Broadsword56

This reads to me like a good textbook description of the preferred infantry tactics against an enemy MG in the modern era, but not what actually happened on a WWII battlefield, from what I've read. In Normandy, in particular, Joseph Balkoski writes in Beyond the Beachhead (p. 89): "US Army field manuals emphasized the importance of fire superiority, but in truth, the Yanks found it difficult to achieve without supporting artillery. American infantrymen simply were not provided with enough firepower to establish battlefield dominance [he cites the TO&E of a US rifle company with 193 men and only 2 MGs, vs. 15 MGs + 28 SMGs in a German company, which had only 142 men]. "...Instead of forcing the Germans to keep their heads down with a large volume of M1 and BAR fire, as the American manuals demanded, it was usually the Yanks who got pinned." So fire-and-movement doctrine didn't really work for the US in WW II, and the SAWs and assault rifles other weapons we've come to know in the modern era were a result of these hard lessons -- to give infantry the firepower to make fire-and-movement possible. (Of course, by the time US infantry were fully equipped and ready to win the fire-and-movement fight for Normandy, it was the 1960s and they happened to be in Vietnam, where yet another new set of tactics for a new type of war were needed -- but that's a whole 'nother story)

Good material for the CM Wiki, seems to me.

Thanks Jon -- that's exactly the point I've been trying to make (only less eloquently) when people complain about smaller or larger scenarios in the abstract. Naturally it's a matter of personal playing taste whether one prefers to play company or platoon scale battles or larger ones. But when it comes to designing *historical* scenarios, I find that certain battles naturally lend themselves to certain scales and map sizes. Of course one could just take my map and make a totally fictional Company B battle on a piece of this map. But it would make no sense historically, for the reasons you point out. When CM gets to mechanized combat in Russia, I'd imagine the scale of maps and battles will tend to get larger, not smaller.

Fantastic!

Much better now! It could be even dustier and less shiny, for my taste. Great work.

The AI also crawls through stone walls, which I didn't realize until I watched my AI plan execute and saw the AI Germans assault that way. Actually, I would have liked them to stop and use the defensive benefit of the walls. But I didn't realize they ignore them.

I'd be OK with ordinary tanks being able to push light vehicle wrecks (trucks and jeeps) out of the way.

Well done!

But what does "on hand" mean, specifically, in a situation where an entire corps is strung out along (and confined to) a single narrow road? Unless the dozer tank happens to be right at the location where the wreck happens, then the dozer tanks themselves will be somewhere else in the column and have to deal with "traffic" to reach the scene. Again, these things took time that would often have been beyond the time scale of a CM battle. This discussion reminds me of ones involving German tank repair -- they had expert crews that dashed out to recover wrecked tanks and tow them back for repair so they could quickly return to action. Why isn't that in the game? Again, it's a logistical function that's beyond the scope of a tactical situation.

If CMFI ends in the June 1944 timeframe with the fall of Rome, then I suppose we'll be able to use an eventual Bulge module (and its updated engine) to make late-war Italy battles in the snowy Apennines, etc.

To put it another way -- once a wreck happens on Hell's Highway, the time it would have taken for a request for the dozer tank to make it back to Division and for the dozer to arrive and to clear the wreck would be longer than the time of your battle. And the dozers couldn't clear wrecks if the area is still under fire and not secure. So there's no need to have them in CM Market Garden. If a wreck happens on the highway, it remains a problem for the duration of the battle. Terrain note: It will be important to simulate the effect of the raised portions of the highway, since the embankments were too steep for vehicles to use and that's what made wrecks on the highway such a problem for the Allies. I don't know if the MG module will give us a specific raised road tile with that effect, so if it doesn't I plan to line the shoulders with impassable-to-vehicles tiles -- maybe heavy forest with no trees on it.

Bravo, Sir Tanksalot!

The North Africa book had a more compelling dramatic story, to me. Taking a green army from a shattered wreck after Kasserine and -- in only 3 months -- getting it to the point where it could take Hill 609 and (together with the Brits of course) finish the Afrika Korps is one of the most amazing military feats in history. After reading the historical AAR for this battle I'm replicating in "Flanking the Fortress," I got a much better sense of how that transformation actually happened. It wasn't just Patton coming in and kicking a**, but hard-earned lessons by small units in combats like Fondouk Pass. As the AAR describes, the 34th ID got its clock cleaned at Fondouk and then spent some intensive training time learning how to fight properly, work with tanks, etc. Those lessons really paid off in the Hill 609 campaign and the endgame in May. And it's these battles that made Sicily, Italy, and even D-Day possible. The Italy book -- though still very good -- seemed to me as wearying and repetitive to read as the actual campaign up the Boot must have felt to the participants. Just my feeling about it as a reader. I also personally disliked the fact that the Italy book ended well before the Italian campaign was won. My uncle fought with the 10th Mtn. Div in the Po River Valley campaign, and I think some of those battles should have a place in any good book about the Italian Theatre. Those vets get overlooked enough as it is. I'm looking forward to Atkinson's final volume in the trilogy, when it gets to NW Europe. He's a great writer and historian, and I'll probably read anything he writes.

Yes, the wait for CMBN 2.0 is making me crazy enough that I've finally been driven to...this. I can't be content just playing CMFI as it is, in Sicily, against the AI...and, I might add, your recent globetrotting hasn't left me much alternative! ;-D I find North Africa more appealing as a wargame theatre than Sicily, for some reason. Probably a result of reading "An Army At Dawn" (which IMHO is a far better book than Atkinson's sequel on the Italian Campaign). Also, I suppose I just find the creative process of research and historical discovery, mapping, and scenario-making more active and fun than merely playing the game -- the only "pure playing" experience that trumps it for me is playing battles within an operational-tactical campaign. I'd be happily doing that right now if the existing CMBN had been able to handle our Saint-Lo campaign without crashing, or if we had the Market Garden module now. Yes -- for example, the patrol to the final pair of hills at the end of this scenario could easily be cut off and made into a separate little night action. In fact, I might actually do this someday if no one else does [ oh no, please stop me -- this is MADNESS!]. But I wish more people would build on what's been provided in the Repository -- even just modifying a map, scaling a battle up or down, slicing off a bit to make something new, or adding some different AI to it would greatly increase and enhance the content available for the games. And it's not nearly as much work as starting something from scratch. I just make these maps/scenarios for my own hobby satisfaction, and to share them with like-minded players, however few they may be. And I tend to be persistent about things. So even when I take on a big idea for a scenario -- even if it's too big -- I start to feel responsible for it and the need to see it through drives me to finish it. I'm not even sure it's 100% enjoyable; it's more likely borderline obsessive-compulsive. But I also feel a real thrill in discovering a 60-year-old hand-drawn map and typed AAR in some forgotten Army archive and making it come alive again -- to give up it's "dead men's secrets" and take me back in time to tell me why things might have happened as they did, or might have happened differently "if only." And I start feeling more connected to the real soldiers who fought this battle and died in it, responsible to them, in a way, as their ghosts whisper to me to "just get it right."

In a fairly static defense, it's no harder than making the plan for a half-hour scenario. You just extend the time for some orders to last longer, and make the last order extend past 04:00:00. But players don't have to play the scenario for the entire maximum possible length -- in my experience, the result of a battle is usually obvious to each side within an hour or two. But in this case, the battalion had all afternoon to accomplish its mission, and I want to see how long it takes to do that without artificially forcing the battle to end. If the results are clear in less than 4 hours, then I'll shorten the battle accordingly. But I like players to be able to play on if they want to. It can also be part of the game to decide, as the US player: Do I feel I have sufficient victory points already to capture Hill 531 and then ask for ceasefire? Or should I press on and patrol to the final objectives, to earn additional points (but risk a major loss if enemy forces put up a big fight there)?

Merci beaucoup, snake eye! If you PM me your e-mail address, I will give you "share" acess to the Dropbox folder where I will maintain the playtest version of this scenario. I would greatly appreciate your taking a look at my AI plan for the Germans (I intend to make only 1 plan, since the ideal is to play this scenatio HTH). But it would also be a simple matter to make more AI plans, using the same or similar orders, simply by changing some of the execution times. Also: No, Hill 455 is not on my map. It was beyond the scope of this battalion's attack orders on 30 April. Hill 455 was in the 1st Infantry Division's sector (their attack on Hill 455 was a disaster.) The orders of the US battalion in my scenario (they were in the 34th Infantry Division) were simply to take Hill 531 (and the 609 "knob") and then patrol toward Point RR and Hill 455 to probe and assess enemy defenses there. Historically, the main attack started in midafternoon and the patrols didn't go out to that area until much later, in the evening. My scenario starts in the afternoon and is "only" 4 hours, but since CM tends to compress time, I'm still going to give the US a chance to earn some bonus points by making some "touch" objectives on Point RR and Hill 455. That will encourage the US to patrol in that direction.

Those AI plans tips are pure gold, LLF -- thanks! (saving them to my scenario tips-and-tricks file) Actually, I went whole hog already and made 15 Axis AI groups (leaving the 16th for a reinforcement group if/when I decide to allocate some later). But since it's a defensive plan, and I know the battles will center on the three main hills, it was fairly straightforward to set up. ***SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT -- STOP READING HERE IF YOU WANT THE AI TO BE A TOTAL SUPRISE*** The movements are fairly short -- basically I want the Germans defending the hilltops to HIDE for a while at first to ride out any opening Allied barrage (historically it was a 10-minute Corps/Div stonk) and let the enemy approach. Most of the really active German AI will be around Hill 531, the main US objective and the must-hold territory for the Germans. Because it's a close-quarters knife fight among the boulders and crevices, I don't need to move the Germans very far. And the concealing aspects of the terrain should help protect them when they do assault. In essence, I set up several "waves" of aggressive assaults, to clear the hill, interspersed with coordinated fallbacks to reverse-slope defenses to rest and regroup. There's also a German reserve nearby that will come in to help out at a sertain point (although it's anyone's guess whether they'll arrive at a helpful moment or just get slaughtered.) I gave each HMG team its own AI group, so they could "advance-normal" on their own from place to place among small zones (synchronized with the main waves) and simulate moves to alternate firing positions. The rest of the German force on the other hills are just there to defend and support Hill 531. HMGs and AT guns, in particular, can sit up there and ambush from long range. The Axis also have fantastic observation from Hill 609 and plenty of TRPs to call in AI artillery on the GIs, although the Germans have fewer artillery units than the Allies and ammo is limited. If all goes as I hope, we'll see a lot of infantry units stumbling into each other on the hills at very close range. The human US player will have the advantage to be able to maneuver against this, but I'm thinking the AI may score a few punches if an assault group suddenly appears in a spot where the Americans are outnumbered and/or suppressed.

Axis deployment finished and one basic AI plan for them, too -- Now to deploy the Yanks and try my luck...

Well, you've inspired me to at least try and make some defensive AI for the Germans in this scenario.

Also, I know there's a vocal faction on the boards that dislikes larger maps/scenarios. In this case, I gave this scenario the map and scale of forces I felt it needed to represent the historical battle accurately, and to re-create the tactical problem. These were mutually supporting German hill positions, and a major challenge of this attack for the US commander was how to deal with all the German support fire coming from all the other hills, over such a wide-open area. I think it's much easier to make successful small scenarios in close terrain or bocage, where smaller units often fought in isolation. But more open terrain tends to lead naturally to bigger-scale scenarios, IMHO. Market-Garden probably won't pose this problem as much, despite the flat and open terrain of Holland. That's because so many of the fights happened as flare-ups between isolated forces all along the corridor.

I suppose I could try, but it would be my first effort and would most likely suck. True, the Germans were somewhat static but they counterattacked aggressively -- and how would that be coded into AI plans when the AI can't react to a lost position? It would have to be done all through timing, guessing where the GIs would be at particular points in the fighting. Suggestions? If there's anyone who's good at AI and wants to try adding it to the scenario, I'd be happy to turn it over once I have the OOB and briefing finished.

LOL -- I agree, LLF. Too many wartime US reports tend to describe every German unit they faced as "fanatical Nazis." I'd make the Germans in this scenario High motivation, I think. Even though they knew it was the endgame in Tunisia, I think they still believed they would win the war. These Barenthin troops really were crack soldiers, though. "Fallschirmjäger Regiment Barenthin, was called 'perhaps the best German troops in Africa' by none other than General Harold Alexander, Commander of the Allied 18th Army Group. (according to this wiki site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_von_Broich/von_Manteuffel ) But I've been having a devil of a time ascertaining the exact OOB for the Barenthin troops that faced the 1/125th at Hill 531 that day, or even how many Germans were actually on the battlefield. Any help in that from folks on the forum would be much appreciated.

Thanks! The AAR is really a good read -- it's one of the best-written battalion AARs I've come across. You really get a feel for the action, and anyone playing the scenario will get a lot of insight about the tactics required. I'm going to make the US battalion commander a +2 leader -- he led the key attack personally and really made a difference, I think. The US troops will be Regular by this time in the campaign, but tired and only average motivation. US Hint: Use LOTs of smoke! German hint: Keep reserves to counterattack every US gain immediately and vigorously. For those who played CMAK: There was a Hill 609 scenario by a player named Iron Duke. I never played it, and mine is not based directly on that map or scenario, but if you liked that one you'll probably like this one.

Now for some in-game looks at the terrain: What the German FOs would see from "The Knob" on Hill 609, looking along friendly lines toward Point RR and Hill 455. The spring rains are over but N. Tunisia is still very green. This is the wheat-growing belt. Wheat fields here have the hedge-and-cactus borders typical of this region (it's what Tunisians used instead of barbed wire, to keep animals out of the crops). It might look like nice tank country at first, but all the valleys and roads are deathtraps -- the key terrain here is the hilltops, which can fire on anything that moves in the areas below. The hills themselves are solid rock -- making it impossible to dig in. This was an infantry battle, where the fighting was boulder-to-boulder and it often came down to grenades and bayonets at close range. Panning around to look from The Knob toward the US starting positions: The rocky hills were criscrossed by ancient stone walls, making it even better terrain for the defender. Center left is Hill 531, the main US objective. To the right are hills 529 and 530, where the Americans started from the rear slopes. The "saddle" between those hills was a key approach route to Hill 531, but the Germans had all the obvious paths and roads in the valleys wired and mined, with TRPs on everything and heavy weapons covering them. The German defenders were the fanatical Regiment Barenthin, a formation cobbled together from Luftwaffe and FJ troops. They will have loads of HMGs, mortars, and high motivation. But they will be spread somewhat thin for the area they have to cover. I may start them with one company + heavy weapons, and then have a few reinforcing platoons arrive later. This will be an infantry-only HTH-only scenario, with no AI in it. It would also be ideal for a 2 or 3 vs. 1 PBEM, with several US players taking companies against a single German player. Here's the historical AAR, in PDF in the US Army archives: http://www.benning.army.mil/library/content/Virtual/Donovanpapers/wwii/STUP2/BrandtArnold%20N.%20MAJ.pdf I'd be interested in comments, and to hear from those interested in playtesting this.

A smaller scale map, from the historical AAR, showing the attack routes of each US company ("K" on the map stands for the "knob" of Hill 609 that overlooked the battlefield: And here's an in-game overhead of the scenario map -- a 1,776m x 2,672m battlefield covering the unit boundaries of this 1/135th Infantry mission: The same map in the Scenario Editor: (more...)