Broadsword56

But at least it will be fun to see more of the new FJ units in action.

I think it's better to dismount the tankers and scout with them on foot -- although I'll bet most of us forget that's an option, myself included. It's a fairly safe thing to do this early in the game when the enemy wouldn't be within small arms range yet.

My money's on Bil. I can already see he's going to hand the Germans their lovely FJ helmeted heads to them.

I see the soldiers' canteens clipping the side of the truck :-( Hmmm...maybe they wet the canteen covers and hung them from hooks outside the truck -- an old cyclists' trick -- the flow of air over the wet cover chills the water. Very clever!

I wonder if GAJ will be able to detect sound contacts from those tanks creeping up to their OPs?

Is this similar to the "gaps and surfaces" concept? That's how I like to play. If it's a gap, attack it and exploit it. If it's a surface, bypass, isolate or neutralize it. The small lead elements that find a gaps "pull" the larger forces in behind them. It's like water flowing around hard stone to seek out the cracks and then widening them until they crack apart. The danger, of course, is mistaking a gap for a surface or vice versa. A canny enemy will create false gaps that can lure you into killzones.

The recon and move to contact phases are my favorite aspects of CM. But one thing I almost never see players mention in the DARs and AARs is patrols. I'm no tactical guru, but whenever I read a historical account or watch a vintage training film on YouTube, I'm frequently struck by how systematically a unit was expected to have patrols out -- contact patrols to make sure there's LOS on the neighboring friendly unit, scouting patrols ahead, fighting patrols designed to provoke an enemy reaction, etc. "Always try to engage the enemy initially with the smallest possible force," the saying goes. I wonder if patrolling is an overlooked art among CM players, especially if the scenarios they play are often very short, the maps small, or the forces already or nearly in contact? Bil's use of the Stuarts for OPs is a move I really like, BTW.

The recon and move to contact phases are my favorite aspects of CM. But one thing I almost never see players mention in the DARs and AARs is patrols. I'm no tactical guru, but whenever I read a historical account or watch a vintage training film on YouTube, I'm frequently struck by how systematically a unit was expected to have patrols out -- contact patrols to make sure there's LOS on the neighboring friendly unit, scouting patrols ahead, fighting patrols designed to provoke an enemy reaction, etc. "Always try to engage the enemy initially with the smallest possible force," the saying goes. I wonder if patrolling is an overlooked art among CM players, especially if the scenarios they play are often very short, the maps small, or the forces already or nearly in contact?

That actually is a work-around I'd considered. If you and an opponent want to see what it's like to play in a simulated heavy fog, just set up a scenario OOB to give the German player a lot of werfers and make it a house rule that they can only be used to lay a mandatory smoke blanket, on the starting turn only, and on TRPs that have been pre-placed evenly across the map. After that they're banned from use. Probably quite a framerate-killer, I'd imagine...Not for a competitive situation, obviously, but just an interesting low-visibility experience or if you want to simulate some particular foggy encounter.

+2 to that -- French fogs are extremely thick and played a great role, for example, in the Dauntless/Martlet (June 25, 1944) when the British 49th Div literally got lost after jumping off and tankers couldn't see past their own gunbarrels. When we get to the next CMBN module and the fall of '44, fog becomes even more tactically significant. In eastern France "les brouillards matinaux" are a daily early-morning feature by September. The nature of battles like Arracourt can't be replicated without real fog and its visibility effects. I know someone is likely to say, "We left this out because weather can't change within a battle, and players would complain about not being able to see anything, etc." But it's easy to change the weather in the Editor if you don't like it. And it would still be useful to have real thick fog as an effect because I could have one battle in early morning with the fog, end that one, and then set up a second battle starting from the time when the fog has cleared.

Still, I'd like to see what a well-sited Panther turret bunker could do here!

If people cared as much for their fellow man as some of our pixeltruppen, there would be a lot fewer wars!

Do these have to be renamed or anything to work in CMBN 2.0, or can they just be dropped into the Z folder? Wouldn't they conflict with helmets altready in that 12SS cammo mod?

Understood. I think what's baffling to people is the strain seems to hit different systems so differently, and the hardware power that might easily handle other demanding games doesn't necessarily make CMx2 run a lot faster or smoother. I'm probably not alone in considering my next PC will be configured with CMx2 and CMx3 in mind. So what we need most of all are some more specific guidelines about what specs are proven to really make the most difference to this game's performance.

To be fair, at least it worked better than the Soviets' previous attempt with mine cats...

If a comrade's body, a dead cow, etc, is all the cover you've got, of course you'll use it. But that doesn't mean it's actually useful cover -- watch those YouTube videos of WWII weapons effects training films that have been linked to so often on this forum. You'll see small arms rounds easily penetrating brick walls. I can't imagine flesh and bone would fare any better.

Same here -- I can't see the day where I'd ever be able to afford (or justify for myself) $300 for a used copy of a board wargame. Too bad, since VASSAL makes it more possible than ever to set up and play this monster game (Stalingrad at company level) without having to set up the physical game, and even to find human opponents for it. My consolation (or it is sour grapes?) is that we know CMx2 doesn't really do combat in cities very well (yet), so S-grad probably wouldn't be a great operational layer for CM East Front anyway -- even once we have that game. I've staked my money on Panzer Command (Victory Games, 1984), which takes place on the steppes W of S-grad around the Chir River, circa Dec 42-spring '43. That's company scale, a great system, and seems well suited to work with CM Eastern Front in battles of the early '43 time period. Used copies of Panzer Command are going for much more reasonable prices ($40s to $50s) especially if you're willing to have a copy that's got punched counters. Since I'd play only the electonic VASSAL version, it's not an issue for me.

Yes, but in my example, those higher level effects of civilian pheonomena could potentially show up at the CMBN tac level in these ways: A little bridge that's on the CMBN map is now changed in the scenario editor to be blocked (using, say, a roadblock) to represent the fact that the Germans don't believe it's crossable by vehicles -- because they were misled by the Dutch if civilian crowds got triggered in an area that becomes part of a CMBN battle map, a certain route out of town could be blocked off, the area is labeled "Liberation Party" and a few units are stuck there. Just some wild and problematic examples, but I like to see players be as creative as possible and make things with the game we actually have.

There's a place where the civilians were not only present but one could argue had a real and direct effect on military operations, and that was in Market-Garden. The throngs that came out to welcome the Allies clogged the streets and slowed the advance. Other Dutch civilians influenced the course of events by, for example, lying to the Germans about whether a bridge could support tanks, or misdirecting them to get them lost, etc. Much easier to simulate such things in a board wargame than in CMBN. (Where Eagles Dare, for example, actually has counters representing the crowds and the individual heroic Dutch farmer, which can appear due to "event" triggers.) An operational layer using a boardgame can apply the **effects** of such things, at least partly, to CMBN battle situations. So there is at least something one can do besides merely dream about features that will never be in CM. In the "Streets of Stalingrad" boardgame there are counters for Soviet mine dogs, too! :-)

That makes sense for vehicles -- but I was wondering if, for example, infantry moving through deep snow would move any slower or tire any faster.

Soviet mine dogs?

What effects will snow have on gameplay, if any?

Thanks for the update -- very interesting. Curious...wouldn't it be simpler to just save the one game file (.bts) and share that in Dropbox so the successive players pick it up and add their moves to it?

Speaking of formations -- many players (especially newbies) might find this US WW2 training film useful: http://http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=AzEfslwknZs As the film stresses, platoons should delay deploying their squads into skirmish line formation as long as possible, and only once within small arms range of the enemy (400 yards pr so). (And yes, that IS a very young Harry Morgan -- future star in films, Dragnet, and MASH -- playing one of the NCOs around the sand table. What a cushy war some of these Hollywood actors got to have, playing soldier in training films while living the good life off camera!)

I was thinking a similar thought about how CMFI might re-create the Tabaccificio Fioche (The Tobacco Factory) near Salerno, another architecturally distinctive and infamous building complex that featured so prominently in the fighting on mainland Italy: http://www.wwiithenandnow.com/index.php/italy/salerno-operation-avalanche/persano (a much-loved community-made scenario in CMAK, which I hope we'll see return with a vengeance in CMFI Gustav Line)