A Canadian Cat

Unbelievable! This Stug put a hole in an Achilles and before they could reload to finish the job this happened. That was one hard boiled egg. Needless to say the Stug brewed up and all the crew were lost. In the woods 1 Company's lead platoon runs into a Scout team. After a brief fire fight and one casualty they are dispatched. He must have been wondering what my guys were up to. Over with 5 Company a Churchill rattled this crew so much they bailed and ran off. And the Stu42 on the right side of the Orchard could not with draw fast enough and is hit again. Mean while the bridge head assault team is full of optimism and heading off looking for a fight. I hope I can lead them to some victories instead of more defeats.

Oh man those moments can be painful. I hope the American are too shocked and you get away with it. My SOP for bocage or other impassible obstacles is to place a way point right at the opening I wish them to use, on my side, and then another close by on the other side of the opening. Then continue as usual.

This is more from the new Sticking it out. The fight is in the town now and a nasty close quarters battle: AT gun vs tank. Check out Tanks a lot's new building mod. Awesome work.

Direct fire from 81mm mortars - nice. He may not see where those shells are coming from. At 500m away if they have any concealment they may well stay hidden. I often come under mortar fire and never know where the origin is.

Thanks for your awesome work. The Blitz is having a bi weekly competition for screen shots. My latest entry makes good use of you Stuart mod: http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=62903&pid=367898#pid367898 I tried something similar with a vanilla German armoured car but it just did not have the same effect.

3 Battery continues to work towards flanking those newly found Churchill tanks. The advance from the bridge head proceeds in two prongs. One along the river and one a bit wider on the right. I want to see if I can fix his forces with the river side assault and then flank and destroy them on the right. Time to back off further into the Orchard to keep 5 Company and its supporting vehicles intact.

Finally that uber Churchill is gone to. The Panther's long 75 succeeds where the Stug's shorter gun failed. Yes that other Churchill is KO'ed too. I am not really sure when that happened.

Not much is happening at the bridge head. The infantry and their supporting Stugs lead the way to expand the bridge head towards the rail crossing. Over near the orchard one of the Stugs of 1 Battery exchanges fire with a Churchill tank. They fire almost simultaneously and both connect. Neither is destroyed but I know how this mach-up ends. Not well for me. Also this turn a 75mm Half track gets nailed. 5 Company is going to have to do a better job of finding cover in the orchard. Over on the right flank one of the Stugs is assaulted by a British crew member using nothing but his sten gun. You can see the ricochets flying. If you look closely in the bottom right corner you can see the crewman. Another of 3 Battery is hit by an Achilles but shrugs it off. The return fire is a nice looking hit. Hopefully after surviving the hammer hit the Stug can crack the egg – and this buddy near by too. That would be nice.

What happened to your plan for the PzIV to catch the Stuart when it went after your men on the road?

I have had both happen - in the ford and at the edges. In Huzar I lost a sizable chunk of my flanking force to a ford (5 vehicles mix of tanks and HTs) one on entry tile one one exit tile and others in the middle. In a QB a while back I lost a tank in the middle of the ford.

Interesting discussion of using fords. I am very cautious about using fords. They pose a risk. If there is a bridge and a ford that can serve the same purpose I will use the bridge and ignore the ford - every time. I am a ford user when opportunity arises. They can be great to allow forces to attack from unexpected directions. But they are not without risk. The chances of loosing vehicles to bogging are much higher in a ford. So if the risk is worth it I'll use the ford. In this case where a ford and a bridge offer the same or similar crossing I would not put a single vehicle in the ford. Why risk it? As for traffic jams there are techniques to manage traffic but lets face it, the player has to manage a lot of stuff to keep the traffic flowing. I would appreciate some helpful commands (some kind of convoy follow command) to make this work better. But I am not holding my breath for that. From the earlier comments it struck me that the issue is for the particular scenario having an unopposed river crossing is just creating traffic management issues for no particular reason. Which begs the question why have the river and the bridge at all them? Note: I have not tried this scenario so my comments are simply referring to my impressions of the earlier discussion.

Stripping away the tank's infantry is the right thing to do. Trying to fight tanks with infantry is hard but if those tanks have an infantry screen it gets much harder. The other technique that I find helpful is smoke. Some of your infantry can probably pop a smoke screen. Often getting some smoke to bind the tank will allow a squad to get close enough t use a PF or even close assault.

Excellent - I love reading AARs too. Your force selection with no armor will be challenging but German Infantry in bocage country is about as good as it gets when fighting tanks with Infantry - should it come to that. I have a question here - your infantry plan looks good to me. I wonder about the TRP on the left (from the screen shot). Why put one there?

The squad leader that wondered off to the hill is now back in town.

Moving forward to engage those Churchill tanks. In this view you can see contact icons where the Churchill tanks are. 5 Company and its support are going to back off a bit so the Churchills across the valley cannot pick them off one by one. With the exception of the Stug on the far left that I think can safely get a shot on a couple of Stuarts. The rest of 3 Company is ordered to head across the bridge.

3 Battery finds that there are more Churchill tanks near by. They are currently quite far away and stationary but that might not last long. 3 Battery will begin to work on flanking those Churchill tanks. Moving into position above the town. My immobilized Stug gets taken out by an Achilles on the ridge line opposite the town. After the crew bails there is a large secondary explosion. Thankfully members of 1 Company are far enough away that no one is hurt. The Panther's finally connect with the Uber Churchill but still do not destroy it. Here is an overview of the current situation. My current goal is to get an assault on the town objective rolling. 3 Battery (bottom of the screen and my right flank) will protect the FO who will bring some pain to the town's current occupiers while keeping those newly discovered Churchill tanks busy. 1 and 2 Company will be ready to pounce on the town once the barrage ends. My assault is predicated on getting the artillery falling which will take some time. 5 Company and their supporting Stugs will hold the left flank. Later I will use them to push towards the rail crossing but being able to do that is predicated on the rest of the plan going well. Mean while 3 Company with the Panthers will push a bit on the other side of the bridge. Hopefully that will be enough of a distraction to allow me to get the artillery falling on the town.

On the other side of the river my men spot and destroy a Stuart and take out a few crew members from previously destroyed vehicles. More soldiers race across the bridge. Meanwhile 5 Company in the orchard takes fire from the Churchill tanks across the valley. Nothing serious but the Stug that was hit does not spot its attacker. Given that 5 Company is there to protect the flank at the moment it is time to hide a bit more in the Orchard.

As long as it is not "Fools seldom differ". Which is the quote my mother would always say back to me when ever I used the "great minds think alike" quote. The only thing that gets to be a pain quickly is the setting of all the soft factors down to the squad level. I tend to use typical when adding units and then record it all but I admit it gets tedious at times. My friend sets his by platoon or higher to make his life easier.

096Meet Med Agricultural 096.btt Allied setup zone much smaller than axis. Single objective is closer to the Axis setup. Suggest evening up the setup zones and adding an additional objective on the other side of the map closer to the allied zone than the axis zone. 111Meet Small Forest 111.btt Missing objectives entirely and Axis zone has a bulge in towards the middle. Suggest get ride of the bulge and create objectives. 117Meet Small Rough (steep hills) 117.btt Allied setup zone is smaller. Objective is close to the allied setup zone Suggest make the allied setup zone larger and either centralize the objective or add one closer to the axis side.

I started to go through the meeting engagement maps one by one. Here is the first installment of my results: 009Meet Large Town 009.btt Already discussed on the forum 018Meet Large Rough 018.btt Axis setup much larger and covers one side of map. Also closer to one objective. Suggest making setup zones more even size and taking away the objective closer to the Axis setup 050Meet Med Open 050.btt Totally broken for a meeting engagement - setup for an allied attack. Suggest reworking setup zones and objectives or just take this off the Meet list. 059Meet Small Agricultural (water) 059.btt Setup zones are not bad but all objectives are near the allied zone. Suggest reworking the objectives. 064Meet Tiny Town (steep hills) 064.btt Looks good 067Meet Tiny Agricultural 067.btt One object is partly inside the axis setup zone and the other is closer to the axis side. Suggest add an objective partly inside the allied zone and center the middle objective.

A friend of mine and I are doing the same. For those not fast enough to get Jon S to be your trusted third party I wrote a set of instructions on how to do this. I introduced it here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1382032&postcount=1 Here is a direct link to the instructions: http://www.lesliesoftware.com/forforumposts/2012/Force%20Selection%20Instructions.pdf

Very cool, two AARs at once. Is Penry going to start a thread form his side of this one?

Glad you found it. I thought I would share my technique for finding fords when they are not marked. What I do is put the camera at level 1 and position it in the middle of the river. It will go under water. Now move the camera and follow the river. The fords will be obvious in short order. You can even tell the difference between shallow and deep fords once you have seen both.

A friend and I have a huge 20 000 point quick battle going on Pete's 2k x 2k map. It is defiantly *not* a bocage prison. This map is really awesome actually. There is lots of interesting features an room to maneuver. Link to my side of the DAR thread: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105660 Link to the other side of the DAR thread: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105686

Since 1 and 2 Company are waiting for their armour support and eventual artillery support before assaulting the town the only orders I issued this turn were for 3 Battery on my right flank and 3 Company along with elements of 1 Battery that are crossing the bridge. 3 Battery is doing two things right now. One clearing the right flank and making sure there are no more Churchills coming and setting up to cover my Osterhaus the FO as he gets into position to call fire on the town. The bridge head expansion complete with 3 Platoon's orders to cross leaving one Stug a squad of infantry and the battalion HQ to occupy the town.