GreenAsJade

Oh - I took another photo while looking around: my mortar guys are now pinned and thus pretty much out of action... shells and bullets are flying around here from unidentified sources ... I can hear a mortar over near the PzIVhs, and a sound that might be the Brummbar firing as well.

Note: It wasn't a spotting round, it was followed by another very close by, very soon after... GaJ

Yessir, I am gobsmacked by that one. Did KW-man jog past my anti-recon and is right now poking around in my back line? Did the sound of the engine waft over to Hill 130? Or was it a good guess? I'll look forwards to hearing about that one after the end! The last piece of "new action" is an HT heading my way up the left flank: See how Hill 130 can see everything there: To tell the truth, at this point I'm a lot more worried about an attack from this direction than the other right flank stuff that has been happening. As far as I can see, I'm going to have to let this thing come wizzing really far into my midfield before I can start doing anything about it. The defensive situation over here is much worse than I thought when I set up, due to the already discussed impressively penetrating view from Hill 130. GaJ

However, Bil hit me with his own surprises this turn: not one but two of my M10s are under surprise attack. The first one is not actually that surprising. Once again, I have Bil's lesson in tank dodging to thank for my Tame M10 still being alive this turn. I looked at that tank while giving orders and thought "hmm - I imagined the bunker would provide more side protection, but actually it's low. And ... the M10 has been sitting still with maybe only trees between him and the PzIVhs. I carefully checked the LOS situation, and there were no blue lines over to the location of the PzIVhs, but... I got nervous, so I decided to dodge again. At first I plotted a pause (waiting for a moment to see if I'd spot the right flankers) and a reverse, but then I decided to just move back immediately. Wow... thank goodness for that!.... It appears that Bil's right flankers have spotted the tank, and the PzIVhs can't _quite_ see it, but they area fired in right where it was! OK - so that's not _too_ surprising, though quite a relief in the way it turned out. The next one is _really_ surprising: Whoa!? How on earth does he know that this tank is there!?

Remember that this thing chews through it's ammo. There aren't _that_ many turns worth of area firing on board. Movie 25, 0:46-0:45 I luuuurve Tommy guns... After being mercilessly mowed down by Bil's Sten guns last game, I had been really looking forwards to this moment Give me an army of these guys, I reckon.

OK. Still waiting for the next turn, with some anticipation. Surely it can't be disappointment every turn! Maybe this turn the AAHT spots something. If not ... c3k's plan may be the way to go!

Well, if y'all can just persuade him to have those ghosty units up on the centre right ridge wave some flags or something, maybe I'd have something to shoot at!!

I somehow doubt whether you will be more cross than I am if it gets blown up before doing it's job...

Suppose he has detected my scout. Then surely he will come and kill them. In which case, I will be - shall we say - immensely diappointed if the AAHT _still_ doesn't see the ghosts as they mow down my scout! However, as you say, it is not a battleship, and a more prudent action _might_ be to pull it back till someone else can confirm that the area is target rich. The downside of that is moving it again may increase the chances that Bil spots it: he only needs a sound contact that looks a teeeny bit like an HT to know what is there. Such dilemmas! I'm letting this decision gel for the moment. Meanwhile, speaking of lights going out, the lights have already gone out on the left rear approach-way: A shell landed near the Sunken Road foxhole this turn ... don't tell Bil, but the MMG has moved on from there Another landed in my left midfield. I had a sinking feeling that Bil's KW crew is spotting arty targets in there already, until I realised it _might_ be an overthrow from aiming at The Spur/Sunken Road. Next turn will tell I guess. GaJ

My mortar guys elected not to use the foxhole that I provided for them, and are of course under return fire now... ... and they still haven't spotted the HTs in that field. Bil must be very cunning at hiding HTs behing tree trunks or something. Similarly, my centre-right scout still hasn't spotted any infantry, but my suspicion that they are here was confirmed as ghosts moved past on the upper side of the slope, to a position that is now _past_ the scout. My scout was on "slow" this turn. It will be "interesting" to see whether Bil's ghosts detected him. If so, it would appear I'm about to have the lights go out on the right flank back approach route... I know what's there now, but I won't know quite so well when it's coming...

On to the turn. I have to say that this was a turn of small disappointments. My AAHT backed into view of the field in the centre right, and didn't spot anything. As predicted, my anti-recon-recon was whacked, and that put out the lights on my view of the area of interest... I have to assume that my AAHT's view of the field is cut short juuuust before where Bil's forward HT is parked. I guess I'll just have to wait lurking here... (I can't imagine for a moment they will code trees being blown _over_. They will be blown _up_ into a million smithereens... )

Movie 24, 0:47-0:46 Slight delay on my side as I updated (give us this day our daily 2G download, and forgive us our maxed bandwidth) to a new version. Nice things in this update - the most noticeable being a FOW improvement. When I first clicked on these guys, I thought "Whoa, darn, graphics bug, I must have mis-installed..." ... then I realised "whoa, Bil can't figure out my forces from the labels, yay!!!" An interesting aspect of this is it may cause us all to be more focussed on looking at the guys close up, to see what they really are. ...ooo, a faust! I haven't thought a lot about it, but I can also imagine a renewed interest in detailed uniform mods, at least from those especially keen to know exactly what the oppo's infantry dudes are

Huh - I didn't realise it was controversial. I can certainly imagine a scenario where they are trying to sneak a shot into a tricky place and don't quite get it past the tree in the process... You can see that the barrel is pointing right at the tree, so clearly the tree is in the path of wherever that shot was supposed to be going. GaJ

The overall picture is like this: One of the things that's still surprising me each turn is how hard the attackers are to spot. In the above picture, the spotted HT man's icon is obsucred by a sound contact icon, but actually the centre scout can see that guy. There are at least 4-5 other eyes that can see the very grass that the HT guys are standing on, with blue lines an binoculars, but they aren't spotting these guys as they hunt (upright) through the grass. So - despite the great temptation to open up area fire with HMG and M10 HE, I'm holding back still. Better to let some more HT men come forwards, and have more spotted units occupying this kill zone (also, the M10s have precious few HE shells - 13 IIRC). There other thing in a similar vein that is bothering me is the other KW-guy has disappeared. It seems I am going to have to start a sweep for him with other units as well, because I can't really afford to have some guy of Bil's wandering around invisibly in my mid-field. Another couple of things to mention, shown above and also here: The turn before last I ordered 81mm mortar fire on the Brumbar. It took them nearly a minute to get the first shot fired, so it was in flight in the last movie. In this movie it landed waaayyy back behind Bil's Brumbar. I suspect this might be because those guys are tired (they ran away earlier when their foxhole was being shelled, then snuck back). More importantly, there really are 4 PzIVHs. I was hoping that the second two contacts were "echos" of the two that I've seen before, but this turn as the movie played I spotted 4 individual tanks in different places. That is going to be hard to stop. It seems I now have Bil's force pretty much identified and located, because the numbers now add up. 2 Brumbars (left and centre), 1 JgPz (left)m 1 Elefant (centre) , a platoon of PzIVHs (right) , 2 platoons of mounted armoured inf (centre and right) and some miscellaneous mortars and support. Not specifically called out in the picture is the AAHT, which is just about to reverse into position to theoretically be able to see the field where Bil's HTs are positioned busily firing on my poor anti-recon-recon. Last of all, I managed to capture this happy-snap of the Left Tit Brumbar firing what appeared to be smoke (at least, a fair bit of smoke blew off it) into a tree Tee hee (I have to laugh, because when that thing starts landing shells where they are supposed to be, I'm sure I'll be crying instead!) GaJ

Glad you're enjoying it - that makes it fun to do, too Movie 23, 0:48-0:47 Well, probably the most dramatic thing to happen this turn was that I rushed the anti-recon recon guys across the road, and they hit pay-dirt, and the literal dirt too. At last I found Bil's uber-camo-arty-spotting-KW-crew! And ... actually, the anti-recon recon dudes haven't spotted these guys themselves, desipte being under fire from them... ... it's the centre right ridge scout (not pictured) who can see that guy hiding in the bush. I'm glad to have found this guy, and hope to put him out of action, but actually it has become academic anyhow, because his damage is done: I'm sure he was the guy who could see my rear M10s and that's how they got arty fire, and he can probably see other things along my centre right ridge defense too. Even if I kill him now, he's being replaced by the HT squads, who are moving up .... (more in a while)

Well there ya go, that'd be what I'm looking at. Meantime, I've been doing some rethinking about having that support HT menacing the centre-right, and decided that this is enough to warrant pushing the AAHT around to the right - not to defend the West Spur (which is in the 'we're only pretending to defend this' category) but to hold back that centre-right force. In the absence of this, if that centre-right force got some momentum, I'd be forced to bring in the back 2 M10s, which would then deprive me of a decent response on the left. So I tweaked the mortar to fire just in front of the 251/10 (IE I picked the action spot as close as I could to it but in front of rather than behind) with a view to either hitting it (in a dream) or at least persuading it to move back, hopefully giving the AAHT a clear run at the remaining HTs/troops. I have also pushed my scout further forwards to try to precipitate the spotting of those guys. The AAHT is on it's way, while avoiding being spotted from the Tits, which can see way back into my right hand flank in all sorts of nuisancy ways - it's hard to cover the centre-right ridge without being spotted from a Tit! (I've sent the turn now ) GaJ

Whoa, I was just checking my orders an noticed that one of the HTs in the field is not what I assumed it to be... ... well I'll be darned, these support HTs can carry an HQ unit as well. I'm not sure if it changes anything significantly, but I'll need to watch out for that nasty little gun. GaJ

... but I don't think he can go back there. Bil's back 2 PzIVhs are only a short hunt away from having LOS into mid-lower Tame. I will avoid off the possibility of getting into a 2-1 shooting match for now, which means that the M10 can't really be much use against the HTs in the centre right field. Instead, this turn I will fire some 81mm into that field, trying to guess how far ahead of the HT overwatch the scouts are, and I'm also spreading out some infantry on that side of the ridge trying to intercept them, with a lowly MMG for support. The AAHT is now over on the right flank ready to catch Bil's flanking manoeuvre there ... I'm waiting to see the pace at which that proceeds before committing it deeper. My sniper died this turn - although they didn't shoot anyone, I guess was both valuable intel and a valuable distraction for Bil. I have been throwing some 81mm at Right Tit while the sniper hunt was on, since I can see men moving around there. I will be stopping that now and waiting for the next appearance of these guys - presumably on The Spur or just left of centre somewhere. Interestingly, no further smoke developed in Tame. These odd spotting rounds create the impression of Bil tweaking the timing of a major onslaught... That's about all for now!

On the up side, from an intel perspective, I got a payoff from moving my anti-recon guys forwards. In addition to moving away from where the area fire continued coming in... ... I found those elusive central ridge HTs. They are moving forwards - two are empty and one is containing an HQ. This seems to confirm that there is a scouting party in that field - who must be sticking quite close to the HTs because they haven't bumped into my forward centre-right scout yet. Dang - this is making it tempting to move the Tame M10 back down to his position of a couple of minutes ago, where he was looking at that field!

Movie 22, 0:49-:048 The guys in HTs on the right wing disembarked (dehted?) this turn ... and disappeared like ghosts... I gotta get me some of that cammo!

Thanks for the encouragement Alan. "Tank dodging" is something I guess we all do when we get nervous about getting pinged, but Bil demonstrated how it could be used to really good effect as a matter of routine in our last game. He left his Sherms in place for maybe 2-3 turns before moving them. I think he had less to loose and more to gain by waiting for a "spot", wheras my current priorities are "shoot at something opportunistically if I can correctly predict where it will appear, but don't sit around to get whacked". It's a shame the stopping-HTs have foiled my predictions 2-3 times now, but eventually he has to come closer The position I'm moving to next to the bunker may feel cosy enough to stay for a while, if the sight-lines are as good as I hope. GaJ

Last of all, I spotted something rather nice: ... a second dead HT! I did wonder where that guy went, though stopping HTs seem to be standard procedure. I don't really know what took it out. I was shelling that area with 81mm from the West Spur, but I don't recall a shell that landed close to a known HT contact. It's also amusing to look at the line up of the ATG, the first dead HT and the second, show clearly in the picture. In the past I've had 3 lined up HTs taken out by one enemy shot (that brings tears to the eyes, I can tell you!), so it's conceivable that this happened here! I bet that caused much hilarity in the other thread, if so (I might have to go look at the old movie, if I can find it, and see if I can spot what caused this ... maybe later). GaJ

I think it's also noteworthy that Bil is bringing his mortars/reinforcements up the middle. It appears he's still not decided where he is going to attack... or maybe he's going to take all three or four possible approaches at once! (The Spur, The Middle, The Right West Spur). He's brought another Brummbar up behind Left Tit. It looks a little like he thinks I can't see it there - I've decided to throw some 81mm at it just in case I might catch the TC, or an overthrow might land on a truck on the road behind.

One thing I like already about the AAHT is that it goes like the clappers. I made a bit of a goof running it on the road though: look at that enormous dustcloud that resulted. If Bil sees that it won't be hard for him to guess what's going on there. But that's OK: if it triggers him to bring tanks over to the right flank, that is one place where I have a reasonable chance of interdicting them still. Note to self: drive on the grass! My right wing counter recon came under fire this turn, but I can't see where from. It could be from cover on Left Tit or from the HT/scouts that stopped a few turns ago right of centre.

Here's the overall picture: Bil moved his JgPz again - it looks like he's given up on the Bunker for now: it appears that the three big tanks (Elefant Brummbar JgPz) are all waiting to bomb the heck out of The Spur/Sunken Road, once they can see someone actually in there. This is a process I just have to wait for while it unfolds. Irritatingly, the left KW dude has completely disappeared, even though my left wing sniper has a good view all the way right out to the left. I've started moving another small unit up to where that guy seemed to be heading, to see if I can catch him if he's sneaked past in the grass.