Broadsword56

I don't have the official in-game victory screen handy, but here's the final tally from the Excel file I used to keep track of my US forces during the game: ---

I noticed from the Wiki site that CMBN was released May 17, 2011. So the first anniversary is almost upon us. And a great year of gaming it's been.

I'm sure you will (Although it may be awhile yet -- this op-tac campaign has been going on for some 9 months, I think, and just the Hamel Vallee battle took over a month for us to play out). What I really hope is that those who enoyed this AAR will feel encouraged and inspired to post some of their own. I enjoy reading/seeing a good war story on these forums more than anything else. And if more people are inspired to try making operational-tactical campaigns of their own using a boardgame with CMBN, I'm always happy to share anything from my experiences that might help.

What's that circular thing on the roof of the cab? A hatch? Maybe for an option to mount a MG or get better observation?

Just remembered a lingering question from this battle: Why the Germans never targeted the Hotel au Heup horse farm complex on top of Hill 108. Aside from some early and ineffective mortaring near it, the hilltop never seemed to be specifically targeted. I had my main FO in the upper story of the house with the ruined upper story through the entire battle, and while his LOS wasn't ideal it was very good for quite a way back into the German side. The farm was also a rally point, movement crossroads, mortar position, and anchor to the US position throughout the battle. Was it a matter of conserving ammo and hitting only spotted troops? OTOH, since the Germans won I guess that proves the right choice was made...

Cool idea about the pixel-runner. Would be even more fesible if, say, the HQ support teams could split off individual soldiers for this. About my op-tac campaign system: It's definitely not for everybody. I developed it because it fit my own needs and tastes. I'm all about historical play, historical tactics and maps of real places -- in other words, to push the envelope of the game to make it as much a "time machine" as possible. It's also great to run a solitaire op campaign because you can play it as you want and not have to organize and maintain teams, etc. But by inviting good players in for specific battles (like sburke) I also get to enjoy the social benefits of HTH at the same time. I also enjoy mapping, so while I'm not pleased that it takes me weeks to make a good map, I find the experience of seeing and playing on the real terrain doubles the thrill of CMBN for me. It's the experience I always dreamed about back in the old hex-and-counter days, when I squinted at those map symbols or tank sihouettes trying so hard to imagine what the action would just played really would have looked like. Once the Saint-Lo campaign ends, I have an Operation Epsom op-tac campaign set up and already started to use with the CW module, using Panzer Grenadier:Beyond Normandy (Avalanche Press, counters are platoons). And for the Market Garden module I'm going to use MMP's "Where Eagles Dare" (counters are companies) and just play the Hell's Highway portion of the campaign.

In real life, from what I've read, the only way the Allied tankers ever really found to cope was to area-fire every hedge and bush and building in sight as they moved. I also think the real-life Allied tankers were more prone than we are to pull back at the first sign of dismounted AT teams and leave the infantry to fend for themselves. Their attitude seemed to be: "If the infantry won't do their jobs and flush out the 'shreck teams ahead of us, then they can't expect us to stay here and risk our necks for them." But maybe I'm more infantry-centric in my POV. In the game, I know I tend to leave my tanks exposed to danger more than I ought to.

Yes, this battle has been just like a chapter out of the "Normandiefront" book! What kills me is that I now realize my late armored-infantry attack on sburke's right flank actually was working quite well in several respects -- it was indeed the right move at the right place -- and if it had managed to reach the highway and the Manor, it might well have succeeded in grabbing a corner of the objective before the battle ended. But the US casualty toll was just already too high by that point, so the fatal problem was time -- it happened just too late in the day, casualty-wise. And that final turn of German artillery on the infantry, plus three lost tanks, were losses the Americans could no longer afford at that point. On the other hand -- unless I somehow shattered the German force, the Americans had no real chance of capturing and holding the entire objective area, even if they had 2 or 3 hours left to attempt it. There just wouldn't have been enough cohesive US squads left to do it. The most I was hoping for was to reach a corner of the objective or bite off a small initial piece of it, then end the battle and hope that the op layer would give this battalion a chance to activate immediately again and resume the fight the same day in a "Round 2." By the way: After the airstrike wiped out KG Lang, I expected some observers to wonder: Duh -- why the Americans didn't just launch the airstrikes FIRST, then let the 3/320th walk over their riddled bodies to Hill 122? I should point out that the op layer game (Saint-Lo) has a built-in, realistic risk to using allied airpower tactically, within 600 yards of one's own troops. If you roll a "5" on the airstrike column, the casualties hit only friendly troops -- and any friendly unit within 2 hexes is potentially subject to this. So, based on the on-paper odds and force matchups, it seemed a far better risk-reward option to go with the intensive ground attack, keeping the air in reserve to follow up or use elsewhere. About the op layer: I have posted some details about how we've been doing this, in various places on the forum, over the past year. I'm delighted that there seems to be renewed interest. Would you rather I start a new thread (i.e., How I've Run an Op-Tac Campaign using Hex-and-Counter wargame")? Or, should I just find one of the threads where I've posted about this before and bump it with some new material, a link to this AAR, and links to things like the conversion rules and the relevant boardgame sites on Boardgamegeek?

A fascinating last chapter to the Hamel Vallee battle story remains to be told -- a tragic one for both sides that will make July 16, 1944, a date oft-remembered in the stories told to future generations... By afternoon, the US 3/320th Infantry abandoned its futile and costly assault on Hamel Vallee. So the higher HQ did what Americans usually do in these situations: call in airstrikes to blast the defenders out. The exhausted Germans of KG Lang could barely see the Thunderbolts swooping in through the lingering smoke of battle -- but they certainly heard and felt the effects of two massive sorties. The first one decimated the battalion; the second one shattered it and sent the survivors fleeing for Saint-Lo. Incredibly, the enemy that had blocked the Americans' progress toward Hill 122 so stubbornly was gone! And just as incredibly, the Americans proved unable to exploit this decisive moment -- their best opportunity in the six days of the Saint-Lo campaign thus far. The 3/320th was too battered and exhausted to move. And the only only other two US units in a position to rush the gap to Hill 122 both failed their activation dierolls. So -- just as happened in the real campaign -- the Americans' slowness and command problems gave the Germans just enough time to rush another unit to Hamel Vallee and shut the door again. A double tragedy: For the brave Germans of KG Lang, who outfought the GIs only to be "unfairly" assailed from above; and for all those Americans still lying in the orchards and wheatfields of Hamel Vallee, whose sacrifices were nearly redeemed -- then wasted. But this battle was only one event in a day's worth of fighting over this part of Normandy. Once the door to Hill 122 closed again, the campaign's spotlight shifted to upheavals on the east and west ends of the XIX Corps sector: [Hamel Vallee is the spot with the yellow explosion line around it. The dotted red line represents the German front line at the start of July 16, and the solid orange line represents the German front line at the end of the day. White arrows are American movements and attacks.] A new American unit -- the 1/175th Infantry -- arrived in the sector and raced down the Isigny-Saint-Lo Highway toward the front to join the push for Hill 122. But the German OP atop Hill 122 had a perfect view of their approach march and called down devastating artillery fire, disrupting the battalion and ending its activities for the rest of the day. Nevertheless, the imminent threat to Hill 122 convinced the German command it was time to withdraw from the salient of the Carillon heights and shorten their lines. The withdrawal was orderly and several units even managed to entrench in new positions. But vigorous attacks by the two other regiments of the US 35th Infantry Division drove back the German left flank, and posed a threat to open the Carentan-to-Saint Lo highway. And a worse crisis developed on the German right flank, where the 3FJ Division simply didn't have enough men left to maintain a solid line. Even though the Germans managed to anchor their far right flank, several holes opened around Le Calvais, St Andre de l'Epine, and the critical Martinville ridge -- a spur leading right into the NE suburbs of Saint-Lo.

Thanks StoneAge -- your HTML Mapping Tool is likely to get a real workout in the later stages of this campaign, since we will soon have fought our way off the south edge of my original XIX Corps master map. The US progress in our op-tac campaign is running about 1 day behind the historical results -- in reality the 35th Infantry Division captured Hill 122 by the end of July 16. In our game it looks like July 16 will end with US lines still quite a bit north of that.

And now we can better understand how even trained artillery spotters can sometimes transpose a map coordinate, or accidentally call fire down on their own position -- all of which has happened on real battlefields. But you can bet I'll never make the tree-branch or wind-direction error in a CMBN battle again! (Like a virus, I grow more deadly after each battle...mehheheheh)

To recap: The armor-infantry assault encountered no initial opposition. It ripped through the orchards, roared up the sunken road, and bore down on Hamel Vallee like a tornado. But their smoke cover was mis-targeted, and a friendly-fire tragedy started to throw the plan off kilter. The attack plan depended on a speedy advance to the highway and a lightning breakout. But instead, the suppressions, pins and shaken morale of several units wasted a full turn while they rallied and tried to get moving again. I knew the Germans would try to stop the attack with mortars and artillery. But if the attack moved quickly enough, the Germans didn't know the exact direction of the attack, and if and no German FOs could get eyes on the column, the shells might well fall on empty ground behind them. But the delay was a fatal one -- the first HE rounds landed squarely among the advancing infantry: At that point the attack was effectively over. All those Shermans would be helpless without advance infantry to screen them. And then, suddenly, three tanks brewed up in a single turn. All I had to show for this entire battle so far was one Marder. A few more minutes of this armor battle and German shelling would certainly push US losses beyond the critical 40% threshold, triggering a step loss to the unit in the operational game.* So, very reluctantly, I broke off the attack and ceded the battlefield to sburke and KG Lang. I'm sure that in a standalone battle, a US player almost certainly would have continued this attack because it would have been fun to see how it turned out, and because the developing armor battle around Hamel Vallee would have been cool to watch. But here we see the ways an operational layer affects the tactical one -- I need this battalion to be able to fight another day. I need these armor assets because the division only has so many Sherman companies available. And, in an operational game, there are other ways to achieve goals -- airpower, maneuver, etc. Many, many other things were happening in the XIX Corps area while this battle was going on. So, stay tuned as we return to the bigger picture and see happened on the rest of July 16, 1944, after KG Lang and the 3/320th Infantry met in this valley of death... *For those curious about how we apply this, here's the relevant section of the op-tac coversion rules in use for this campaign: --- 7.3 Cohesion step losses and strengths Combat losses have a greater effect on a unit’s ability to fight than just the loss of personnel. Each CMBN battle scenario imposes overall loss thresholds, representing the cohesion “breakpoint” for the type of mission the unit is doing. Losses are the total of KIA + WIA +POW. 7.3.1 Battalion breakpoints: At the end of CMBN battles, players check who occupies the objective, and whether any participating units should take a step loss. Based on the overall losses (KIA + WIA + POW), at the end of the battle, any battalion or company that lost over a certain percentage of personnel strength should go back into the boardgame with a step loss or other penalties, as follows: 7.3.1.1 Attacking battalions: Each 40% in personnel losses per attacking battalion (average for the entire battalion at the end of a CMBN battle) triggers the following: *1 step loss; *Permanent reductions in leadership (1 level lower than standard); *Permanent reduction in motivation (1 level lower than standard). Attacking battalions that lose 33%-39% of personnel in a single battle suffer no step loss, but they do suffer the permanent reductions in leadership and motivation. 7.3.1.2 Defending battalions: Each 80% casualties per defending battalion (average for the entire battalion at the end of a CMBN battle) triggers 1 step loss. Defending battalions that lose 50-79% of personnel in a single battle suffer no step loss, but they do suffer the permanent reductions in leadership and motivation, as in 7.3.1.1. 7.3.2 Company and asset unit breakpoints: 7.3.2.1 Attacking companies and assets: If total size of a player’s starting force was less than battalion, each 35% casualties per company or asset triggers one step loss (elimination) of that company or asset. Attacking companies or assets that lose 26-34% of personnel in a single battle suffer no step loss, but they do suffer the permanent reductions in leadership and motivation (as in 7.3.1.1) long as they remain a separate company. [if they later “builds up” with its fellow companies to reconstitute its parent battalion, these penalties end and the company carries the ratings of its parent battalion.] 7.3.2.2 Defending companies and assets: If total size of a player’s starting force was less than battalion, each 70% casualties per company or asset triggers one step loss (elimination) of that company or asset. Defending companies or assets that lose 50-69% of personnel in a single battle suffer no step loss, but they do suffer the permanent reductions in leadership and motivation (as in 7.3.1.1) as long as they remain a separate company. [if the company later “builds up” with its fellow companies to reconstitute its parent battalion, these penalties end and the company carries the ratings of its parent battalion.] ---

Some screenshots of my armor-infantry assault as it advanced to contact(my favorite sequence of this battle)... Infantry leads the way through the orchards and hedgerows toward the D-91 highway: My tanks and infantry area-fired the heck out of every possible German hiding place along their attack route. They never encountered any opposition, however, and through the first two hedgerows the Americans progressed with zero casualties to tanks or infantry. This seemed almost too good to be true -- could the attack be hitting an undefended sector? Had the HE bombardment wiped out the forces ahead? A double run of good luck on the sunken road: As the infantry scounted ahead, no sign of mines or enemy! Creative positioning for covering area fire from one of my tanks in the sunken road: (I swear that's exactly what my dog looks like when she puts her paws up on the windowsill to bark at a squirrel!) But then came the first casualties -- again it was a self-inflicted error: friendly fire. I've made it a rule NEVER to use TARGET for tanks when firing over the heads of friendly troops if there's any trees in the way or even nearby. But for some reason I got overaggressive and set one of my tanks to area TARGET some covering fire -- on a path that I could see went cleanly thought the orchard and didn't touch any trees. But of course I forgot about the parts of trees that are abstracted and not visible to the naked eye -- and sure enough, an HE shell from the tank did a treeburst right above my tightly-packed infantry. At least three or four teams were affected -- total 2 KIA 3 WIA, and even worse was the morale/suppression effect on what until then had been aggressively attacking troops.

An elevated view of the US attack as it went in: The American troops felt unstoppable when they looked at this array of armor and firepower moving in a concentrated spearhead. You see the force of 4 tanks starting up the sunken road, and just to the right of it the other half of the US armor starting to move through the first breach on its parallel route. The Americans expected the sunken road to be defended, mined, or at least covered by some outposts. So the tanks there sat while two or three infantry teams felt their way to the far end of it -- to make sure the tankers wouldn't find a StuG or an 88 barrel waiting for them at the other end! On the parallel route through the orchards, engineers would have to blast breaches in three hedgerows before the final one -- which would be the breakout point for the attacks across the highway, through the walled orchard complex, and up into the objective. I knew the Germans had spotted one or more tanks at the formup point. My biggest fear was an attack or a bombardment of this force at the formup point -- the time of maximum vilnerability, when the infantry was dismounting trucks, scouts just starting to clear the attack route, etc. The sniper kill on one of the tank commanders indicated the attack would not be a total surprise. But even now, the Germans still might not know exactly where the attack was going in. And, even if they had figured out the plan, once the breaching and advanching started, and the supporting artillery was falling, I felt optimistic that the Germans would be unable to react to the attack and counter it until it was too late. Everything started according to plan -- except one important detail: Smoke. I knew the cluster of buldings just past the sunken road would have LOS onto the left flank of my entire force, once they reached the highway. So it not only got a massive pasting from 105mm HE, but was supposed to be under constant smoke cover once my spearhead neared the final hedgerow and the sunken road exit. But with smoke, one always has to factor in the wind. The wind arrow was pointing left, and I forgot that the arrow points to where the wind is FROM, not the direction it's blowing. So I thought I was being clever by placing my barrage beyond the right side of this image, where it would drift left and cover the buildings by the time my forces needed the smoke to be there. If the timing ended up being a little off, I reasoned, my tanks could shoot smoke here and there to supplement the smoke barrage. As it turned out the smoke never reached the intended area and was largely wasted.

Yes, this is one of those "best practices" topics for map makers. It's always a designer's option how many bocage gaps to place and where/how to place them. But I think we have a pretty good consensus on the forums that gaps should be marked in some way. Different mappers have evolved different ways of doing this. Originally I marked all gaps with a dirt tile. It's quite visible that way. But now I've evolved a bit into marking some with dirt, some with mud, and some with marsh. I like using marsh, in particular, because it not only slows the infantry down and tires them a bit more realistically as they crawl through, but it adds a bit of its own vegetation to the tile. The marsh-marked gaps are slightly harder to spot, however -- from an elevated view they appear as slightly darkened ground. If you download my Hamel Vallee map/scenario from the Repository, you'll see this variety of bocage gaps in it. Also: Don't be afraid that by placing gaps that you're "nerfing" the bocage -- in practice we've found that the bocage is still plenty frustrating to move and attack through. During battle, the gaps never seem to be quite where you need them to be. And of course the enemy knows them too, so you have to assume the ones in contested areas are likely covered by enemy MGs, etc. When you're mapping, just try to think like a farmer and make sure every field, orchard or whatever has a logical gap to move into and out of it, and think about the likely movement paths that would extend out from your farms or hamlets into the surrounding countryside.

Not sure if the American team even had grenades to toss, or more than just one. I'd have to check the turn. But they were never sent to that hedge as an assault force. They'd been sneaking up the highway and were just hunting to the that spot to peer into a little orchard, then deploy their MG to help protect that flank so the Sherman 76 could take position where it was with less danger from dismounted AT teams.

But there was time pressure -- of a sort -- that weighed heavily on American actions at this point, even though the Germans would not have known about it. Despite all the hours remaining on the clock, my casualty ticker was getting close to the end. According to our op-tac campaign rules, a battalion on the attack loses one of its two steps if its combined losses (KIA + WIA + POW) hit 40% or more (and if the battalion was already reduced and had only 1 step left, it's eliminated). That disastrous frontal attack in the center had already pushed US casualties up to around 30%. And with each passing turn, the mortar shells, snipers and brewed tanks in ther sectors of the battlefield were costing the Americans a slow but steady additional loss of lives. It's one thing to attack and fail to gain the objective -- but it's far worse to fail at the objective AND have the battalion weakened for the remainder of the campaign. That meant the American armored flank attack -- for all its apparent boldness -- had an exceedingly thin margin for error. I knew I'd be forced to break off the attack if it hit any significant resistance and began to take any real casualties. Or, even if my flank attack went well, I realized I'd have to break it off anyway if it took so long that my losses elsewhere on the battlefield got too high in the meantime. So it was really a longshot gamble that had to pay off immediately, or not at all...

Now I'm getting as excited reading the AAR as everyone else -- and I was there! Only just now did the FOW lift a bit more and did I learn the Germans had only 3 Marders and a Pak40 to oppose my new flank attack! I'm glad Molek saw only 3 tanks -- but I would have loved to hear your reaction if you'd seen then just how much armor was coming at you on that flank. Glad to know my "steel curtain" of artillery really did work close to plan to isolate the attack area. I only wish my smoke plan had worked as intended too -- but more on that later.

Wow. I think it's fair to say this is one of those times when an individual soldier (Molek) altered the course of history. I can only wonder how things would have played out if Molek had arrived at his first scouting position just one turn later -- or even 30 seconds later, at a moment when my patrol happened to be prone on a listening halt, with weapons ready? Or if the GIs in that patrol had been fitter and I'd been able to push them along their patrol route a little faster? Losing tactical surprise just then cost me at least half the value of my Plan B for attack. When I saw the man in the patrol get hit ( and it was a dramatic sniper shot -- a single report of a rifle, and the sight of the American literally blown off his feet) I knew I had to keep my recon screen in place at that little orchard, otherwise Germans would be able to get LOS into my attack column on the march. I thought I'd succeeded, until I heard those rounds plink off one of the tanks. It was too late to call off the attack, though. I just ordered all units to speed up and knew I needed to get the attack launched before the Germans could act on the information they now had about it.

I'm going to skip the narrative ahead a bit from here, because I think by now it's clear to everyone that the US setpiece attack on those twin orchards in the center, between the two crossroads, was a colossal failure. Not only did all three US rifle companies suffer over 15-20% casualties within the first 40 minutes of battle; their losses reached to 25-35% when they got hit with airburst artillery during their panicked attempt to fall back to the start line. Just look at that screenshot in the opening post, which was taken in the aftermath of the shelling, and you'll get the idea of what the next dozen or more turns looked like if you happened to be wearing Olive Drab. Normally, in a one-off CMBN battle, that would be the end of it. But we're in an operational-tactical campaign here. It's July 16, and the Americans have to capture Saint-Lo by the end of July 18 or they lose. This reinforced battalion represents the 35th Infantry division's main effort today. They've thrown the kitchen sink at Hamel Vallee, and the battalion commander is getting heat from above -- telling him to kick in the g** d** door and get on that objective -- NOW! So, Colonel, what would YOU do now? You can't just break off the Yes, the setpiece frontal attack was probably a bad idea -- and you tried to warn them back at Division that it wouldn't work. But orders are orders, and it's too late for that now. Time to improvise a way to win -- show those know-it-alls at HQ what a true combat commander is made of. The company commanders gather around the Colonel as he rolls the map out onto a tree stump... "We've lost a lot of men but we've hit the Germans hard," says the Colonel. Forced them to engage heavily all along our front. Now it's time to "hit 'em where they ain't." Instead of slowly feeling our way around to probe for a gap somewhere, we'll make a lightning strike in an entirely new spot. "We still have our armored reserve -- 8 or 9 Shermans, including a Rhino. The AT platoon has its guns and trucks, so they can join the attack and transport 2/L Company, which has been in battalion reserve. There's also the reserve Engineer platoon with its demo charges and its truck. We've still got four fresh ammo bearer teams from Weapons Company we can reassign as light infantry. And finally we have half a dozen jeeps from the various HQ platoons and support elements we can use for recon" "So here's where we go in," the Colonel says, stabbing his finger into the map: "This sunken road gives a short, covered route right into the corner of the objective. Once it's cleared by some infantry scouts we can dash armor right up it and hit the enemy in force before he can react. "Engineers and the Rhino can blast a parallel route just to the right of the road. That will be the infantry's route, supported by the other half of the tanks so we don't get stuck if the road gets blocked. The sunken road gives the infantry a secure left flank as they advance. And the hedgerow lines help give them cover as they go. "Once the parallel attacks reach the D-91 highway, there's an orchard complex between the highway and the objective. It's got a series of lateral stone walls that make perfect cover for advancing infantry, and it's open enough to allow supporting fire by tanks. "The key to this plan will be surprise and speed. There's a cluster of buildings at the right end of Hamel Vallee that has LOS onto our left flank once we reach the highway. The FO will travel with the attack and keep that compound under constant artillery pounding, and hit it with smoke so it's screened. In fact we'll put the entire orchard into an isolation box, with suppresive HE inside it and blocking barrages around it to keep out reinforcements." "We know the enemy is tired, outnumbered, and doesn't have the transport or the armored punch we've got. We know he's got a lot of men fighting on the wrong end of the battlefield, and no easy or quick way to get them over to Hamel Vallee. "So by attacking there quickly and in strength, we force the enemy to stretch his defenses across the entire AO. And he'll be having to move and react to us this time, instead of sitting in his positions and waiting for us to come to him."

Yes, this battle took well over a month, with both of us sending out approximately two turns a day. Loved every minute of it.

Also, if you miss the look of an interior floor on the ground level, all you have to do is change the ground type under the house to something like paving stones in the map editor. Then it will look like a floor again and you won't see grass indoors.

As you can see from sburke's last image, the US main attack has now jumped off and is heading for the highway. Note the hatchet-shaped wheatfield complex just below the German front line: From the explosion debris, you can see the US rolling barrage is hitting the rear of those wheatfields. But it really needs to be hitting the FRONT of the wheatfields, where the Germans are lying in wait. That's the cost of delay -- the barrage has moved on according to schedule, but the GIs don't realize they're about to make an unsupported frontal attack into the teeth of a prepared defensive line. The diversionary attack on the far left has been a smashing success. But the US force committed to it -- a Stuart platoon and two platoons of L Company -- aren't enough to do much more than penetrate into the wheatfields and threaten from that area. As it happened nearly all the infantry in that sector were "broken" by this time, as a result of the battles for the orchard and the inevitable retaliatory German post-withdrawal mortaring. Also, a number of the Stuarts (at least 3 by now, including an important Rhino) that rushed to the doggies' assistance have been destroyed by StuGs. The surviving Stuarts in that sector have pulled into defensive and safer positions, while the infantry tries to reorganize and proceed with combing those cut-off Germans out of the wheat.

The US perspective thus far: Turn 20 -- Everything going close to plan so far, with the diversionary probe on my right reaching the D91 highway under supporting fire from a Sherman platoon on the hilltop at HOTEL AU HEUP. In the center, you can see a thick line of troops waiting in their foxholes for the jumpoff. Scout and recon teams form a thin screen, feeling their way toward the highway and trying to spot/flush out any lurking snipers, outposts and AT teams. The rolling barrage has just lifted and it's time to make the first bound with my main force. But there's a problem: German outposts and snipers are raising hell with my scouts in the center. Of the 9 or 10 icons you can see in my recon screen, at least two are pinned, another is suppressed, and another is shaken. I can't really support them with covering fire from my foxhole line (no LOS) and I don't want to expose my main body of troops or feed them into the battle piecemeal. I need that diversionary attack on my right to gain a position across the D-91 highway, capture the orchard at the far right, and then angle through the the wheatfields. That's where they can threaten to enfilade the German center positions at the same time as my main body attacks from the front. Otherwise it's just a predictable frontal assault in the center, and too easy for the Germans to defend against. Turn 28 -- About 3 minutes now until my rolling barrage starts to fall and my 2-company attack in the center jumps off. But thinga are falling behind schedule -- the scouts in the advance screen should have cleared past the D-91 highway by now up to the twin orchards. Instead they remain bogged down and picked off by sniping and mortaring and haven't even cleared the highway yet. So it looks like I'll have to fight my way to was was supposed to be my start line. By the time I get there, the rolling barrage will have lifted and the Germans under it will have recovered. The diversionary attack force on my right have reached their orchard. But the minute they breach the orchard hedgerow and start to move in, they hit a withering fire from Germans and StuGs on the far side of the orchard's rear hedgerows... The GIs are almost all pinned or suppressed, and it's too late to fall back. So they hide, pop smoke, and make a 911 call to their supporting Stuarts (who are making their way down from Hill 108 behind them).

Let's not forget to leave some room for the imagination and the fortunes of war. A glint of sunlight on a piece of metal, or a movement at a certain moment, could have caught the tank commander's eye just as he happened to be scanning in that direction. No, CMBN doesn't model such things explicitly, but thegame's level of abstraction allows for these sorts of unusual-but-plausible things to happen. That's the fun and beauty of the game, to me. If the outcome of events were always 2+2=4 or as predictable as a boardgame CRT, it wouldn't feel nearly as much like the real thing.