Nemesis Lead

Anyone out there?

CM manuals are unclear.....if you have a Captain spotting for mortar halftracks, do the halftracks get command bonuses (i.e., improved morale, combat, stealth)? I have never noticed, for example, that a spotter with a +2 combat rating causes his mortar halftracks to fire more effectively. Please only respond if you know the answer. Many thanks.

LOL-In another game I attacked with Germans and had a single enemy 3-inch (Brit) mortar kill 28 of my men. I was packed into a treeline (treebursts) and the mortar had a field day. This was the most casualties I have ever seen a mortar score.

Guys, Won a minor victory over a very good player the other day with mortars carried by Universal Carriers. It was a 1000 point QB attack and I was the attacker. 3 British 76.2mm mortars did the following: 1) Knocked out 2 wooden bunkers (repeated partial penetrations caused evacuation). This was new to me since I didn't know mortars could do this. 2) Knocked out 4 75mm inf guns (in foxholes). 3) Immobilized a Hetzer (it was later killed by a flank shot from my Achilles). 4) Caused a Hetzer to move into range of a 105mm Sherman which killed it with an HE shell (this was very lucky). 5) Killed about 25 infantry. 6) Laid down a smokescreen which allowed one of my infantry coys to take a flag. Fantastic weapons, these 76.2mm mortars.

Flaming Knives, Larger CW formations? What do you mean? Would love to find a way to get the carriers cheaper. Wicky--I always have HQs to spot for me. The mortar never shows itself if I can help it.

Wicky--CMAK. Flaming Knives--I mean real experience using mortars in the game. While it would be great, I doubt an 80 year old Tommy or GI would reply to me.

Guys, As I have gained experience in CM, I have fallen in love with on-map mortars and mortar halftracks in particular. Would love to hear your opinions on the following: Which is best(for the money)on the battlefield? 1) A Brit 3-Inch mortar that is transported by a Universal Carrier (powerful mortar, but you have to dismount to use it; also no MG on Universal Carrier). 2) A US M4 Mortar Halftrack (huge ammo supply and a MG, but expensive). 3) A German SPW 251/2 Mortar Halftrack (cheap with a decent ammo supply; no MG). Please only reply is you have real experience using mortars.

Hi Tigrii, Everyone has made very good points. One other thing if you are lacking covered reinforcement routes--you can use smoke to conceal movement just like an attacker would. Often your antagonist will use just a few units (often MGs) to pin down a large segment of your line and a few mortar smoke shells can effectively blind him. Having played a lot of games--one other point I would make is that too many players try to defend ALL flags which necessitates having a reserve to deal with threatened & weakly held flags. Often, I will cede flags to the enemy and try to establish a continuous MLR and a defense with some depth. You can also refuse your flank to the enemy and really shorten your line while also having a reserve (the flank defenders) who can move to the forward part of your line if it is breaking. An attack on your flank can be defended the same way (move forward deployed units to the flank). The idea is to form a right angle or a horseshoe shaped hedgehog with your army (just don't bunch up too much or heavy arty can slam you). Having positions that mutually support one another reduces the need for a reserve and reduces the distance a reserve must move if you have one. The other thing that I would say is that too many players (including myself) wait too long before committing their reserves and this can cause casualties when the reserve is deployed. I am always worried that I am facing a demonstration by a horde of halfsquads and the real attack will come later on a different part of my line. In reality, your OPs almost always give you a good sense of where the main enemy attack is coming from and you should move the reserve into place soon after significant contact is made. One QB trick (nothing new) I use is to have another CM version of the game running in the background and I "purchase" enemy units as I identify them in the game. Then I have a sense for how much of my opponent's force I have already faced off against and how much more I might face.

Hi Tigrii, Everyone has made very good points. One other thing if you are lacking covered reinforcement routes--you can use smoke to conceal movement just like an attacker would. Often your antagonist will use just a few units (often MGs) to pin down a large segment of your line and a few mortar smoke shells can effectively blind him. Having played a lot of games--one other point I would make is that too many players try to defend ALL flags which necessitates having a reserve to deal with threatened & weakly held flags. Often, I will cede flags to the enemy and try to establish a continuous MLR and a defense with some depth. You can also refuse your flank to the enemy and really shorten your line while also having a reserve (the flank defenders) who can move to the forward part of your line if it is breaking. An attack on your flank can be defended the same way (move forward deployed units to the flank). The idea is to form a right angle or a horseshoe shaped hedgehog with your army (just don't bunch up too much or heavy arty can slam you). Having positions that mutually support one another reduces the need for a reserve and reduces the distance a reserve must move if you have one. The other thing that I would say is that too many players (including myself) wait too long before committing their reserves and this can cause casualties when the reserve is deployed. I am always worried that I am facing a demonstration by a horde of halfsquads and the real attack will come later on a different part of my line. In reality, your OPs almost always give you a good sense of where the main enemy attack is coming from and you should move the reserve into place soon after significant contact is made. One QB trick (nothing new) I use is to have another CM version of the game running in the background and I "purchase" enemy units as I identify them in the game. Then I have a sense for how much of my opponent's force I have already faced off against and how much more I might face.

I have had US 155mm VT kill a Panther tanks. A bit of background....my human opponent brought a platoon of 5 Panther tanks into a game on a small map with heavily wooded terrain. The Panthers (who had infantry riders) all came through one small gap and all at the same time. I fired the 155mm at a TRP hoping to kill the infantry riders. This worked fairly well and 1 of the 5 Panthers died as well. The bottom line--fairly heavy arty can kill tanks, but usually it is just a waste of precious ammunition. Then again, I have always had very good luck killing open topped vehicles with arty.

I have had US 155mm VT kill a Panther tanks. A bit of background....my human opponent brought a platoon of 5 Panther tanks into a game on a small map with heavily wooded terrain. The Panthers (who had infantry riders) all came through one small gap and all at the same time. I fired the 155mm at a TRP hoping to kill the infantry riders. This worked fairly well and 1 of the 5 Panthers died as well. The bottom line--fairly heavy arty can kill tanks, but usually it is just a waste of precious ammunition. Then again, I have always had very good luck killing open topped vehicles with arty.

I have had US 155mm VT kill a Panther tanks. A bit of background....my human opponent brought a platoon of 5 Panther tanks into a game on a small map with heavily wooded terrain. The Panthers (who had infantry riders) all came through one small gap and all at the same time. I fired the 155mm at a TRP hoping to kill the infantry riders. This worked fairly well and 1 of the 5 Panthers died as well. The bottom line--fairly heavy arty can kill tanks, but usually it is just a waste of precious ammunition. Then again, I have always had very good luck killing open topped vehicles with arty.

Paul/AU, Really like your point on allowing crew members to occassionally reman their abandoned (not knocked out) AT guns / tanks. It is often strange to see the crew of your 6-pounder (armed with pistols!) sitting in the same foxhole as their abandoned gun which is in perfect working order. While I do think that most of the crews should be "routed" and be unable to reman their weapons, some might be only rattled and able to reman their weapons (but they would be very likely to break and run again). I do, however, like to have crews on the map. It is often a fun "mini-mission" in a game to rescue a downed tank crew or slay the crew of a particularly nasty Panther tank that gave you a lot of trouble. Crews are also worth a lot of points in CM and they should be--well trained tankers were often in short supply. You don't want to let them die (if it is your crew) or let them get away (if it is an enemy crew) and CM recognizes this. In fact, I often giggle when my human opponents use crews as scouts--they invariably die and my opponent loses a lot of points for doing this.

John, You are correct on tank crew casualties and make my point--in real life you get extremes. It is often the case that everyone gets out of a tank alive or no one does. CM seems to (almost always) give you average (very funny for me to see a tank explode catastrophically and only 1 guy gets injured--reminds me of the old A-Team TV series or the GI Joe cartoons--lots of shooting and explosions and no one gets hurt). As to your other points...you are generally correct. Actually, the most realistic wargame might consist of you giving and receiving radio transmissions/using runners/fielding other communications and fighting the battle off of a map for everything except for things that occur right in your LOS. You would also have to give orders in REAL TIME and not in a turn-based format (I like to play with time limits on turns for this very reason--I hate when guys take 30 minutes to give orders for a turn that will last one minute). There was a game for the ancient Commodore series of computers that was like this. I liked it, but almost not one else did because it had no graphics. Good point on logistics--while forward stocking points and ammo trucks are probably beyond the tactical purview of the game, it would be cool to have an option where infantry get (for example) 150% of stated ammo levels, but cost more and pay a price in lost mobility. Artillery could also pay for ammo on a "per round" basis in QBs. If I want a spotter with 100 155mm VT shells, let me have him (but force me to pay the exorbiant price). In both of these cases, you can build this into scenarios, but can't do this in QBs.

Urchin, You are right on target--other units do tell the tank what is happening. The issue is that the communication happens instantaneously and with perfect accuracy--the tank wheels its turret around and nails the AT team. There should be a delay for radio communication, spotting, etc..

Guys, I think CM is the most realistic wargame of all time. Having said that, there are a few areas that are not realistic. What do you think is not realistic in CM? These are minor nitpicks of a truly great game--but I am interested in other perspectives that we can pass on to the designers of CMX2. My nominations: 1) Tanks that are destroyed (especially those that get hit by a high velocity AT gun) have too many survivors. In CM, it is very rare that a whole crew will die, while in WW2 this was often the case (Read Belton Cooper's "Death Traps"--great book). 2) Mortars are underpowered. A 81mm (on-map) team firing at known targets in the open or in trees (airbursts) would inflict heavy losses. Mortars are very accurate and very deadly--they inflicted heavy losses on both the Allies and the Axis in WW2. The bocage fighting in Normandy is a great example--mortars accounted for nearly half of all US losses. Hence, the game does not model them correctly and their lethality should be doubled or tripled (how many times do you play a game where your mortar teams fire all their rounds and only hit 1 or 2 men)? 3) Artillery in general is underpowered. I have some military experience and if 105mm or (worse) 155mm arty fire is on target (i.e., within a hundred meters or so), you and most of the men in your squad stand a 50%+ chance of being hit (unless you in in foxholes/trenches/heavy buildings in which case you stand a MUCH better chance of living). The challenge is getting the rounds on target and it seems like this is too easy in CM (US spotters seem to almost always be on target). Hence, I think it should be harder to get rounds on target, but rounds that ARE on target would be more lethal to infantry. 4) Tanks seem to have better "situational awareness" than they should. Anyone who has ever been in a WW2 tank (or any tank for that matter) knows that it is VERY hard to see what is going on outside because of narrow vision slits, etc.. CM tanks always seem to know where that PIAT shot came from and return fire immediately and accurately. A tank's strength is in seeing things VERY well (especially at long distance) that are in the very narrow vision field of its optics. All else is very hard to spot/hear. 5) Related to the above...open topped tanks/TDs/assault guns should have vision advantages. In CM, having an open topped vehicle seems more like a liability with no benefits at all to having the good views that come from having an open top.

Guys, Have sent an email to Madmatt (but it turns out his email address is not valid). Does anyone else know a chat room where CM games can be started? Please let me know. Many thanks,