sburke

Question to battlefront and beta testers. Assuming the above is true (have not actually tried or tested it yet) would that mean that in developing a scenario you should set the houses to damaged if you want to allow for defenders having prepped it initially to provide for some covered firing positions? Would be curious to know for development of urban fighting scenarios.

Is your question a general one about fighting through an individual hedgerow or simply a question of how to use an engineer? If a general question, the answer is slowly. Speed=death Unless you know the opposite hedgerow is unoccupied your first objective is to do some recon. Either with a recon team or by fire. If it is occupied you need to establish fire superiority or you aren't going anywhere but the morgue. Once you have accomplished that you can consider taking the next hedgerow. If it is specifically about engineers, you simply use the blast command and select an action point of the opposite side of the hedgerow and yes make sure your other infantry are not too close. There are some other posts related to this topic but if you expect fire on the other side it is best to put some pauses in wego mode to allow the team to blow the whole at the end of the turn while providing you the opportunity to prevent them from going through the blast hole which they will do otherwise. For vehicle holes what I tend to do is do one blast to the opposite side of the hedgerow then do a second blast right to the action point to the left or right of where you start. The engineers will then (given enough blasting charges and time) blow a whole wide enough for vehicles in a single turn.

I am not sure if the names are set or if they are randomly generated when you load the scenario. In this case Otto had a +2 leadership modifier though only regular by experience. He is (you'll be happy to know) one of only two German leaders with this high a rating. So don't worry, you aren't facing the "uber race" here, just one (posthumous) Audie Murphy who incidentally probably didn't even hit anyone. That period where he crouched aiming to the left seemed to last forever and he never fired a shot. I kept thinking, WTF dude either get a round off or hit the dirt!

Thanks for bumping this one again. And thank you battlefront for having the cohones to make this decision and forge ahead. A larger game company may have said why mess with a valid game that is bringing in money. You guys know what you/us really want and made what I feel is a brave business decision potentially putting at risk your livelihood. Kudo's and glad it has paid off. Even if I didn't know there would be additional modules coming out, I am so thrilled with CMBN I would continue to applaud the decision. Now hurry up so we can get back to Market garden and the Bulge. Yeah yeah stop bowing, back to your cells all of you! Christ bad as the Oscars listening to the "I'd like to thank God and my Mum without whom....."

I had a recent encounter where the TC after receiving a glancing hit from an AT gun immediately grabbed the .50 and started scanning for targets. The next round killed him. Would've been better off dropping down into the turret. For those who care, this was a friend of "George the tanker".

Or you could send your opponent a nice box of huggies afterwards. The humiliation factor alone is probably encouragement enough to change tactics,

In that moment of thought, poor Otto finally catches a round How can you not love this game? And to all you RTS weenies belittling us wego pukes - you'd have missed Otto's little tragic tale. We salute you Otto, but if you'd been a little less motivated you might have kept your head down.

But Otto man, he is super motivated, who else is out there I can shoot at?! Rounds zipping by every where and he just calmy exhales and aims 75mm Tank rounds flying past, bullets singing in his ears, Otto is a man possessed. Finally he realizes grenade man has friends who are still shooting. Calmly Otto turns his attention on them Slowly he pulls the trigger and....Missed em by this much...hey wait what happened to the last guy who missed high?

long Well ya got him straddled now, and wait, George the tanker is coming over too. Boom! Special delivery for Otto! Straight and true, wait watch out for that . . . TREE!!!! Guess there won't be anymore rifle grenades, but the rest of the team is intact.

First off a thank you to broadsword56 without whom Otto's story would never have been told. Of course that meant having to kill him but hey, you can't have it all. This is the (short) story of a highly motivated sniper named Otto. At the moment Otto is pinned down and his asst is dead. Our brave Ami infantry are calmly unloading round after round and even some rifle grenades at poor brave Otto. Fortunately they are short But hey, just calmly reload and aim a little higher Mmm no looks a little...

Ack!! your right, Frederico was just the last commenter in the thread. Sorry Sergei. Time to edit!!

The Wrong Tool Poor Hans is confronted at close range by an M5 spitting bullets faster than his Grandmother spit tobacco. Unfortunately in his confusion he considered fragging his grandmother when he should have been thinking about the tank. The Right Tool Fritz here thinks he is Harry Callaghan, I believe he muttered something like "Do you feel lucky punk, well do ya" as he hefted his PF. No Faith His buddies meanwhile show how much regard they have for the martial capabilities of their buddy Fritz and their odds of surviving the next few minutes. That's gonna leave a mark Incoming!!!!! Bingo I think Fritz blew the smoke off the PF launcher here, however 5 seconds later the Sherman behind him ventilated his....well everything. His buddies were right. Credit to Sergei for an excellent guide for posting. This was my first shot Sergei, do I pass? snip snip Sorry, Sergei all cleaned up with proper credits.

How could they not know Mr. Peabody...oh right not everyone is old.

I tried it first from the American side. My experience was similar, but I divided up my recon on the left side of the river. One section was sent to cross to the far left of the town figuring the main bridge was too exposed. The other half of that group went into an overwatch position on the main bridge. Got an M5 hull down on the road leading into the town and nailed the German recon vehicles trying to maneuver down those little streets. On the other side I got another M5 into overwatch on that small bridge by the manor and hit the rest of the German recon crossing there. The Panthers gave me some trouble and I ended up playing cat and mouse with them in the hedgerows on the right hand side (from the American view). Was actually pretty tense. The StuGs and halftracks though just got shot to pieces. I even had an M5 stalking an StuG through the hedgerows and hit it so many times it eventually just broke down and sat there waiting for me to finally get a Sherman to put a round up it's exhaust.

I have played this one, but it has been a bit. I would go back and review the victory conditions and check who holds what ground. I can't remember if the conditions were primarily for casualties or locations. The primary objective if I recall was for the Germans to hold the main bridge crossing. I loved the map as well, but felt the AI had some real difficulty maneuvering on it from both sides. As the Germans I was able to surround the American forces stuck in front of the main bridge and almost completely annihilated them. Having played from the American side first i had a better idea of where the choke points were. As the Americans I had a bit of a tougher time though the AI had real problems getting the halftracks through and that delay made life a lot easier on me.

Much appreciated and yes helpful. I really enjoyed the Bois de Baugin AAR and was looking forward to a battle on this map. It is a beautiful work of art. Unfortunately that also means you have to deal with real world terrain issues where lines of fire and observation aren't all that easy to find. I didn't appreciate the difficulties this map would present for defense as at first glance it looks like you have a great defensive position. Try finding a good spot for your AT gun that won't have everything in sight nailing it as soon as you fire. :-P When I finished set up and started reviewing my unit organization I noticed what I had done with what by rights should be there to protect the ATG.

It's a towed ATG. I haven't looked at the TOE in the editor but i suspect the sp guns don't get a security detail. I would tend to agree with you, seems logical enough. I tried telling that to Hpt Kaumeier, but the SOB just told me I could alternatively be posted to the russian front.

The kill data is there after the battle. As to target lines, that one is kind of problematic. In Cmx1 the whole squad fired at one target. In Cmx2 each individual fires independently, but you can't select individuals. As an example in a recent engagement I set a sniper team to fire on some infantry on the move. After the first shot the infantry went to cover and the team now just fired on targets of opportunity. The marksman fired at one target, his asst at another and they would switch targets during the course of the turn. In the course of 60 seconds they probably picked on about 5 different targets independently. Not sure how you are going to get good target line information off that. And incidentally watching from the perspective of the team is cool as hell. CMx1 didn't give any of that feel.

Wow hadn't noticed that. Can I just say one more time, this game is awesome.

Have a question regarding employment of the LMG security team found in the PzJg companies. *Broadsword56 it is okay to read this, it has been reviewed for operational security* In a current battle I have employed them independently, but in real conditions (like that replicated in Bois de Baugin) would the Germans have maintained the security element with the AT gun? Considering the paucity of resources I have my kp Commander Hpt Kaumeier decided we couldn't afford that , but am curious about doctrine.

Ha not likely, you put out a 4x4 map and it can be edited to take out the bocage and used as something else. :-D Maps are always welcome and the work will never be wasted. The map I really want to make if I ever stop playing enough to actually spend the effort on the map is for a depiction of the battles of the 4th Armored at Arracourt.

I think this was a forerunner of the "twit" race. Minute 3:38 for an apparent relative of the guy.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can certainly believe I did that. I never heard of Steelbook before (I don't purchase many DVDs to begin with) and could easily see my hearing what I thought it was saying. In retrospect I wonder what I was thinking. A true steel box would have been more than just a couple dollars, it would have had to have been custom made. However for myself, steel or just a metal cover isn't that important. It's still a cool looking case for my discs, which I will probably never use as I have the game saved on a USB and an external hard drive. Don't even ask me why I bought it, even the manual I read on my PC. Just excited about the game and wanting a bit of a reminder of it on the shelf. Would've been even cooler if it included a vintage WW 2 map replica of the 1st Army Area of operations to put up on the wall. Come to think of it, maybe I'll just do that myself if I can find someone to print it. :-D

Maybe it is me, but from the beginning in this thread and from comments in a few others I get the sense that many people feel that WW 2 combat tactics were very deficient compared to today. I think the reality is that between wars, armies tend to forget a lot or think somehow those particular rules don't apply. Granted better communications have been developed and new technologies employed, but frankly at the grunt level much of what we think of as modern tactics was born in the later stages of WW I and brought to a pinnacle in WW II. After 11 years of war in some parts of the world and 6 in the ETO folks learned the hard way what works well from small unit tactics to operational warfare. Bounding movement, overwatch, fire and movement all were well known by 1944 even for the relatively new to the war US troops. Before you write off capabilites represented in CM as being too influenced by current knowledge it would be worth one's while to look up material like what akd posted. If you review the battles of the 4th Armored division in Lorraine you can clearly see how well Allied forces had learned battlefield mobility almost on the same terms of what later became "Airland Battle" in the European Central Front. Our forefathers may not have had laser ranging tanks, but they certainly understood how to make the best of what they had.

wear the bocage, be the bocage, you are the bocage!