trucks and a kubelwagen to air attack and artillery.  On the other side of the ledger though, the Russian lost 509 men plus 17 captured and 20 tanks, plus 59 of armored vehicles and other.  The artillery once again did the job.
In all for the campaign I lost 208 men and 14 tanks (five Panthers, nine Mark IV), while the enemy lost over 1300 men killed or wounded, 48 captured, and 94 tanks, plus 120+ assorted other vehicles. I played it on Veteran mostly for the quick artillery. Longest wait was nine minutes and three minutes on a TRP,  but those are only available in the first half of the campaign. These are dense missions, compressing a lot of action in to an hour and twenty minutes, and I'm glad I went for the shorter on-call times as I got to use the full power of the strong artillery the German is given. If I had to wait 13+ minutes for it then this campaign would have played very differently for me. I wish I had been on engine 4 to see the artillery kills. I'd guess that it accounted for about half of those 1300 kills.
The player starts the campaign with a total of 56 tanks, evenly split between the two types. Of course it's only in the final battle that all are on the same map.  So over the course I lost a quarter of my armor.
I had a great time playing this campaign. The maps are fantastic and offer up a nice blend of long range gunnery duels and close-in combat in the towns and forests of the region. My longest tank kill was 2269 meters in the second battle I think. But there is a lot of combat that takes place at 1500-2000 meters, which I find a lot of fun. I focused on force preservation, playing each battle cautiously in order to have the strongest force I could at the end. So I ignored certain objectives. For example the two flank touch objectives in the fifth? battle, Stary Jankow,  were clearly traps, served no tactical purpose, and I judged it a fool's errand to go for them. So they were ignored. I wasn't too concerned with the scoring, just trying to play sensibly, concentrating my forces and trying to keep them alive. I scored in order, Draw, Minor, Total, Total, Minor and Total, for a Total victory overall in the campaign. I was way too cautious in the first battle crossing the Rzadza river and let too many T-34s escape. But after that I got the pace.
Historically, the action this campaign portrays is not well-known, but this was the largest armor clash that occurred in Poland. I imagine that the grogs that hang on this board know about it. But it's worth recounting. In July of '44 the Russians were closing the Vistula and the eastern approaches to Warsaw. Operationally, it was XXXIX Panzer Corps defending against Rokossovsky's 1st Belorussian Front, and in this region 2nd Tank Army, of which the campaign's enemy, the 3rd Tank Corps, was part. Model ordered a counterattack with four Panzer Divisions. The Hermann Goring and 19th Panzer Divisions attacked first and managed to cut off 3rd Tank Corps from 2nd Tank Army. 5th SS and 4th Panzer then arrived and the pocketed 3rd Tank Corps was destroyed. In the campaign we command elements of 4th Panzer, and the player is attacking/pursuing 3rd Tank Corps as they fall back in to the pocket to ultimately deliver the crushing blow.
Historically, this action was a sharp success for the German. For the moment anyway, the Vistula crossings were safe, and the direct threat to Warsaw removed. It was a good example of how vulnerable armored spearheads can become after a long advance, and here, at the end of Bagration, 2nd Tank army was exploitable, Model recognized this and struck when the time was right. This action is also interesting for the role it played in the Warsaw Uprising which sparked as these forces approached the river. The Soviet defeat left Warsaw on it's own as they needed to cross the river elsewhere. Of course it's questionable whether Stalin wanted to enter Warsaw in the first place, as one might reason capturing Warsaw with no home army intact was preferable from a political point of view.
I started this thread because I thought one of my squads had thirty panzerfaust. I was quickly shown my error and then just turned it in to a sort of AAR and review of the campaign. I apologize for the spoilers, but as the campaign is nearly six years old now perhaps it's not such a sin. I think it goes without saying by now that this is an awesome campaign, with great battles and proper resources to conduct them. Ammunition and force preservation are important, as is killing as much Russian armor as possible to make the end manageable. I felt like there was always plenty of time, except maybe the second battle, but even there I took all of the objectives, even if I needed extra-time to do it. If you enjoy long range battles, and feeling like a battalion commander, with all of the attention to detail this demands, you should play Blunting the Spear. It's one of the best campaigns I have played in Combat Mission. Well done and thanks to everyone who had a hand in making it.

Fifty minutes remain, and the final battle is going well. I've been playing this campaign since September 26th. What a beast.
In this sixth and final battle my infantry has suffered. As Warts noted, the enemy is seemingly everywhere. My troops need to plunge in to the forests to comb them out. A single Russian soldier with a PPSh is very dangerous at such close quarters. At 20 feet range they cut loose and take out 4 or 5 of my troops before they've burned through a single magazine. There is too much forested terrain, and not enough time to march fire through all of it and often my first clue the enemy is there is the ubiquitous chatter of those SMGs. So all of the enemy squads cut up by the attack or by artillery, if they have any survivors that melt away, will be encountered again deep in the forests.
I took the right-most objective with a company of infantry.  Two of those platoons were then wheeled to the left (east) astride the road to sweep the forests along the route to the next objective and clear for the armor. One platoon was left to occupy the objective. The two platoons sweeping have been whittled down by the close encounters in the woods and no sooner had they cleared the objective than a enemy barrage hit it and caused casualties in the platoon left behind to 'rest'. 
All infantry reserves have now been committed. I still have most of my armor, and the two infantry companies on the left are in better shape as the terrain isn't so close and they aren't just walking in to the kill zones like the assaulting company on the right. As the sweeping platoons on the right wheeled left, the reserve company was fed along beyond them, creating an extended vertical right flank and essentially a big 'L' with these troops the shorter leg and the main body the longer one. The intention was to compress the final objectives from two sides, but on the right only three platoons are still near full strength. They're well behind the enemy MLR though and might be able to make progress. Some armor sound contacts along the back edge of the map give me pause though.
If I can push these reserves forward we can essentially create a kessel with a large portion of the enemy infantry caught inside. That's the new plan, to use the depleted platoons as a base or hinge, and use the two legs of the 'L' to converge and create the pocket. What little remains of my artillery can be brought in on them, and then the armor can be brought up to reduce the pocket while simultaneously taking the center objective and closing the ring. Best laid plans and all that....

Quite right, Road to Montebourg is like that. You have a number of different battle groups, related but essentially separate. I prefer a core force, like this one, or Kampfgruppe Engel is another. When persistent repair and ammo states are included it's really the sweet spot, as those must be managed as well. I recall in KGE getting to the Dives river crossing mission and my armor was alive but in tatters, with shot-out optics, radios and barrels. One Panther's tracks were in such a poor state that it was really little more than a barely mobile pillbox, and I had used up most of the rounds in the ammo racks and it forced me to find another way, instead of relying on heavy armor firepower applied from range. Good stuff.

Ain't that the truth!  It's crawling with Ivan, he has infested every little patch of cover or concealment on the map it seems. You are quite right. But the German has a very powerful force with which to attempt to eject them, I suppose depending on how well forces were conserved in the previous battles. I have two main axes of advance, each with a company of tanks and two companies of infantry, with plenty of support from crew-served weapons, artillery and tracks. That's a heavy hammer. We took the right-most objective with only two infantry casualties, but the remnants have withdrawn in to the forests and will have to be rooted out as we make our way to the next objective.
It was glorious really, with artillery crashing in, a smoke 'corridor' created, through which the assaulting infantry arrived in halftracks before dismounting and getting down to business. HMGs were laying fire in on the flanks, tanks enveloped the target on both sides. It was a very strong enemy force installed at the objective, but as the assault started, they mostly got up and ran and were cut down though a number managed to escape as my liberal use of smoke works both ways doesn't it? The fact we got a resupply for this mission means we have lots of smoke and I'm not shy about using it.
So with a little more than an hour to go we have secured one objective and are closing in on two more, though there's plenty to do to get there. And there are aircraft buzzing around and I'm waiting to see what fate deals me. Which part of my plan comes apart due to air attack?

I am forty minutes in to the final mission. I've lost as many tanks in this battle as I had during the campaign to this point. Five Panthers and two Mark IVs have been knocked out. But I have a massive force and have taken out a lot of enemy armor though I am sure more lies hidden. At this point I am just committing my infantry, until now we've been probing forward to find the form. The thing that worries me is the enemy have yet to send over any artillery, which I am sure they have plenty of. Once my units get spotted by a F/O I expect a lot of it all at once. Gotta keep 'em moving.
It's as if the enemy has gotten better ammunition, all those failed penetrations from earlier battles have been replaced with dismay and despair, with the Panthers committed on the left suffering in particular to T-34/85s well concealed in the tree lines. One T-34 was so well cloaked in fact that I had to withdraw, reposition, and then attack from the flank. He got off a lot of shots, and despite having four or five Panthers with LOS to his position, none could spot him. He destroyed two Panthers, and the gun on a third before I wised up, withdrew and then took him out with flanking fire.
This is one more great battle in a campaign full of great battles. Honestly I am sorry it's nearly over. I could go for another six missions of this.

I think AT guns should be difficult to spot, especially out of a tank. But the odd thing for me in Combat Mission is the game seems to treat it as though it's the crew spotted, not the gun. As a result, if the crew becomes suppressed, the spot is lost. As though it's the top of the pointer's helmet that's spotted, not the gun, and if the crew simply lie down we can no longer see the gun.  I think once spotted, an AT gun should remain so unless it's moved, the spotting unit moves, or it's obscured by smoke. The crew could run away or dig a tunnel but the gun should still be seen. Not how it works in CM.

Great work Bozowans, that's 40 more casualties, one tank and one plane! more than I managed. Man, I would have liked to have knocked down a plane, as they've been quite the nuisance. More than a nuisance, a scourge actually that have dealt a significant portion of my losses so far. And they've knocked out most of my AA assets just to rub it in.
Sorry to spoil your next mission so close to you starting it. Hopefully that won't affect your enjoyment too much, and if there are AI plans I suppose the AT gun for example might be in a different spot.
I finished the fifth mission, and scored a minor victory. I won't spoil this one too much. I'd rate this one as the most difficult so far. The enemy has a proper defense, well supported by infantry, and well everything really. The designers made good use of the terrain when placing the defenses. Spotting is tricky I think due to low light? The map is almost 'crowned' so that LOS is limited, and you need to find those good spots with sufficient fields of fire to take advantage of your long range superiority. I did not play it in the spirit it was designed, ignoring most of the objectives in order to maintain my force integrity and once again keep losses low. I lost zero tanks, which is unbelievable really considering the strength of the defense. But time and again my Panthers shrugged off the hits while not missing much themselves. 14 enemy tanks/assault guns were knocked out in one 5 minute period.  However, my armor still took damage, and optics, radios and tracks have seen better times.
Had a look at the final mission and it is a big one. All remaining units from both flank forces are involved. I haven't lost many tanks, so I go in to it in very good shape. And since it's the last mission I feel less compelled to proceed cautiously and can be aggressive when the situation calls for it. We've also received a much-needed ammunition resupply. We'll see how it goes. Good luck in mission four Bozowans.

Very interesting posts. Here's a spoilerific post from the third mission:
I just now finally finished it. After the difficulty I had with the second mission, this one was surprisingly easy! It was a massacre. I took only 6 dead and 9 wounded, with one tank lost. The Soviets took about 320 casualties, 27 tanks lost, 35 other vehicles lost and even one of their planes got shot down, crashing a couple hundred meters from the AA half-track that got it.
After the big tank battle at the beginning of the scenario had died down a bit, I started advancing a very thin, very widely dispersed infantry skirmish line out on foot across the wide open fields toward the objectives. Since the scenario was an hour and 20 minutes long, there was more than enough time for them to reach the other side of the map just by walking. It was a nice image watching them walk by all the burning T-34s everywhere. The infantry got into a few shootouts with retreating Soviet troops and tank crews, sometimes at very close range, but the resistance was pretty light.
By the time my forward scouts had begun encroaching on the final objective, they noticed large numbers of Soviet troops, trucks and a couple of AT guns starting to pull back from the town, heading to the map edge to exit. That was when I ordered one of the Panther companies to speed forward ASAP and cut off their retreat. I had the Panthers encircle the town with one platoon cutting off the road the Soviets would have to cross in order to exit. Whole platoons of infantry got caught out in the open and wiped out. I had the infantry line start running ahead with more tanks to storm into the town, flushing out panicked Soviet troops to be mowed down by the tanks. There were Soviet troops running right past the Panthers just meters away, but they were too panicked to be a threat.
Some of their troops got away, but It was a slaughter. Just one of the tanks alone caused 44 casualties. I didn't even use that much artillery, but I had one observer shell the town and some Soviet mortar positions with howitzers, causing 35 casualties. It was an interesting battle. 

A repeat of some of what I already wrote, but this is an excerpt from a campaign thread I have going on SimHQ. It's written for a more general audience, not the hardened veterans of Combat Mission who frequent this board. Includes a shot revealing enemy positions, which is a major spoiler, but after all the other spoilers I reckon that horse has bolted.
After reaching Cimene South and triggering the T-34 counterattack....
 
The T-34s found themselves suddenly surrounded by my troops and pushed on through at high speed, causing a few casualties. As they reached the end of the road and emerged from the smoke my hidden Mark IVs opened fire from point-blank range of 80 meters and three of the four T-34s were knocked out, while my startled infantry cut down the baling crews from very close range.. The fourth veered off the road in to a field I had no LOS on. That broke the Russian and he surrendered at the end of the turn. With additional time allotted in this one I expected it to be a harder nut to crack, but it proved the easiest so far, but of course in a game like this anything can happen and disaster and victory are often separated by fine margins. Maybe your APBC shot penetrates a turret, or maybe it fails and that tank goes on to gun down your whole platoon.
Here's a good shot of the leading elements on the left side of the map during the battle. This shot is fourteen minutes before the surrender.
 

In this shot you can see the three Mark IVs sent to Cimene in the upper left. Just out of frame are the halftracks carrying the infantry. I wanted to send the tanks ahead to be sure the tracks weren't ambushed. You can see my tank strength, along with the faded icon of the sneaky bastage AT gun center-right. A mortar spotting round has just hit to the left. On the left side you can see the Mark IV hit by the the AT gun. The icon appears as normal (because it's abandoned at this point, not destroyed), but has the crew icon right behind it. The halted armor is just a bit further left. At the bottom of the shot is the Rzyska Folwark objective and an infantry platoon can be seen moving on to it emerging from the smokescreen. They would eject a HQ unit, a Maxim, and a F/O team, all of whom had nowhere to run. It doesn't hurt to be supported by nine Mark IV tanks either.
At the top of the map is Cimene, and the tanks that counterattacked at the end came from Cimene N (the sound contact is visible). The smoke in Cimene shows some of the positions of the assault guns encountered earlier in the battle. The frantic action at the end occurred on the Cimene S objective. This shot shows only a portion of the huge map, but this is where the battle was decided. I said this thread was full of spoilers, and this goes beyond my normal level of spoilerification. But a picture's worth a thousand words. I usually only include map shots of the setup phase to prevent revealing too much, but I thought this might be interesting. If you play this campaign try to forget what you saw here.
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It's not a big deal and probably has been brought up before, but the briefings and debrief identify the town as Cimne, and on the map it's Cimene. Not asking it to be changed, just something I noted.
 

Thanks Warts, appreciate it. These battles often hinge on the outcome of the armor duels and maybe I've been a bit fortunate in that respect.  If a few ricochets had been penetrations instead, then maybe it's all turning out differently. Ah, such is war

Battle four, the attack on Cimne, is in the books. The AI surrendered with a little more than an hour on the clock. When I saw there were 2 hours allotted I reasoned the scenario might be more difficult that the previous ones, but whilst the enemy had some serious AT assets, and artillery, they were lacking infantry. The scenario is designed to convey an opponent caught in a disordered withdrawal, and perhaps that explains it. Or maybe the enemy also has a core force and the losses he took in earlier missions stripped him of some of the forces that would otherwise be here. We uncovered a number of unoccupied foxholes, and maybe it suggests sometimes there could be more infantry units in this one?
I made my main push up the right,  toward the Brickworks. It was defended by a single sapper platoon. Against four infantry platoons, a tank platoon and an assortment of halftracks and artillery committed to this action, the AI had no chance of holding it. My infantry attacked from two sides, and I was in no hurry, and took the complex without loss.
On the left the armor had a rougher go of it. In the open they were vulnerable to air attack and anti-tank assets and I lost three Mark IVs destroyed. A support halftrack  was also knocked out by a direct hit from large caliber artillery. Two tanks fell to enemy armor and one to a pair of devlishly sited 57mm Zis guns. These guns caused one Mark IV crew to abandon their tank, and later I remounted them only to have the guns come back to life and knock the Mark IV out. The gun position was eventually neutralized with a combination of mortars, artillery and direct howitzer and tank fire. A hell of a lot of ordnance was expended on this, and it was only in the map review that I could finally breathe easy and saw they had been knocked out.
An interesting action took place near the end. There are fifteen terrain objectives in this one, but most are worth 10 or 15 points. The town of Cimne though has four objectives each worth 100 points, plus the road at 125 points. So in order to get better than a draw I knew I'd need to capture some of these. To accomplish this I sent a platoon of Mark IVs (minus their immobilized HQ) up the left, with a platoon of landsers mounted in halftracks following in their wake. Once level with the town, they were to turn on to it, with the infantry to dismount and help clear the way so the tanks could navigate through the town.
As I moved on to the Cimne South objective it triggered a platoon of previously hidden T-34/85s positioned at the far end of town, Cimne North. These tanks immediately rolled out and barrelled down the road toward my dismounting infantry. Sensing disaster I threw some smoke and positioned a coupe of tanks behind some trees at the near end of this road. If the T-34s rolled all the way to the end they would pop out on the end of my guns. First they had to pass my scrambling infantry, who threw a couple of grenades but had no panzerfaust since one squad had all thirty
The T-34s found themselves suddenly surrounded by my troops and pushed on through at high speed, causing a few casualties. As they reached the end of the road and emerged from the smoke my hidden Mark IVs opened fire at a range of 80 meters and three of the four T-34s were knocked out. The fourth veered off the road in to a field I had no LOS on. That broke them and they surrendered at the end of the turn.
With the 2 hours on the clock I expected this battle to be the toughest yet, but it proved to be the easiest one. I either didn't remember, or just learned, that tanks could get bogged/immobilized on dry and clear ground? I guess there's always that chance.
In the last post I used the term battalion for my armor, but really it's just a company or so, but part of the battalion. And I may have, through these posts, confused the campaign's left flank and right flank forces. Right flank is Mark IVs and left flank is the Panthers. Right flank has fought three of the four battles so far, and are very low on ammo. I need a resupply. Next battle is the left flank.
 

Battle four, the attack on Cimne, is in the books. The AI surrendered with a little more than an hour on the clock. When I saw there were 2 hours allotted I reasoned the scenario might be more difficult that the previous ones, but whilst the enemy had some serious AT assets, and artillery, they were lacking infantry. The scenario is designed to convey an opponent caught in a disordered withdrawal, and perhaps that explains it. Or maybe the enemy also has a core force and the losses he took in earlier missions stripped him of some of the forces that would otherwise be here. We uncovered a number of unoccupied foxholes, and maybe it suggests sometimes there could be more infantry units in this one?
I made my main push up the right,  toward the Brickworks. It was defended by a single sapper platoon. Against four infantry platoons, a tank platoon and an assortment of halftracks and artillery committed to this action, the AI had no chance of holding it. My infantry attacked from two sides, and I was in no hurry, and took the complex without loss.
On the left the armor had a rougher go of it. In the open they were vulnerable to air attack and anti-tank assets and I lost three Mark IVs destroyed. A support halftrack  was also knocked out by a direct hit from large caliber artillery. Two tanks fell to enemy armor and one to a pair of devlishly sited 57mm Zis guns. These guns caused one Mark IV crew to abandon their tank, and later I remounted them only to have the guns come back to life and knock the Mark IV out. The gun position was eventually neutralized with a combination of mortars, artillery and direct howitzer and tank fire. A hell of a lot of ordnance was expended on this, and it was only in the map review that I could finally breathe easy and saw they had been knocked out.
An interesting action took place near the end. There are fifteen terrain objectives in this one, but most are worth 10 or 15 points. The town of Cimne though has four objectives each worth 100 points, plus the road at 125 points. So in order to get better than a draw I knew I'd need to capture some of these. To accomplish this I sent a platoon of Mark IVs (minus their immobilized HQ) up the left, with a platoon of landsers mounted in halftracks following in their wake. Once level with the town, they were to turn on to it, with the infantry to dismount and help clear the way so the tanks could navigate through the town.
As I moved on to the Cimne South objective it triggered a platoon of previously hidden T-34/85s positioned at the far end of town, Cimne North. These tanks immediately rolled out and barrelled down the road toward my dismounting infantry. Sensing disaster I threw some smoke and positioned a coupe of tanks behind some trees at the near end of this road. If the T-34s rolled all the way to the end they would pop out on the end of my guns. First they had to pass my scrambling infantry, who threw a couple of grenades but had no panzerfaust since one squad had all thirty
The T-34s found themselves suddenly surrounded by my troops and pushed on through at high speed, causing a few casualties. As they reached the end of the road and emerged from the smoke my hidden Mark IVs opened fire at a range of 80 meters and three of the four T-34s were knocked out. The fourth veered off the road in to a field I had no LOS on. That broke them and they surrendered at the end of the turn.
With the 2 hours on the clock I expected this battle to be the toughest yet, but it proved to be the easiest one. I either didn't remember, or just learned, that tanks could get bogged/immobilized on dry and clear ground? I guess there's always that chance.
In the last post I used the term battalion for my armor, but really it's just a company or so, but part of the battalion. And I may have, through these posts, confused the campaign's left flank and right flank forces. Right flank is Mark IVs and left flank is the Panthers. Right flank has fought three of the four battles so far, and are very low on ammo. I need a resupply. Next battle is the left flank.
 

Now 30 minutes in to battle four. Played for nearly four hours last night. I could play a couple of entire missions in some campaigns in that time. But here I'm managing a rate of about one turn every fifteen minutes. I continued to move (Panzergrenadier) 2 Company toward the Brickworks with a platoon from 1 Company attached to add weight. This advance is supported by a Mark IV platoon and the bulk of the support and Stummel tracks, as well as artillery.
The rest of the armor is on the road or to the left of it to take advantage of the open ground and clear fields of fire, supported by the other two infantry platoons from 1 Company. After 15 minutes without having spotted any enemy armor I was a little spooked. Where are they? I continued to probe up the left, and the leading Mark IV platoon came under fire from well-concealed assault guns positioned at the edge of Cimne at a range of around 2000 meters. Lost one Mark IV knocked out straight away (another platoon leader), another took a hit with spalling, and a third took a turret penetration, killing the commander, but the tank reversed out of the line of fire.
I reacted aggressively, pushing the remainder of the battalion forward to get more barrels in the fight. The SU-85s were tucked behind hedges, hull-down and difficult to spot. In some cases they got off three shots before being spotted. As we got these spots and the battalion came up we began returning fire. A fourth Mark IV was hit, incapacitating the TC, and the crew dismounted (what's the difference between dismounted and abandoned?). Our weight of fire began to tell and all visible assault guns were knocked out.
These duels are so tense! So much depends on the outcome, and with rounds flying downrange each direction it's both fascinating and terrifying to watch. The dismay or elation felt with each hit or miss never gets old. But here, because I had massed my armor, we had the numbers to emerge. Once the battalion was fully committed to the fight, we were exchanging shots three to one, and that rate of fire, and the fine German optics, won the fight.
This shot suggests my man was just a little bit faster, and evokes the sniper duel scenes from Saving Private Ryan and Enemy at the Gates. The poor gunner.
 

 
Forgive the total lack of graphics mods, just haven't gotten around to it.
With an hour and a half left on the clock and a number of objectives taken, not to mention significant enemy armor losses, the battle is going well. Crossing the open ground before Cimne is still ahead, but the initial clashes have gone well.

Log in to Battlefront site https://www.battlefront.com/index.php?p=home
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If this doesn't work submit a ticket to the helpdesk

Now 30 minutes in to battle four. Played for nearly four hours last night. I could play a couple of entire missions in some campaigns in that time. But here I'm managing a rate of about one turn every fifteen minutes. I continued to move (Panzergrenadier) 2 Company toward the Brickworks with a platoon from 1 Company attached to add weight. This advance is supported by a Mark IV platoon and the bulk of the support and Stummel tracks, as well as artillery.
The rest of the armor is on the road or to the left of it to take advantage of the open ground and clear fields of fire, supported by the other two infantry platoons from 1 Company. After 15 minutes without having spotted any enemy armor I was a little spooked. Where are they? I continued to probe up the left, and the leading Mark IV platoon came under fire from well-concealed assault guns positioned at the edge of Cimne at a range of around 2000 meters. Lost one Mark IV knocked out straight away (another platoon leader), another took a hit with spalling, and a third took a turret penetration, killing the commander, but the tank reversed out of the line of fire.
I reacted aggressively, pushing the remainder of the battalion forward to get more barrels in the fight. The SU-85s were tucked behind hedges, hull-down and difficult to spot. In some cases they got off three shots before being spotted. As we got these spots and the battalion came up we began returning fire. A fourth Mark IV was hit, incapacitating the TC, and the crew dismounted (what's the difference between dismounted and abandoned?). Our weight of fire began to tell and all visible assault guns were knocked out.
These duels are so tense! So much depends on the outcome, and with rounds flying downrange each direction it's both fascinating and terrifying to watch. The dismay or elation felt with each hit or miss never gets old. But here, because I had massed my armor, we had the numbers to emerge. Once the battalion was fully committed to the fight, we were exchanging shots three to one, and that rate of fire, and the fine German optics, won the fight.
This shot suggests my man was just a little bit faster, and evokes the sniper duel scenes from Saving Private Ryan and Enemy at the Gates. The poor gunner.
 

 
Forgive the total lack of graphics mods, just haven't gotten around to it.
With an hour and a half left on the clock and a number of objectives taken, not to mention significant enemy armor losses, the battle is going well. Crossing the open ground before Cimne is still ahead, but the initial clashes have gone well.

I thought this was a neat little encounter from the last scenario I played:
I ran a full platoon of Germans up to a stone wall and unexpectedly bumped into a bunch of Soviet stragglers hiding on the other side just a few feet away. Two Germans were gunned down immediately and a point blank firefight broke out.

 
One of the Germans dropped down and tossed a grenade over the wall.


 
The Soviet soldier tried to duck down but the grenade landed literally right underneath him. He went prone directly on top of the grenade, covering it with his body when it exploded.


 
The rest of the Soviet troopers were shot pretty quickly, with no further casualties among the Germans.

 
I couldn't be sure how many more of them were hiding behind the wall though, so tanks and more infantry were rushed forward in the next turn.


 
The fight only lasted a minute or so in the end. I don't think I had ever seen someone toss a grenade at an enemy so close to them in this game before. He could have reached out and touched the other guy. Usually grenades are thrown pretty far and not very accurately either.

Good idea Ian and thanks, I might just try that. But I may also just wait until after the campaign completes and test it then, if I should decide to go through with engine 4. If I knew it worked and was backward compatible I would probably upgrade tonight since I really want to know how many casualties they caused, but it's not the end of the world if I don't and just through the map review I already know it's 'a lot'
I however, want to finish the campaign more than discover the kill tally. Appreciate your help.