Falcon988

Totensonntag, depicting the battle of Sidi Rezegh during Operation Crusader in 1941. I'm playing it PBEM right now and can safely say it's my favorite tank battle yet.

It's doable. I've made several attacks over relatively open ground and under some intense fire. You just have to keep your men moving but not too tightly packed together. When artillery comes, run your troops out of the area. Generally at long range your biggest enemy is machine gun fire and artillery so just keep your troops spread out. Use smoke when you get up close, and have your tanks blow up anything that is giving you a hard time. ps. If you don't have tanks and he does, retreat.

The Russians are kind of nuts. One of my CMBB opponents has a funny joke when he plays Allies "When Russians take casualties their morale goes UP." Incidentally, I don't believe the Soviet Army was any less skilled than the Germans, particularily mid to late war. Seems to me that the stereotype of the 1941 - 1942 period, which did have mass Soviet casualties, has stuck with them for sixty years. [ February 15, 2005, 02:36 PM: Message edited by: Falcon988 ]

I recommend you gather your survivors and make a mad human wave charge at the nearest pillbox. You'll take horrendous losses but you'll -probably- capture it. Repeat as needed until all German fortifications are destroyed or your men mutiny.

Absolutely.

Good heavens!! Humility in the "younger generation"! This is really refreshing and I'm impressed :cool: . In all seriousness, the only reason an 18 year old might be "bad" at it is an experience thing. You've not had enough chance to watch the older guys make some really dumb mistakes yet. Once you've been around for a while, you learn what works and what doesn't, by the mistakes of others. In any event, given your attitude, I think you'll find yourself ahead of the curve and are probably better than you think .Glenn </font>

The notion of a Sherman being in any way superior to a Tiger tank is... laughable to the extreme. Although I'm compelled to share with you all an anecdote which to this day baffles me. Okay, a few months ago I was playing a battle against the AI. Some little Italian town, who cares what it's name was, I'm German they're American, I have a Tiger tank and they have Shermans. At one point a Sherman showed up directly infront of my Tiger at about 80 meters. My Tiger fired its 88 and the shot -bounced off- the Sherman's hull. And if that wasn't enough the Sherman then fired and knocked out my Tiger -through its frontal armor- with one hit. I swear I just stared at the screen in shock for a half hour after that happened.

My experience PBEM with Soviet SMG's, while I played Axis, has been brief and brutal each time. Ranging from the bloodiest and most successful ambush I've seen in Combat Mission, having infantry attacks come to a stand still, or having entire units wiped out in a close range assault. To put it simply the SMG squads main purpose is to engage enemy infantry at close range. This works particularily well in street fighting. In my experience your options for countering them with your own infantry is limited indeed (engineers with demo charges are always a plus though). But there are still other options. The key is to support your infantry by suppressing the SMG's. Machine guns, mortars, and direct fire HE off a tank will work wonders for any attack. Artillery... meh, not so much unless you have some really high caliber stuff that you can drop with accuracy. I was about to suggest using smoke rounds... but, heh, your men would just be mowed down as soon as they became visible at close range anyway. In fact it's preferable -not- to use smoke because the Soviet's will fire their weapons at you from a distance which is a huge mistake for SMG squads. Their mean weakness as I see it is their lack of ammo. If they fire on you from too far away chances are they'll miss and will be low on ammo by the time you attack. If you're on some city street in Stalingrad and you're trying to attack Soviet SMG squads without any support... well, I wish you the best of luck because changes are you won't get through.

As the poster above me said, the best use of artillery is in coordination with an infantry attack. Recently I was attacking a hill in a PBEM game and brought down four 139mm rockets (using a target reference point on the target - very useful those things) on the Germans. The blasts caused two friendly casualties but it pinned Jerry down and the arty was -immediately- followed up by an infantry attack. Ended up taking the hill easily after that. Let's face it. Artillery against dug in troops is practically useless - unless you follow it up with infantry while the enemy still have their heads down. You may take friendly casualties, but ultimately your losses will be -much- less than they would be if you tried a regular ol' frontal attack.

Comrade! And here I thought that I was the only teenager in the entire Combat Mission community. Glad to see that I'm not alone. I rather like the battalion level assaults, for much the same reasons as others have mentioned here. In fact my favorite scenario is Our Backs to the Volga and I love it specifically for its epic size. And to answer the thread title, CMBB is my favorite of the three.

You people boggle my mind. I love North Africa and I love fighting in North Africa scenarios. In fact right now I'm playing Totensonntag in PBEM and having a ball. My interest in Combat Mission theaters vary with what book I'm reading at the moment. For instance I've recently been reading the CMAK Companion's tales from N. Africa... hence I'm playing through Totensonntag. A few months ago I was reading about Stalingrad and found myself playing CMBB. I love all three games and play them all accordingly. If I -had- to pick though I would say CMBB is my favorite simply because the Eastern Front's scope seems so... epic.

Boots and Tracks made a good Warsaw scenario a few months ago. You can go look there.

Actually, my wife loves watching when I play CM, because of it being turn-based so she can actually follow what's happening. </font>

Yes, I played Bagration in PBEM and really enjoyed it. Great map with a lot of room for maneuvering and tactics. Stalingrad on the Danube is a nice and brutal urban battle set in Budapest. I played that one against the AI and I bet it would be even better PBEM.

Rowan's Battle of Britain is one of my favorites, up there with Combat Mission. I have all the BDG patches installed and, let me tell you, no other flight sim is as immersive as this; flying with 300 RAF fighters to face the Luftwaffe's armada of a thousand planes can't be beat. Soon I'll hopefully be buying Pacific Fighters and maybe IL-2. I also play Operation Flashpoint a lot. While not strictly World War II it has WW2 modifications. It's what Combat Mission would be if it were a first person shooter.

"Siege" is a term I use very loosely. :cool: The British basically camped out in the Borgo, just under Gemmano, and shelled the living hell out of the town. Of course they were shelled in return, making it a very interesting night. The outcome was very much in doubt in my game also. When the new infantry showed up, I formed them up, brought up the Shermans, and launched a big attack on the town. The reason I won was because of my tanks. I'd only lost about 3 - 6 in the preceeding battles so there were quite a few Allied tanks. They swept through the town and basically blew everything up. Some were lost to Shreks, but the shooters would be instantly targetted by the other Shermans and killed. So we won, but just barely. Me and my opponent are in the process of beginning a Cassino battle with me as Allied attacker. And honestly, if Gemmano was the "Cassino of the Adriatic" then I'm -really- worried about this next fight.

Akula, Monte Gemmano was a complete meat grinder for me. I'd send up A Company, they'd be chewed up breaching the first line. B Company chopped to pieces breaching the second line. The remenants of A and B wiped out. C Company chopped to bits... etc etc. During the night battle my men were encamped in the Borgo and laid siege to the town, British artillery hit them, German artillery hit the Brits... at one point the Axis defenders outnumbered the Allied attackers. Let me tell you, I won by the skin of my teeth.

The 6. Armee? What divisions, when and where? I never heard about that. </font>

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Oh, heh. The 6th army when it was encircled in Stalingrad. I didn't mean that the -entire- army was out of AT.

I hate the KV-2 with a passion unrivaled. I fought them in a scenario that took place on the first day of the war, PBEM against my friend. My Germans were doing very well up until he was reinforced by three KV-2's. They single handedly destroyed much of my armor and I had to withdraw the few remaining pieces that survived. I was finally able to gradually destroy all three thanks to close assault by a few brave German troopers, and I was able to regain the initiative and win the scenario. However I still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from those KV-2's. Hate them hate them hate them. :mad:

You are all old men. I'm 18 and have only been playing wargames for two years. :cool:

Tank terror is indeed interesting. Notice how, during Stalingrad, the Germans derided the Romanians for abandoning their positions and running from Russian tanks because they didn't have any AT weapons to fight them with. But a little over a month later the Germans themselves were out of AT and they were running from the tanks also. Sitting in a foxhole watching a T-34 charge at you is not a pleasent experience.

Best advice I can give you in urban war is to prepare for heavy casualties. Stay off the road as much as possible too. And if you lose tank superiority that means the enemy will be able to bring up their heavy guns and blow you to hell. If that happens it's running time.

I have several actually. I played all these battles PBEM against my friend. Our Backs To The Volga - On the Stalingrad pack from B&T. I played this in November 2003 and it is still quite vivid in both my mind and my opponent's. It's probably the most brutal urban scenario I know. Prelude to Kursk - Great armored and infantry clash. Lots of room for tactics and maneuver on both sides. One of the few battles against an evenly matched enemy that I've won a major victory in. Battle for the Reichstag - Beautifully captures fighting on one of the last days of the war. Memorable to me because of the heroic and futile last stand I made against my opponent's overwhelming force of tanks and infantry. There's so many more and I feel like it's a disservice not to mention them. But it's late, I'm tired, and my contacts are acting up so I'm going to go to bed