GreenAsJade

VL location uncertainty aside, here are some thoughts. What I know now about Bil (unless he decides to suddenly change style to throw me off) is that he's going to start with recon across the whole front, and he doesn't have a specific plan of attack... what he does will depend on what he finds. Seems pretty basic and simple eh? But it makes me think about this: I can control what he finds, so does that mean I can control what he does? And if I can, what would I like it to be? On the assumption of lots of Tigers, Panthers and an Elefant, I need these things to keep bumping into death-by-surprise. A pitched armour battle doesn't sound like a good idea at all, except if I can get his beasts up close. That will have to be later in the battle, as he's trying to take the VLs. Earlier in the battle, I need decent concentrations of anti-tank mines, and ways to persuade him to drive over them, plus random surprises from ATGs and Shreks. I can't see much reason for him to be bringing infantry at all. Maybe he needs a few platoons for recon, and a bunch to take the Central Objective, which is all buildings. One thing that I'm aware of is that he is going to have a huge force, and I can't rely on him not splitting it. A lot was made, last battle, about "not splitting your force", but actually Bil split his force last game, and also in the first game I played against him. It's quite possible he'll do so again in this battle. It must be tempting to bring a force up each side of the map. I'm not sure what to make of the central ridge. While in theory you'd think that forces there will be "most exposed", actually the way that the trees come up to the road as it slopes away means that there it's hard to get a look from anywhere on the map to that ridgeline. Here is what it looks like from the attacker's point of view, after moving along the road past Right Tit: ... basically, nothing out there can see you, nothing can look down on you. Moving along, it's not till you get to the Sunken Road intersection that the defender has places that might see you: Food for thought. It's my bedtime. I think that at this early stage I'd like to invite all your thoughts and suggestions. As soon as the battle gets going, you're not allowed to make suggestions due to intel leak etc ... but right now I can't see why you shouldn't. What do you all think? GaJ

(I have to note at this point that the VLs are still under review, so I won't put to much thought into plans based on their exact location) From the attacker's end:

So, I think that the new battle ground is chosen. The US forces have rushed to face the Elefant and rip out it's guts, at Santa Maria Infante... This looks like a fascinating place to do battle! Here is the view from Obiettivo Centrale... As you can see - a town on a road that leads down a ridgeline towards the enemy, with lightly wooded farmland on the slopes on either side. Over at Strada di sorveglianza Obiettivo... we can see that the trees are very sparse - a good view from here up the left approach, at least as far as the middle of the map, but no-where really good to hide. Over at Città Obiettivo we see: ... that there are more trees on the approach ... at the sort of density that will be fickle for cover and concealment, and still not likely to slow tanks at all. The eagle eye view:

Yes - I think this is the sort of scenario we could see unfolding: each side throwing firepower brute force at the other. Hence the thought that we'll move the battle...

Whoa - heads up - newsflash!!! Patton got word of what some middle ranking commander ordered me to do - the defense of Arterna. "What the **** are you fools doing setting up to defend a fixed fortification like that?" he said. "If there are Elefants coming, you should get out there and hunt them down, and rip their guts out, not hide away in some hillside resort like a mob of jerry poofters". Translation: based on Bil and my planning so far, it looks like this map will not be especially entertaining. So we're looking at an alternative, with perhaps not such impressive scenery as this one, but more room for interesting manoeuvre. GaJ

Are you taking the piss out of my previous game's strategy, like my mate c3k?

It's probably worth noting that these words almost certainly will get some modification during the review, since we know of some situations where they aren't quite correct... or at very least the phrase "the total points" needs to be clarified to mean "the total points for OCCUPY plus UNIT objectives" rather than the way it reads as "the total for OCCUPY points". So everyone should be on standby for the final answer GaJ

^^^ Between the quoted text and the signature it was hard to find any content in that post at all!!

I think that it's a remote Vatican Enclave. They just had the roads re-sealed, they don't want tracks and all that messy stuff churning up the streets... Oh, and a great big shell landed on the single only road-entry point to that walled area, so no big vehicles can get in. Yes. That's it, I'm sure (who am I to argue with the scenario designer ) GaJ

Have you ever seen how many bazookas you can buy with 3000 points? It's amazing! I think I'm going to put together a 3000pt army of bazookas and just run out there in a human wave and see how many tanks I can take down...

That is what I thought, too Curse that scenario designer... I'm sure he's in league with Big Bad Bil

I better double check those numbers, I thought it was right OTOH, who knows what magical factors bring these exact numbers into being? If they were human-designed, they wouldn't end in 7 and 6 I think, they would be round numbers. So maybe they are computed, and the computation changed due to ... um I dunno ... different forces available? GaJ

Here's another sippet of relevant information. The points we are working with are: Attacker 5327 Defender 3296 So with one Elefant coming, it will be a key thing (because it's probably indestructible) but far from the only thing. We are talking a mass force here! GaJ

So: Assets: a big fortress, surrounded by light wooded cover. Liabilities: a small town to be defended from a full frontal attack: no nice reverse slopes or obvious other terrain to keyhole/ hide and/or manoever behind. Without a lot of care, it appears that any defending unit is exposed to every attacking unit. And, I'm sure you've heard by now: intel tells us that there is a massive armed force on the way. Heaps of unidentified tanks (my guess ) and for sure one Elefant amongst them. This appears to mean for my forces: move and/or shoot and you are dead! We're all into Patton at the moment - he said "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man". He would have loved this place Something else to be aware of is that I'm not allowed to put armour or heavy guns in the upper township... Now I'm back to thinking... (and I have to do some actual day job work today ) GaJ

(continuing with my description, thanks for the comments, they're great ... will respond soon....) ... most importantly, the VLs...

Now that we have enjoyed the scenery, and before we all start going "Oh, woo hoo, Gaj has a frickin fortress to defend here, he's surely going to do OK this time", let's take a closer look at the "scenario", and assets and liabilities... The whole picture: The setup zones:

OK - so now that you have looked at the today's picture of Arterna, on Google Earth, here's what it looks like in May 1944... ... as you can see, not nearly as built up as today In fact, this is not really an urban battle, it is defense of a small down in flat country (with lots of defensive overwatch )

Can you believe it? Somehow here I am venturing out onto the battlefield again, vs Big Bad Bil! Who in their right minds fights against some guy who can figure out your whole purchase from a glimpse of one of your unit's helmets!? Well, I have to admit that while no-one enjoys being beaten in public, still the battle was fun, and yes I'm up for it again. This time I get to be the besieged US Army, defending the impressive city-on-a-hill of Arterna in Italy. We have to think that the US Army took this from the Italians and now the Germans are coming to take it back. With Elefants, so I hear! You should take a look at the real Arterna, how it looks from satellite today in preparation for the screenshots of the CM map that will be coming shortly.... GaJ

In H2H play, this is not sufficient. There needs to be an unbiased declaration of "winner". If the outcome is "well, _I_ think that _I_ did well" on both sides, the game system has not done it's job (unless it confirms a draw in that case). While a significant component of H2H play is "for the fun of it, for the satisfaction of the gaming", another significant part is the victory or loss. If the game fails to deliver a verdict that reliably both players agree with, then it is not doing it's job. GaJ

You know, as the loser, and the clear less-competent player, my opinion probably doesn't count for much. But I still haven't seen the massing of Bil's forces in the centre and the splitting of my forces as what decided *this* battle. It _may_ have been a deciding factor later, if I had not thrown away my armour. I didn't surrender due to the great force about to rush over me from the centre. I surrendered because I had no answer to Bil's tanks. From the point where the game finished, my take on it was that all my guys were going to get mown down by tanks no matter where they were: Bil's infantry was secondary at that point. I could have put up a reasonable defences of MonteG with my right flank forces (remember that I had a ton of 81mm still available, so as soon as Bil's inf started to attack over MonteG they were in trouble)... if it were not for the fact that had I tried to do so, the tanks would have driven unopposed around the back of MonteG and torn me to pieces. The only place where my inf was safe against his tanks, to defend against his inf, was tucked into the little valley on the right. Sitting out an hour of attrittion there wan't going to be a "battle" of any interest, hence I waved the flag. As I mentioned before, I lost the game, pretty much, as soon as I moved my tanks away from my main infantry force on my right. They were supposed to be protecting those guys from Bils armour. Not going off on hunting missions. Here is the place where I screwed up... when it was clear that P523 was solidly defended with tanks: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1429654&postcount=132 As I said in that post, I needed a Plan B ... but I chose a bad one. As Bil said (I agree with this) I remained married to the idea of a right flank push for too long. That inflexibility caused me to come up with a dumb idea: I was thinking to push his tanks back off P523 by threatening them from the Horrid Plateau and thus let me continue up the right flank. Really Bad Idea (dude, with your tanks over there, what was protecting the right flank infantry!?) ... end of game GaJ

Wonderful! Lol!

That's probably what I'd do too, if you asked me to traverse a vineyard!! (Unless there were bullets flying along the edge, of course). GaJ

Me too! GaJ

In this picture, a 50mm Pak, a recoilless rifle, an HMG and a Mortar were all given "Quick" orders as a group to head off in parallel lines across the trench and into the next field. You can see that the Mortar and HMG trotted off on Quick. The RR and ATG converted to "walk", and decided to go around the trench. As you can see, the Fallies come with the "2 wheeled light tripod" variant of the recoilless rifle. As I said, a tough choice whether to bring this on a meeting engagement (I guess that would have made the truck even more important!) GaJ

I stripped out the recoilless rifle platoon. I thought that they would be like ATGs: too slow to move around, need to be placed in prepared keyholes/foxholes in a defensive role. Maybe if we had mules.... However, after some more reading, it seems these things were actually amenable to being carried around. If I'd realised that, I might have experimented with them and brought some along if they didn't slow the guys down too much! GaJ PS: just I did the homework that perhaps I should have done before. Interestingly, the FJ recoilless rifle is "better than an ATG but still slow". They do not have "quick" order available, and "Move" along at a walking pace. Much much slower than an HMG can move along. Also, they can't go through some terrain that an HMG and a mortar can do, and have a 1.5 minute setup time. I'm not sure if I'd have chosen them after this experiment if I did it back then - I would have thought to myself "I'm better off with more shreks". Knowing what I know now, which is that it was darn hard to get a Shrek within 150m of his tanks on this map, I'd have had a harder decision.