BletchleyGeek

The Twenty-Fifth - Thirtieth Minutes - The Wheels Come Off
“Be the hunter not the hunted: never allow your unit to be caught with its guard down.”
James Mattis
 
My AH-1 has been flying overhead for several turns now, and as far as I know this BMP is its only kill.  But in its defense it was being chased by AA missiles for most of the time it hung around and did lose it's mate so I'm lucky it made even this kill.

 
After that the wheels started to come off....
...one of my M-150s exchanged ATGMs with one of Warren's BMPs...


...both missiles passed each other on flight... the M-150's hitting a tree... sigh...

...of course Warren's didn't miss.  Damn!

One of Warren's T-64Bs... (in fact one that had been beaten up, in what seems like another life now, by my 1st Platoon tanks) fired and destroyed one of my M-60s still sitting on the Short Route... damn.  That means 2nd Platoon has now lost three of four tanks. Triple damn.

 
Now with Tank Section 2 joining in on the fun I order all four 1st Platoon tanks back into the breach!

Tank 1/9 had it's career cut short when it exchanged rounds with a T-62... 1/9 fired first, however... it missed.. the T-62 did not.

Uh-oh... have I pushed too far?
 
Third Platoon's tanks have also started moving down the highway... 

Glorious March to Victory Post #13 - "The Song of Small German Town 1980"
So on the very next turn Bil has offered ceasefire...we have playing together for a long time.  We have decided to do the final debrief at the same time, so I will wait for Bil to catch up a bit.
But I could not leave the second to last turn hanging because it represents this battle so well:
You remember the stand off on the Red Knoll at the end of turn 31...well here is how it played out:

My T62 got off the first shot and it was a killer (note the now-deaf-est Soviet Pl HQ in the ETO circled)
Then this happens:

Seriously, this is like the freakin ending of Reservoir Dogs at this point.  BTW I found out later, that M60 is immobilized by my heroic second squad.
So here we are at what is essentially End Game:

I will leave you to speculate as where things landed....
I can tell you that the fight over this non-descript little town in West Germany created so many pixel heroes in less than an hour.  I hope you have enjoyed it a fraction of as much as it was to play.
 

Well you are now ahead of Bil in commentary and he is certainly playing catch up.
As for comments I try not to say anything as I could let slip clues as to what we know and you don't.
😉
But I think you will see that folk were in your corner when you read the Peanut Gallery thread...
Before I just saw this latest post my guess was a draw... 
Looking forward to Bil's take on the last few turns...

Glorious March to Victory Post #12 - "We Try Harder" (25-31)
So based on observation, I am seeing quite a few "likes" (thank you btw) but few comments, which tells me that I am probably telling you all something that Bil has already posted.  So for fear of getting left behind in the narrative I am just going to pull you all the way to where we are as of today.
I want to say up front that no matter how this ends, this is a really good game.  This is one for the books.  You can tell when everything feels so finely balanced and you and your opponent are fencing on a tightrope.  every PBEM turn gets the heartrate up!  
When I left you things were not looking so good for the brave soldiers of the Soviet Union.  But like the superior communist system, Soviets know how and when to pick themselves up and get back to it.

So not much but re-positioning in Turn 25 as I scramble to re-establish a parameter up on the ridge, Bil pulled back so that all proceeds.  The only interesting thing happens here near the end of the turn.  Looky here comrade the corrupt capitalist system thinks that they are so clever...looks like Bil is taking the deep left option after all.

The next turn I immediately start repositioning my remaining T64 on the left in order to form a blocking position on my left (that poor BMP got nailed by a second Cobra before I scared it off).  Bil could try and hide in the that wood line but we are past that now, he is going to try and roll me up (more on my logic later).  Meanwhile back on what is now called Red Knoll:

My intent here is to establish a hard point and pull Bils forces in, this time however, I am pushing infantry up front.  Note that an ATGM duel is forming up with that M150 and a BMP on the right here.

Which we win.  That should be about 4 out of 6 M150s killed.  Another sign of a really good game is the emergence of all the micro-dramas.  Here there are literally a hundred small stories all unfolding simultaneously, here is one:

So that brave little infantry squad breaks out of that tree line and sees a M60 monster...do they run and hide...nope they open up like it is the last thing they will ever do (and literally is).  Those are both the RPG 18 and RPG 7 firing simultaneously right at the turns end.  Finally on back on the Hwy:

So yep, pretty much as I expected this is an attempted roll up...oh Bil, you tired foolish old man, did you think I would leave the door open?  So here I am re-positioning another T64 and BMP to bottle up that Hwy ploy.  Onto Turn 28 and things start to turn:

My brave little squad misses, and then die in a hail of glory but they spook the crap out of those M60s, who promptly back off buying time for my T62s.  You can see here another T62 I snuck up from the village in the woods, so I have got a pretty good bead on this.

Meanwhile back on the Hwy, Bil's M60 here get spooked by a lone Recon Pl HQ and I start hunting that T64 forward.  I am starting to feel a bit like we are getting back up and then this happens:

Back in the center, Bil still has some armor with eyes on the objective (note: he is still pounding that nearly-empty suburb like it slept with his wife).  My poor immobilized T64 nails this M60 in a single blistering 125mm of bad-love.
Onto Turn 29.

 So on this turn is a positioning turn on the Red Knoll and Hwy, Bill has brought up at least one M60 to reinforce up here, so a lot of micro-drama potential.  And on the other side:

The bottleneck force is shaping up nicely..so the stage is set for another showdown.  
Turn 30 and things start to click:

It starts with this showdown at near-point-blank range.  The M60 fires first but (I like to think my little infantry squad (now all heroes of the Soviet Union) killed the crew commander and rattled that tank so badly that..) it misses.  My T62 does not, because cold steel runs in Soviet veins

Ok, now this is a Balls Game!  Back in the center:
 
DPICM, the last refuge of the desperate (seriously I think we may have overloaded on arty, and of course EW makes most of mine near useless).  But again Bil doubles down on that lone squad and MG team (who have taken a single casualty after all this)  A hint for anyone who plays Bil...he has problems with artillery.
But all is not good news:

This one hurt but it is a straight up "war happens moment so deal with it".  I start to push that T64 up a bit to try and snipe that M60 and he gets killed...gotta admit that one hurt.
Turn 31 and we are nearly caught up.

So up on the Red Knoll, Bil is stubbornly pushing with his 3 M60s (counting the dead one, that is a full third of his armor)  A second squad wins the Hero of the Soviet Union here by fearlessly opening up on two M60s and here they get an RPG 7 off before also being chopped up.

Which hits but I have no sight on the tank so I can only hope it at least rattled them up a bit.  The back on the Hwy:

My other T64, cooly drops that M60 like first period French (swear to god if I had all T64s this game would be over by now).  Back on Red Knoll the turn ends with this: 
Both barrels are lined up and loaded.  This screenshot pretty much captures this entire freakin game!
Ok, my assessment with 9 mins left on the clock.  So, Bil is seriously considering ceasefire right now cause even int guys can do math.  My force on the objective is still very solid with the better part of an infantry Coy and 2 x T62s (I sent the other one back), so the odds of him taking it (which were never great given his force) are low.  He could try a gamey sneak in the last minute of the game but I doubt it.  
So his problem here is one of points.  The US get points for cutting me down past 50% but they need to keep their own force above 50% and based on losses so far he has to be concerned about that buffer.  I am definitely closer (I may be below 50% right now) but even-losses at this point would be fatal to the US side.  And in the last 4 minutes I have lost a single T64 and BMP to at least 3 x M60s and an M150.   By my math Bils armor is precariously down to 50% (and I suspect at least one tank is gun-killed)...and I still have a lot of those nasty BMPs on the board who can all kill Bil's...well, anything.  
Regardless, even if we ended it now, I think this game is a Draw (at least right now).  In reality both forces are at a standstill (even if the US side has not realized it yet) in what has been a see-saw battle that has left me with scars and some therapy requirements.  The Blood-Red Dice still will roll, so we will see.
Capt's AAR Battle Theme Song
 

Glorious March to Victory Post # 10 - "The Nadir" (21-24)
  So in every engagement it is normal to have a low-point and for my troops this was right here.  Everything that can go wrong, does, and nothing really goes right.  Worse, it is the point that you can clearly see your mistakes...after you have already made them.  I have found that in this position it is where the true mettle (and metal) is tested and one must 1) admit the errors and 2) come up with a way out, cause no one else is not going to do it for you.
   So the decent started pretty innocently enough in turn 21:

That brave little BMP that is responsible for probably half the damage I have done to Bil thus far did not make it out.  It was completely out of AT3s by this point but I wanted that little crew to make it...sadly...

So at this point I am still pushing up that ridge in pursuit of Bil's forces.  My aim here is to keep the old man on his back feet in order to make sure he does not collect enough combat power to re-take the objective...and to kill as much as possible with a pretty potent force.  But then badness started to happen:

Ok, despite being on the wrong end of things, this shot is really cool.  That is a newly modeled Dragon missile about to take out a T62...oh, yes that's right, Bil has Dragons.

And they work.   Then down in the village:

Bil's creeping tank platoon sees one of my T62s first and well...ok, I can live with this.  Going to have to break a few tanks to make a tank omelet.   But as we move into Turn 22 it is time to admit that I have a long standing problem:

Yep, I am an over-extender always have been.  I do not know why the siren song of the offence always pull me in but it does.  And here it is in action.  My armor is taking off on my infantry in the best blitz tradition...and it is not a good thing.  But all is not bad news:

Down in the town, my second T62 takes out another M60.  So all in all, I tell myself, it is not that bad....oh foolish past The_Capt....so foolish.  Turn 23...sigh:

Right about here it dawns on me that maybe charging forward was a bad idea.  That is a second Dragon kill.  So I am thinking about holding up and letting my infantry catch up, right about here.  It is not all bad news though:

As the Soviet player, that is a very happy screen shot.  My MANPADs are doing their job.  But then I notice this:

Ya, so all those other icons up on the hill I have been tracking...but that is a new one and it is very bad news.  So I swing a couple T62s and a BMP over because maybe Bill is scratching around the backdoor.
Turn 24: as with most of these things...just a little too late.  An extra 30 seconds maybe but Bil's last tank platoon looks to have finally showed up.  Of course I suspected there was another one up here and of course it shows up in exactly the wrong place, at the wrong time.  And from here it just get uglier:

This is an interesting shot actually, first that is a second T62 (so 4 lost on that hill in about 3 mins) dying, but that is also a 73mm BMP 1 round actually hitting and penetrating an M60 (I think it was HEAT)...but not enough by a long shot:

So here the gods of war clearly are punishing me.  That BMP died for trying but those two explosions are AT3s that both miss (seriously?!)
Ok, so 'new plan' cause the old one clearly was not working.  I am going to have to swing what is left of my Teeth (now with quite a few knocked out....see that last BMP dying on the far right) and consolidate on the hilltop.  I will fend off this tank platoon, while at the same time really dig in on the objective.  The sad part is that right about here, I am out of offensive options.  I will need to play defense from here on out and am basically fighting to hold the objective.  
By this point I have a couple M60 kills, Bils M150s are pretty depleted, a couple M113s and a some scouts...oh and a Cobra.  That is not enough for 5 x T62s (half my force) and 2 x BMPs.  At least my screens and infantry are intact.  A side-note, Bil is really obsessed with the outskirts of the objective (that hashed blue line) and for the life of me I cannot figure out why.  Seriously, we are quite a few turns ahead as of writing this and he spends the next ten minute pounding the same  peice of real-estate, that basically has a single squad and MG team trapped in it.
Anyway, live, learn and love and all that.  I will post up the next series tomorrow...things do get better.
 

Wasn't the PT-76 the first combat victim of the TOW missile (in Vietnam)? I think the key advantage of the PT-76 was it could swim / float - other than that it was a fairly basic vehicle with thin armour and a modest gun (effective range 600-700m?).  They used to display one at Duxford as part of the mini-tankfest events they organised to coincide with Father's day - very dusty affairs!

This time with added dust and showing off it's 'mega hatch' to good effect:


Since comparisons have been made with the CVR-T, here are some shots of a Scorpion and a Sabre (a hybrid vehicle that mated a Scorpion chassis with the turret from a Fox armoured car to produce a Scimitar-like vehicle).
Scorpion:


Sabre:

An update on our friend the PT-76 since the last post. The game continues to be massaged. They've abandoned the rather absurd huge roof hatch  for 'open up' command in favor of the more reasonable (but more rarely photographed) small commander's hatch.
 
 

OK IN THAT CASE!
I have a good feeling about tomorrow!

Hey, while we're fantasizing, how about a little Simon Stålenhag filter, for that 'Twilight of the Gods' feel?

It ain't over til the fat lady sings, and my god the music you two have made is epic and truly enjoyable. 
We feel your pain and joy...

+1.  Have to admit, that was funny.   
At some point during this spring offensive season we will probably have a very wide choice of tanks to choose from.  Many players will probably command everything from T-34 equipped units to T-80s with many types & variations in-between.  It's going to be a very good CM year.       

Hey Folks,
  Sorry for the delay, I am planning to get a couple updates up this weekend.  Bil and I have been progressing at speed, we are actually down to the last 10 mins and this has become an epic slugfest.

My all time favorite:

 
Sadly we won't get this icon with F&R.

I've got a good feeling about tomorrow!

Yeah BMP-3's are very prone to sympathetic detonations and like to share them with their close friends 😉.
If I recall correctly I once observed a Pz-IV getting taken out by an exploding Pz-IV next to it (due to 105mm HEAT cooking off the ammo, I presumed). Would indeed be nice to know more about what happened under the hood that destroyed the tank (for example was it KO'ed because of consequences of blast wave? or did shrapnel from the exploding tank penetrate the other tank? etc). 
 

If you use BMP-3s incautiously, you'll see a lot of mutual kills

I don't have footage of it, but my favourite was a glancing hit on the front of my Panther, that bounced off in a high, near-vertical, really slow arc, before arcing back down directly onto one of my squads.

yes, sadly and I'm kinda sick of seeing it. its the bob semple tank. the internets haha meme tank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Semple_tank

yes I am a grump
edit: I too am excited to have some su100/jagdpanther shootouts

That's an impressive list. I purchased the soviet counterpart to David Isbys book on the NATO forces. It is called:
"Weapons and tactics of the soviet army". 
So it also covers tactical aspects. The soviet way of war, so to speak. Btw quite funny to read that many westeners expected the auto- loader to be a weakness or kind of design flaw in the "new" T-64 and T-72

... like this one
 
The AI was driving those two tanks very close to each other, and I have seen proximity kills of soft-skinned vehicles (or as my buddy @Lethafacepointed out, something to watch out for when around vehicles like the BMP-3), but in 10 years of CMx2 I haven't even seen a proximity kill of a reasonably armoured AFV... by another AFV blowing up.
 
Any other rare events like the one above people would like to share? Spotting stuff like this highlights how much happens under the hood with CMx2... and also how much more could this game tell us about what it does.
 

😳 some times you get things wrong....
Now to find how I delete old forum entries....
🥴

... like this one
 
The AI was driving those two tanks very close to each other, and I have seen proximity kills of soft-skinned vehicles (or as my buddy @Lethafacepointed out, something to watch out for when around vehicles like the BMP-3), but in 10 years of CMx2 I haven't even seen a proximity kill of a reasonably armoured AFV... by another AFV blowing up.
 
Any other rare events like the one above people would like to share? Spotting stuff like this highlights how much happens under the hood with CMx2... and also how much more could this game tell us about what it does.
 

Ermmmm
I will get my coat...
😀
 

Those were two fun turns, Bil. Any chance of a video covering the last 5 minutes of the battle? It would be a great advertisement for the game.

Those were two fun turns, Bil. Any chance of a video covering the last 5 minutes of the battle? It would be a great advertisement for the game.

Those were two fun turns, Bil. Any chance of a video covering the last 5 minutes of the battle? It would be a great advertisement for the game.