Felix_45

There are a few places you can find opponents The Blitz http://www.theblitz.org/ Few Good Men http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/thefgmforum/forum.php World at War http://worldatwar.eu/index.php?esid=346563c7e7bb28b70db1aeecd6323adb〈=3&refcode=0&location=intro Band of Brothers http://webandofbrothers.de/index.htm These are just the first few that come to mind, there might be others. I hope my links work

The Farm - Early Dawn Patrol AAR by Felix_45 Felix_45 (Allies) Ted (Axis) Thank you Bimmer for taking the time and effort to host this tournament. I entered because I wanted to have some CMBN fun and to get a chance to meet and play other opponents. So far I have completed both objectives, I had a good time playing out this little scenario and met a new playing partner (Ted). We are currently playing out a diabolical scenario H2H Valley of the Shadows. Okay enough of these pleasantries.....let's get down to the business of the battle. Mission The Allies primary mission was to conduct a platoon patrol of the farm complex and to determine if the enemy was in the area. The secondary mission was to engage and destroy the enemy if encountered but only if the tactical situation was favourable. Men 2nd Platoon HQ 1st Squad 2nd Squad 3rd Squad Light machine gun team Here is an overhead view of the map and my initial placement: Initial Plan There are 8 objectives: Cafe (30) South field (10) South Orchard (10) East field (10) Entire Farm Complex (50) It's not certain if these objectives are "touch" or "hold" objectives. I make my initial plans as if they are the "touch" kind. What I want to do is quickly take the Farm Complex and then protect it thereby preventing Ted from getting those points. My secondary goals are to touch the East Field and to touch the South Orchard. I don't intend to stay there, just touch and run, if I can. My third objective is to try and touch the South Field objective. Primary Objective: Take over the Farm Complex and defend it all costs! Secondary Objective: Send teams out to touch the East Field and South Orchard. Third Objective Send over a squad (if possible) and touch the South Field objective. Notice that I am not at all interested in the Cafe. It's worth 30 points but I do not have a big enough force to assault it. I'm giving it up to the enemy. Set Up and First Movement Orders Red Line: The light machine gun team is ordered to move quickly south and touch the East Field objective. They are then to retreat post haste and hide behind the bocage to ambush any German soldier fool enough to probe our left flank. Yellow Line: 3rd Squad is ordered to set up position in the middle of the North-South dirt road. they are to keep the position and over-watch the East Field and South Orchard for enemy activity. Pink/Purple Line: Platoon HQ and 1st Squad to set up residence in the Farm Complex. 1st squad's secondary objective will be to go out and touch the South Orchard while 3rd squad provides overwatch from their road position. Blue Line: 2nd squad is set up west of the Farm Complex thereby protecting our right flank. They are to assess the situation and if they feel comfortable, are to move south and probe the enemy's left flank. If they survive, they are ordered to wreak havoc behind enemy lines! Beginning Battle The first few minutes were taken up by both sides getting into their position. No contact with the enemy was made. I didn't just give our orders to rush to the objectives because I was not really sure where the enemy was. So I split my squads and carefully moved into position. After a few minutes this was my position: Things to note.....a contact marker on the south end of the orchard. Also, I found that my platoon HQ was not able to have C2 with all squads so I decide that he could move east or west in the Farm Complex to give C2 wherever the enemy would show up. And show up they did.....all of a sudden we had contact on two fronts, the central road and on our left flank (light machine gun ambush) Over the next few turns we fought for control of the center road position. Eventually 3rd squad was almost entirely wiped out and were ordered to retreat north to safer ground. My light machine gun (protecting my left flank) gave the enemy a bloody nose with a successful ambush: Middle Game The middle game consisted of us licking our wounds and regrouping our men. I ordered my light machine gun to retreat. I also had partial squad hiding in the South Orchard that was able to shoot at retreating German soldiers! During the middle game I gave orders to the 2nd squad to move and probe the Axis left flank. They moved cautiously up my right flank and got into a very nice position behind enemy lines. They set up behind bocage and set up a firing lane down an East-West road. There they waited, patiently for Germans to cross the road....eventually they did. End Game With my right flank secured and having a squad in good position to fire down east-west dirt road I started to move my men south up the middle road to mop up any broken or rattled German squads. After a few light fire fights my opponent asked for a cease fire. The battle ended before time was out. A tactical victory for the Allies. Hats off to my opponent Ted who gave a good tough fight! This was the kind of scenario where all things worked out (for me) and that doesn't happen very often. I think I got lucky on our first few encounters and that let me continue with my original battle plan. Once again, thank you Bimmer for this tourney. I'm looking forward to the next installment of The Farm

To Ian......you should definitely post your full AAR. I'd like to read it and I'm sure a lot of players would benefit from it.

That looks so cool, I'm turning back my shadows on.

#26 Being able to find shallow/deep fords easily and without having to be an underwater diver.

To YankeeDog (and Sgt Schultz) I agree 100% with what you guys have said about the faust being an ambush weapon and how to use it. Therefore the issue of not having a covered arc does not really affect the game play of this unit, but that is not the issue I have with the faust teams. My problem lies with the "hide" command. I do everything that you guys describe...."put the team in an ambush position"....."give it a covered arc"...etc. etc. However, if you don't tell them to "hide" then sometimes their position is spotted by Tank Commanders who are actually Darth Vader using the Force to spot them. If you tell them to "hide" then they do exactly that, hunker down, hide and never look up and will not shoot! Ambush Command please! for the faust Covered Arc Command please! for the schrecks/zooks That will make tank hunting much more fun. Tweaking the super abilities of tanks needs to be done as well. To Sgt Schultz: I'm playing "No Exit" and "Valley of the Shadows" and having a great time. Thanks!

+1 to that, especially since we are given a specific "Antitank" option when we split a squad. That option is so laughable because 3 out of 4 times your antitank team will engage the enemy with small arms fire or give their location away because they chose to shoot at mushrooms or somefink. Hopefully this will be fixed soon so that we PBEM'ers can have some good old tank hunting fun!

Edit YankeeDog pre-empted my post when he says: "I think it's pretty obvious many of these changes are substantial game engine changes/upgrades and as such are almost definitely going to have to wait for a future game family, but there's no harm in wishing" So the logical question is.....what are the chances of this wish list getting to a new family game given that players of CMSF wished for an enter building command for a long time already and that has not happened? +1 to the list. I'm surprised the covered armoured arc and the ambush command was not discussed by the play testers. It just seems that it took game players a few weeks to want this. (maybe they did, what do I know what goes on behind closed doors) Enter building command has been begged for in CMSF. (yes there is a workaround by pausing your men, but it's a workaround...why not just give us a command for that) I don't want to gripe too much because I am thoroughly enjoying CMBN and will pre-order the CW and all the other modules......but CMx2 would be so much more fun with this list implemented. Question to BFC (or anyone else that is "in the know") Are these realistic expectations to happen in any CMBN module? Or is this a list for the next family of game (Battle of the Bulge)?

+1 to Dan the California man. Anytime you are playing a small sized battle (bocage or not) one little mistake or misfortune is very difficult if not impossible to overcome. I entered this tournament to have some fun and to hopefully meet some new playing partners. I was successful on both and am now playing another scenario with my opponent and we are having a great time. A big cheer to Bimmer for taking the time to organize this.....let's keep things positive.

So a map glitch? The campaign author is Paper Tiger, I don't have his contact info to send him the save file. If he's interested in seeing it he can contact me here.

This is taken from me playing out the campaign "The Road to Montebourg" My tank goes through bocage twice. I'm posting the screen shots but I have a saved game file of this as well. The first...... then the second..... and then ends the turn on the other side. Is this a game glitch or a map glitch in the campaign?

My own 2 cents......I'm okay with the C2 and not having target lines. But I'd like to see the game tweaked so that it plays better PBEM. A lot of action happens in one minute, so I'd like to have the following: Covered amour arc (so does everyone else and we all don't understand why it's not there) Ambush command (your squad hides except for one guy who is a lookout, he would be the guy with the binoculars) Enter building command (grenades get thrown in, rooms sprayed with bullets....you get the point it's been discussed in CMSF) Things I like about CMx2: the detail of the game the way mortar/arty fire is handled being able to set multiple way points and commands being able to view LOS from a way point marker. Have a good New Year

Bimmer, I hope you reconsider and not let the actions of a spoiled child ruin the fun for everyone else. I'm playing the American side and don't mind continuing. I'm also looking forward to read all the AAR's after the first round is complete. I think a tourney like this followed up with AAR's will be very educational for the whole community (minus one of course LOL) Count to ten, hit the weight room and let loose some steam, then come back and say "we're still on boys" :cool:

I'm sure all of us who are playing as the Allies appreciate you informing the enemy what our troops are composed of. :mad: You can vent your frustrations when you write your AAR but that will be done when all the first round is complete so that neither side will be able to sift information from it and therefore get an advantage from it. Bimmer warned you before entering the tourney that scenarios may be unbalance and if that is an issue for you not to join. So stop whining soldier and get to the battlefield and start killing some Germans!

All good points and an interesting read. Has anyone noticed differences as defender between RT and PBEM? Defending PBEM is tough because it is next to impossible to plan an ambush (see threads regarding hiding and unhiding and cover arcs/amoured only arc) I don't know how many times as defender I had to withstand a whole minute of pounding by arty/mortar before I could move them.....but then of course my men are pinned so they get wiped out completely. Another aspect of PBEM that makes defending hard is infantry's insistence to shoot at tanks and therefore giving away their position. In RT you can set small covered arcs and then change them when needed. In PBEM you can do the same but a minute turns goes by and you can miss many an opportunity because of that. Does anyone have experience playing both RT and PBEM to comment on this?

How much time was there in the games played? I find that in CMBN an attacker often has all the time in the world to probe and take out defenses. That might be a more deciding factor than the amount of forces for the defender.

I'm in if there is still room. grasshopper1963atlivedotcom

Best bet is for players to do the set up and some of the early files PBEM whenever they can then arrange for a time when both will be able to play for a few hours and use a file exchange program (dropbox) and you're good to go. Each file has a film to see unlike the CMx1 game so things go rather quick once the set up is done. You may not get a full game in but you'd get a good dent into it. I do that with some guys and you get a good feel for the flow of battle that way. I don't play RT because I don't like it, so that is the next best thing. I live in Central Canada so if anyone wants to arrange for a game like that don't be shy. I do all my CM'ing over at The Blitz.

Agree completely, see my post on CMBN not being PBEM friendly I don't think this would be a problem for real time players.

"Covered Arc for Armour Only" I know it's been mentioned in this thread already and elsewhere but this really REALLY takes away from a PBEM game. There is no way to ambush a tank successfully in this game and is becoming very frustrating. It seems like the CMx2 game was made for real time play and to hell with PBEM (in real time you can make a small covered arc, let infantry pass by, and open up when a tank/vehicle comes into LOS.) P.S Can someone from Battlefront explain their rational for not giving PBEM players the option to limit their covered arc to vehicles? Okay, rant over.

Okay, I know this from CMSF/NATO (bought it, played it and got bored of it) that the battle ends when the moral/casualties of the other side get too bad but it never really bugged me in CMSF/NATO because after beating on a weaker side I just wanted it to end.....but....in the demo "busting out of bocage" it really did but me....I worked so hard to set up my HQ's to get line of sight on the anti-tank gun....on the ridge line...on the houses....I timed the howitzer/mortar fire to come in a "Crescendo of Doom" I wanted to watch the fire rain down on my enemy and then I wanted to send in my infantry to mop up whatever survived....but just before this could happen, a small firefight breaks out...a German soldier gets killed then "GAME OVER". What a let down. Is there a way to stop this from happening in the options?

Okay, I had some time and did some searches and found this....sorry I don't know how to past a thread so I'm just cutting and pasting from an old thread: We are collecting/ammassing info on infantry smoke grenades usage, though don't hold your breath for now. Markus (and Tommi) have been very helpful. I have ammassed a lot of stuff too. In fact smoke grenades is another of those underreported, unclear aspects of WW2 micro-history that make being a military historian/afficitiando so much fun. One thing is clear at least on the US side, while any given vet may have seen smoke grenades used in masking situations at somepoint during his combat experience, it was not employed at the same level as they are today, meaning you could not give a smoke grenade capability to every squad in CM and get a historically accurate outcome. It's definately something that will have to be looked at in the future to determine how to make the means (effort to model this accurately) justify the end result. There are other more deliberate means of smoke generation available to the player as it is, so you won't be lefting wanting for the capability. Hope that helps... Los I hope LOS does not mind me copying his thoughts out of the context of the thread but this explains a lot and it seems that if the use of smoke grenades is limited and not used in a gamey way it will certainly add to a hasty retreat.

Ian, Look on pages 89-90 for that. As stated before, I was surprised to see this in the manual because I recalled a CMx1 thread where BFC was adamant that infantry in WWII did not use smoke grenades, therefore they had no intention of giving them that option in the CMx1 games......so I was very surprised to see it in the manual. I'm wondering has there been a change of thought with BFC, or is it just something that has been ported from CMSF with no thought? Just to qualify my thoughts....I am not in the military....I'm not a military historian....so I am not an expert on these things and leave that kind of stuff to more knowledgeable men and women than myself...I'm just a guy who was brought up playing the old Avalon Hill games (squad leader my fave) and caught onto CMBB/CMAK only a few years ago.....

Whew, at least I still have my faculties