Broadsword56

Great point! In the operational campaign I'm running now using a boardgame (Saint-Lo), it generated a CMBN battle where a defending German company is cut off and facing a mop-up attack by a US force. Normally the op layer would give the defender access to some defensive artillery from his parent division But in this case, those guns had already used up all their available fire missions responding to crises elsewhere on the front, doing interdiction fire, etc., so the Germans have no artillery support at all. [i know that a scenario like this sounds like no fun at all to many of you, but you'd be amazed at how much fun some of these unbalanced and weird little missions can be when played HTH. We've often found that even with a 3:1 personnel advantage and attached armor/engineer assets, an attacking force in the Bocage can often fail to destroy/dislodge a stubborn defender who's dug-in and has plenty of mines and barbed wire, especially when required to do so with less than 35% attacker casualties.]

Yes, Human (Allied) vs. AI was my plan. Or HTH. The German panzer reinforcements would have a wide variable in their arrival time, so that would add more uncertainty to the mix. How do you simulate "sleeping" defender units in CMBN? Just set the AI to activate and move them gradually at staggered times?

Great suggestions! Since the Dieppe raid (of which Pourville was a part) was a costly disaster, that's a given and it would be unrealistic to change that aspect. So I wouldn't require too many Allied units to successfully exit -- it would be more the nature of a bonus if the Allies can actually evacuate a few at the end of the mission, since it will be very hard to return to that beach and survive there. What's nice about the Nissenthall mission is that it gives a way for an Allied player to have a small scenario victory in the middle of what was a lost cause, overall. I also think it would be fun to have a scenario where the tactics are so different from the usual "find 'em, fix 'em, flank 'em." If done correctly, it would be highly suspenseful from start to finish. The Leasor book has a good scale map, too. So I'm feeling inspired. Unfortunately, I'm more of a mapper and I have no idea how to go about coding the German AI. I may need a collaborator to see this one through. Any more ideas? Let's hear from some of you Canadians out there!

Now that the Commonwealth module is getting closer, I'm re-launching a discussion I posted a few months back -- it's about a scenario idea and the best ways to set victory conditions for it. The victory conditions would be complex, and that's the main thing holding me back. I'm not sure whether good ones can be made for this situation within the limits of CMBN: "During the Dieppe raid, radar technician Flight Sergeant Jack Nissenthal was assigned to a top-secret mission to learn about Freya [A German radar station on the coast]. Members of the South Saskatchewan Regiment escorted Nissenthal on the raid. Because his extensive knowledge of radar systems could be a significant asset to the enemy, the Regiment was [secretly] ordered to kill him rather than allow him to be captured. Nissenthal and his escorts landed near the town of Pourville and made their way to their intended target, the radar station at Caude-Côté. Unable to penetrate the heavily fortified station, Nissenthal did the next best thing and cut its phone lines to the German forces. The German personnel at the radar station were forced to use radio communication during the battle. R.A.F. listeners in England monitored this radio traffic and learned a great deal about Freya's capabilities. The Allied armies thus gained a vital tactical advantage, the ability to jam German radar. Countless allied airmen owe their lives to the Dieppe raid. Nissenthal and at least some of the South Saskatchewan Regiment returned safely to England. Others were not so fortunate and were among the many killed or captured at Dieppe." [The raid on the radar station is described in thrilling detail in the book, "Green Beach," by James Leasor. ] I'm thinking this could be a challenging and fun CMBN scenario. But how to set up some good victory conditions for a situation like this? Idea #1 -- Make Jack Nissenthall a one-man unit, U1 (are there any units in the game that can be reduced in strength to be a single guy)? Idea #2 -- Make the radar hut a "touch objective" for the Allied side. Ground rule for the scenario is that only Nissenthall is allowed to touch it (since the game won't let us set touch points for only one unit) Set the points for it so high that the Allied player can't win unless Nissenthall touches the radar hut. Idea #3 -- But give the German player a "destroy unit" objective on Nissenthall, so that the Germans automatically win if Nissenthall is killed or captured. Idea #4 -- In real life, if things started going badly, the Allied troops had to decide whether to keep pressing on to the radar hut, or to kill Nissenthall themselves if he seemed about to be captured. In CMBN, if the Canadians kill Nissenthall themselves the Germans would get the points! So that won't work. Any other thoughts on how to deal with this Allied "bailout" contingency? Idea #5 -- Even if Nissenthall achieves the objective, he and his escorts still have to fight their way back to the extraction point back at the beach. The beach would be an exit objective, and the German side would gain points for Allied units that fail to exit. There's a lot of suspense in the predawn beach landing, trying not to arouse the sleeping Germans, trying to protect Nissenthall so he can reach the radar hut under fire, and the race to complete the mission before a reinforcing German panzer detachment arrives from inland. Does this sound like fun?

Speaking of Google Earth and your campaign maps in this area, Paper Tiger... One huge favor you and BFC could do for us, if you would be so inclined, would be to post a Google Earth screenshot showing the boundaries of the areas that your authentic maps are covering (using white outlined polygons, for example, and ideally listing the GPS coordinates of the NW and SE corners) This would help players orient themselves to the sites of battles -- and for the rest of the mapping community, it would show us exactly where we might need to make maps of our own to fill in any gaps. For example -- I've got the whole Epsom-Hill 112-Jupiter area on 200m per hex wargame maps from Panzer Grenadier (Avalanche Press), for use as an operational layer. But I'm going to wait and see what parts of this area BFC is covering before I make any CMBN battle maps of my own for it.

One thing I've noticed in making my La Nicollerie and Choisy maps from Google Earth is that farms aren't labeled directly -- but if you turn on all the labels for roads as well as places, and zoom way in, look for whatever little road or lane leads into a farm. Usually the road bears the name of that farm (La Nicollerie) or hamlet (Hameau Choisy). In Normandy (and I suppose in Calvados too), farm names tend to start with "Le XXX" or "La XXX" or "Hotel XXX."

I have no idea how to code this, but here's the basic concept of how I would imagine that tool working: 1. Input any Google Earth image you want up to 4km x 4km as an rgb color image. 2. The tool breaks the image into 8m x 8m tiles. 3. Within each tile, the tool looks at the rgb value and compares that value to the rgb value of an existing CMBN tile type (grass, light woods, etc). It should be a pretty basic filter that defines most areas as grass, but will recognize a stark contrast such as a blonde wheatfield or a forest, water, or the gray of a built-up area. The hard part would be setting the "cutoff values" for each tile type, so that the tool generates a useful basic map pattern. If the filter is too tight, it will introduce a lot of wrong terrain and not be a useful tool. If the rgb filter is too loose, it won't capture enough terrain types. 4. The tool assigns each tile type to a spreadsheet cell, as in the existing version, and outputs a .csv file that either makes a CM x 1 map like the existing tool, which can then be turned into CMx2, or maybe someday BFC gives us a way to import the .csv files directly into the CMx2 editor.

This is such groundbreaking work -- thank you for developing this tool. A version that "reads" Google Earth imagery -- even imperfectly -- and turns it into CM x2 tiles would be the Holy Grail for generating authentic maps quickly. Just having all the basic land patterns in place in the Editor, already scaled, would make mapping go faster, because all you'd have to do is "clean up" and edit the tile types, and add elevations, to get the basic map ready for placing objects.

Is it Holland?

Have you seen this happen consistently, or even more than once? What was the experience level of the tank crew and its leader's rating?

Just for reference, here's a screenshot showing this map (Choisy) and the La Nicollerie map in relation to Hill 122 on the way to Saint-Lo:

I'm looking forward to what our talented modders will do with this module as much as I'm looking forward to the module itself --- SS camo smocks, dirtied up Tigers and Brens, Tommies with "war-ravaged" blackened faces and netting (and a few leaves?) on their helmets (in battle photos they're almost never clean metal), and then of course someone will give us some intro music files with Highland bagpipes as a mood-setter for the Scottish Corridor... I hope BFC will release the maps used in the Epsom campaign as single maps too, as was recently done in a map pack for Montebourg. I was going to start making maps for Epsom myself, but I'm going to wait until I see what's already done in-house and how authentic they are (looking for that famous Calvary cross monument on the approach to Hill 112)...

Thanks for asking, Vincere. It's progressing very well. Very slowly, but since every stage of it has been fun and interesting, the pace is not an issue for me. I've been playing the op game (Saint-Lo) solitaire, then making battle maps when an interesting battle arises and playing out the battles HTH against a real opponent. After the battles are over, I post the battle map to the repository so others can enjoy them (so far there are two: La Nicollerie, and Choisy, which I posted last night). The op campaign started on July 11, 1944 and is now up to July 15. The two battles that have gotten played out in CMBN were: July 13 - La Nicollerie: In the op layer, the US 320th Infantry, tired and inexperienced, sends a probe (one company, plus a Sherman platoon) towards Hill 122 to find the German main line of resistance. The Germans react by rushing some 88s, 75mm AT guns, and mortars to the threatened sector, which has only a half-strength grenadier company to man the dug-in (mines, barbed wire, foxholes) defenses. It seemed like a promising setup for the Americans, but when played out in CMBN it became clear that the US would have needed a second company to win. The US used covered approaches to get right up to the main German line without many casualties. But minefields and 88s quickly took their toll. The armor couldn't contribute very much because they needed the infantry to clear the way ahead of them. Result: The US broke off the attack and the Germans held the field. July 14 -- Choisy Crossroads: In the op layer, the Germans now saw an opportunity to pounce on the hapless 320th Infantry. Under cover of night, two German armored companies (StuG and Jadgpanzers) and a grenadier battalion crept towards the 320th's reserve company (Company F), which was in a defensive perimeter at Choisy, just NW of La Nicollerie. If the Germans captured this crossroads, the LOC of the entire 320th Infantry would be threatened. At minimum, they had a chance to knock a US company out of the battle and throw the Americans on the defensive with a surprise counterattack. In CMBN, when this battle was played out, it was a slaughter for Company F. Choisy Crossroads became something like Bastogne in the Bocage. Things looked OK for the Americans for the first hour, as the perimeter held and casualties remained light. But the US player (me) made a blunder that really screwed things up: Germans were advancing in one area where I didn't have a TRP. So I sneaked my FO up to get a LOS on the area. He called in a 4.2" chemical mortar strike (so far, so good), I thought I'd managed to sneak the FO away. His team was moving back to the main perimeter, when a German team managed to race up to an ambush position and cut them down with an MG. My defense was basically de-clawed after that point, and the result was inevitable. The US company's survivors eventually were cut off and they surrendered, eliminating that company from the op layer. The Germans could have continued from there and tried to cut the US supply line -- but (and this is the cool thing about the op layer) it would have been too risky to continue exposing the entire 352nd ID's armored reserve to an inevitable US counterattack. Also, if the op turn were to suddenly end, the cloudy weather might become clear on the following day-turn and the armored column would be exposed to US airstrikes. So the Germans retreated with their prisoners and made it safely behind their main lines. July 15 (current situation) The American 2/115th Infantry/29th ID has managed to punch a small hole in the German main line south of Villier-Fossard, in a general attempt to find a path to Hill 122 and outflank the formidable Le Carillon positions from the east. After both battles got played out in CMBN, I considered posting them as scenarios, but I posted them as maps-only because the scenario situations were peculiar to my campaign and probably would not have been popular as stand-alone battles (too one-sided, too frustrating). If anyone wants the scenarios, I can post them. Just let me know. I have no plans for a community meta, because I'm pessimistic about the sustainability of a group campaign and I don't have the time or inclination to organize and maintain one. But I'm happy to keep sharing the fruits of my labor (maps and possibly HTH scenarios if they seem fun for the general public), and let others do what they want with them.

Yes, the catch is that you'd have to make the battle maps by hand -- preferably from one or more 4 x 4 km "master maps," as LongLeftFlank and I have been doing for the July 1944 battles farther inland.

Those who read my posts will know that I'm heavily into using CMBN together with traditional hex-and-counter wargames to create a two-level operational-tactical experience. I've greatly admired some of the work modders and mappers have been doing to make D-Day battles (Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, etc.) The only issue for me has been that CMBN has some serious limitations when it comes to the invasion beaches themselves -- no landing craft, no DD tanks, and the bunker bugs we all know about. But I just discovered something that could make D-Day battles with CMBN really cool and add a new level of realism: the John Prados wargame recently published in Against the Odds magazine, "Bradley's D-Day." It's perfect scale (battalion and company, two-hour turns) and is based on an updated system that he used in making "Monty's D-Day" in the old SPI days: https://atomagazine.readyhosting.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=89 If I got this this game, I'd use it to play out the actual landing parts of the campaign, then set up the battles once units are on the beach, fighting to get off it, or fighting inland. Just thought I'd mention it as another resource for operational-layer fans.

As a child of the '60s and '70s, I got used to seeing good new WWII soldier memoirs emerge every so often. Now it saddens me to realize that (1.) I've already read most of the good ones listed so far, and (2.) Pretty soon there aren't going to be any new ones because WWII soldiers will all have passed away. I envy those of you who are still to discover some of these thrilling reads!

Craters seem to have a magnetic attraction that lures teams out of their foxholes. Which is fine if there's a spread of several little craters or one big crater for the team to hide in -- not so good if there's just crater-space for one lucky soldier and the rest remain exposed... Speaking of foxholes, I'm delighted with the cover they give now to hiding troops against artillery -- in a recent HTH battle I played against sburke, he had the better part of my US company under near-constant bombardment from 81mm mortars and 105mm guns. My company was in an open pasture but every team had a foxhole. The company had maybe 2 or 3 WIA after over an hour of intermittent shelling -- and those were only the result of direct hits on a hole. HE rounds that hit right nearby would suppress, and rattle them, but not cause casualties. The casualties mounted a bit once an FO got a LOS on them and started laying down more accurate fire. Once I took teams off "hide" the difference was notable. They would still often duck down into cover, but their frequent pop-ups to spot left them sitting ducks for low-flying HE fragments.

I think because most players play balanced QBs or one-off scenarios with symmetrical or default settings for the "soft" factors, they're less likely to see any usefulness to the Move command. But if you have a battle where your forces start out "unfit," even more than two Quick bounds in a row will push them into tiring, tired, etc., quite rapidly. I had a battle like this recently (the "unfit" state of my troops was dictated by the situation in the operational-layer boardgame) and I was forced to rely on Move a lot more than I would have liked, giving me a constant dilemma between preserving their limited energy and getting them into position/maintaining battle readiness. Unfair to my side, but realistic and a fun challenge. My point is that Move has a purpose and it's not necessarily a flaw in CMBN -- its value might just not be apparent some typical game situations.

I'm grateful that CMBN has it all: HTH, Wego PBEM, and real time play. To each his own. I just don't like it when people who prefer real time play claim it's more realistic, superior, etc. It may FEEL more realistic to the player, due to the chaos and time pressure, but it isn't more realistic in terms of actions or results on the map. That's because in CMBN the player has to think for all the units and make a lot of decisions for them that would be standard operating procedures for squads in real life. Rushing through that and making bad decisions for units, or missing things a real unit would have seen and reacted to, isn't more realistic. I would prefer RT myself if I only had to control the commander in the game. But that's not CMBN.

In the HTH battles I've played based on my Saint-Lo boardgame op layer, I've found one needs at least 2 hours for battalion-scale battles. That seems to allow for a nice recon/maneuver phase with realistic tactics, and plenty of time for a clear result to emerge.

Thanks for the excellent suggestion, Cogust! To complete this type of operational game in a reasonable length of time and keep it fun, I think one has to pick and choose which battles to play out in CMBN, rather than play out every contact. So, I suppose I would just run the boardgame until a dramatic situation occurs, then freeze the boardgame at that point. If the CMBN battle runs, say, 2 hours, then after it's over I'd have to resume the boardgame with the uninvolved units for 8 turns (@ 15 minutes per turn) to bring the boardgame back up to date. Any new combats that happen during those 8 turns would just be resolved within the boardgame. For casualty tracking -- yes, I use a spreadsheet. I've made a Cyberboard module for my Panzer Grenadier operational game, because I like the way Cyberboard lets you attach any sort of text note to a unit counter (great for keeping track of casualties, leaders, logging what the unit has done so far, etc.)

More outstanding work as usual, LLF! I really like the "sunken" farm compound behind a bocage perimeter -- a look I now plan to steal for my own maps.

I'm planning on using the boardgame Panzer Grenadier: Beyond Normandy to run a brigade-level operational layer for my CMBN battles once the new module comes out. I'm trying to decide the best way to mesh the two games. The boardgame is platoon scale, 200m per hex, and has 15 minutes per turn. Option A (most obvious one I thought of first): Pick a battalion in the boardgame and cordon off that sector of the map, then just fight that battalion's battle in 4-hour increments in CMBN. After each increment, stop and run the boardgame to "re-sync" things, then resume the next 4-hour CMBN battle with that battalion. (The full Operation Epsom scenario in the boardgame runs 26 hours of 15-minute game-turns) Any other ways that anyone can think of that might work better? Open to ideas.

As the nincompoop who got my FO killed early in our HTH battle, rendering an entire battalion of chemical mortars powerless to assist my beleaguered infantry company against the Nazi hordes, I can only say I've emerged humbled and enlightened by the experience. I've read that FOs had an extremely dangerous job, and they did have to see the enemy (while trying to prevent the enemy from seeing them). But this is exactly the dilemma that the real commanders faced in the bocage: Use your FOs effectively to spot up front and risk getting them killed, or protect them somewhere from a rear vantage point and just live with their reduced ability to spot from there. This is also why vantage points like church steeples and Hill 122 were such sought-after and fought-over pieces of Normandy: Anyone occupying them could put FOs there, and accurately and safely target enemy units from thousands of yards away. There's nothing about CMBN that prevents us from simulating this. Just make a larger map and put an FO team in its own little setup zone in the rear where it can get LOS.

Here's something I discovered recently after making and playing a HTH battle on a map I made: I had placed lots of shell craters around an auto garage building, and had a bazooka team in an adjacent action square with "hide" orders. The team sought the best available cover, which happened to be a crater that overlapped one corner of the garage. This created a quasi-basement/dugout effect, and a cozy little ambush site. I haven't tested this, but it seems to me that creative placement of craters around buildings and rubbled buildings could give us a bit more of the basements and covered firing positions we're looking to get in urban environments.