johnstone185

Ha ha, priorities, always gotta have the priorities in line...

Hey Jason C, It is just a game. Take a chill pill and listen up. You aren't the only one who has read a book or two on WW2. I am Carl's primary test opponent for his random scenarios. If you don't like them, don't play them. Simple as that. No need to flame him for trying to have a bit of FUN. So what if once in a while a Souma finds itself out of place geographically. BFD. Carls designs are FUN and action packed from the get-go. Occasionally he makes mistakes such as placing reinforcements in a wrong place, they get blown up and we both have a laugh and fix it. It is FUN. Do you really need to play Anzio or Kursk with the exact historical amount of tanks every single time? Is it really that big of a deal to you that someone else likes to have a bit of ahistorical FUN once in a while? One more thing - I have been mostly a reader on this forum, and not a writer, but for the most part your posts and replies are snotty and condescending. Step away from the laptop for a night or two and go out and have a drink. It's on me.

Back to the original question, it is tough to say whether or not the infantry heavy tactic was better in his particular game. All we know is QB, ME, May '43 and he is Russian. From that we know that his infantry is certainly lower quality than the opponent. But the fact that he has at least some armor gets me to wonderin' what he is doing wrong. If he got to the flag first and is getting surrounded by infantry, just back up and level the joint. There is nothing wrong with retreating to a decent LOS and blasting away for a while. While maybe not as realistic as we would like, it is just a game and you are trying to win, right? The best way to try to solve the riddle would be for the author of the post to put up a screenshot so we can see exactly what forces he has and what terrain he is dealing with. If it is woods and he is sitting at the flag with a bunch of crappy T-26, yes, that is a loss waiting to happen, even vs. green German infantry. On the other hand, even a platoon of T-26 can at least hold off (maybe) the Germans if LOS is good. Certainly if there is decent LOS a platoon of T-34 would be able to dominate by simply backing up and blasting away - but there is just too little info in the original post to go on.

I am Carl's usual opponent and I have to say you can tell that Carl has spent a lot of time on these random scenarios and done a great job. We go way back to the good ol' CMBO days and have both invested literally thousands of ours over the years in our pbem games - we play two or three games at once, and I do turns in the am, Carl in the pm. What I am getting at is that we have played lots of different types of scenarios. When Carl stumbled upon "A Thousand Ways to Die" our eyes were opened. We haven't totally abandoned "static" scenarios, but most of our time is now devoted to games with "random" reins. The random factor, IMHO, brings another dimension of reality to the games. Like Carl said, you really have to know how and when to gamble and when to consolidate. Carl seems to be losing the luck game so far. In A Bridge too Far I got some key infantry reins early, before Carl got some of his and I was able to set up camp right on top of an objective in force before he could react. Right now, in Backs to the Tiber things seem to ge going relatively well for me - that can all change in one turn. Most importantly, do not play these games vs. the AI. The AI doesn't seem to grasp the concept of time very well.

I am Carl's Allied opponent. As I wrote in the Allied article on Carl's site, we have played literally thousands of hours of tcp/ip, e-mail and head to head games since CMBO. As a result, we knew basically what each other was going to do in any given battle. Lots of battles were looked at or set up and not played. How fun is it to have a platoon of Shermans tee off on a squad of Lynx's? What have you learned from that? The random reinforcements have really made the games so much more interesting. We play most of our games over e-mail and are both pretty busy with other things so have only play-tested most of the games once or twice. Since I am the usual opponent, Carl consults me as to weapons and the appearance of them as far as turns go. I think once play testing is done it would be even better to play the games not knowing ANYTHING that is coming (in other words, someone other than us). It is very realistic to imagine a bunch of halftracks in Italy, for instance, on patrol and "happen" upon a Pz 4 or Panther. This is compromised a bit for us when we play since we need to be sure the scenarios are "fair" but the random reins, in my opinion, add one of the most neglected dimensions as far as the fixed battle in cmak goes - when your "good stuff" is going to get to the front to help you get forward.

I need help from some of you grogs. I have been playing via e-mail an experienced opponent (Carl Puppchen) since cmbo came out. We have probably played in excess of 100 battles via e-mail over the years, not to mention head to head meetings over tcp/ip and live. It seems that in most of our battles, against dug in or entrenched infantry, the best way to eliminate them is to get them to "break" or wear them down to "broken" status. This seems to cause them to run away from perfectly good bunkers or trenches to their ultimate deaths in an open field or street. In real life, how often did this really happen? It is very hard for me to imagine seeing experienced troops sit in a trench or foxhole, take tons of fire and THEN run away. I can, however, imagine green or conscript troops taking a small amount of fire and making a break for it. If it were me and I was trained, I imagine I would take my chances in the fortification. Any ideas or comments appreciated.