dungeontiger

Interesting turn. Clearly the half track also say the Chruchill and the commander screamed "backup!" (in German of course). They managed to duck behind a hill before I could get a shot off. Damn. No first blood for me. At the very end of this turn, that same group of Churchills were spotted by a Panther....Panther???? He's got Panthers??? OMG! I have to give up now, I cannot defeat a Panther...wait, he's probably got many, even thousands of them!! Argggg! [OK, back from the brink] I cannot take them on head to head, especially at rank. I gave the troop orders to scream ahead and get off the rise...actually he can only see two. The third one I did not want to risk moving him into view so I told him to pull ahead into the trees at least. Scary! Here you can see the Panther, just behind the Road objective. http://kingtigerbooks.com/combat_mission/epic1_56_panther_done.jpg The above image also shows how he has to move across a lot of terrain to get to me. He either has to cross the river on the road on the left or zoom across (like I assume he was trying to do with his half track) and either cross the railway bridge (we found out last game that Panthers don't fit across it!) or another road bridge on the far right. To update you on my objectives, this is what it looks like on the Railway objective. It is firmly in my hands. He's going to have to dig me out or pound the snot out of my with artillery (could happen). http://kingtigerbooks.com/combat_mission/epic1_56_rail_done.jpg The town objective is also clearly in my hands. http://kingtigerbooks.com/combat_mission/epic1_56_town_done.jpg I am keeping a lot of reserves. I don't know where his main thrust will come from and I don't know what kind of artillery rain I could face. However, I am moving up a few troops of Chruchills to back up these objectives. For now they are mine.

First, a note on objective names. For the purposes of these posts, I will refer to the three objectives as: Town: the large town to the left of my force (the way I picture it) Railway: Marked as "Village and railway crossing" on map, directly in front of my forces Road: Marked as "Village and road crossing" across the river from me, kitty corner to my forces. I should be able to reach both Town and Railway before him. Road is deep in his territory so I am not even going to try for it. In fact, at first, I will try to only hold Town and Railway. Depending on how things turn out, I may not even assault Road. I won't bore you (or me, I don't want to spend the time) with the details of the turns up to this point. Suffice to say my units are rapidly moving into position as planned. I avoided convoy congestion by staging orders properly and not moving out all the units at once. Here are a few screen shots of things moving into position. This shot shows my forces at 1:58 approaching the objectives http://kingtigerbooks.com/combat_mission/epic1_58_done.jpg This shot shows my forces clearly in the objectives at 1:57. All good so far! http://kingtigerbooks.com/combat_mission/epic1_57_done.jpg Right at the end of the turn 1:57, one of my Churchills spotted a Half Track with a 20mm gun cresting a hill on the other side of the river. Effectively moving across the back of the map toward the railway crossing. Lunch time! Target that vehicle! http://kingtigerbooks.com/combat_mission/epic1_57_target_done.jpg

That that is both funny and very true! However, even more funny when you consider my 'guest' is my mom. :-) Actually, we are going to go to the Canadian War Museum tomorrow so not all bad.

Thanks for the tip on the compass. Like I said, for the infantry, too late to change now, plus I want to see what I can do, plus plus everyone here gets "I told you so" rights. :-)

All>> I have company visiting from out of town until Tuesday. That will affect how often I can play / update this thread. Just wanted to let you know so you don't think this is going to die. We're going to see it through.

BTW, before I continue, let me say that I know my friend Ian is going to do a far better job reporting on this then me. Please forgive me. I'm going to do my best with the time I have available for this. It is annoying that I cannot zoom out the map to see the entire thing. They really should add that capability. You would think that a bird's eye (or god's eye if you will) view would be something you would want. Anyway, here's the view of my setup force. Right now it looks like a giant collection of vehicles. I also see that I am restricted to 20K size images as attachments (is that really true?????). For now I will put them on my server and link to them. http://kingtigerbooks.com/combat_mission/epic_20k_setup.jpg That plan is to have Stuarts and Armored Cars move into the town. A Troop of Achilles will take position on a ridge overlooking the approach to the town. I will scream a Stuart through the village with railway to get an advance look on anything coming from that flank. A troop of Achilles will be set up protecting the Village and I will have some units go in. Above the Village (forgive me, I still can't figure out the goofy compass in this game) is a non-objective hamlet. It is a good place to position myself in case he puts stuff across the main bridge. We'll see what happens.

We'll see. Also, I have enough armour to pound the heck out of his positions if I have to. I give you the right to say "I told you so" when I fail.

Going to be very interesting for sure. However, in turn 3 (you will see posts soon) a Churchill got sight of a Halftrack at 1100m so visibility is not too bad.

It wouldn't be the first time I went out on a limb and made an error. We'll see how it unfolds.

HQ has given orders for the my armoured battalion to take and hold three key towns in a large area. The Krauts are expected to be making for the same three positions. It looks like it is going to be a tough fight for the Tommies. HQ intel reports an opposing armoured battalion sized force with the lastest equipment which will include the dreaded King Tiger. I've stomped on them before with my faithful Churchills but it takes 2 or 3 and clever flanking to do it. I've also faced them head on and lost an entire company of Chruchills in minutes. Their armour is likely to be supported by mounted infantry so I will have to watch out for Shreks as well as KTs. Weather is stormy, windy and rainy. We move out at 0630. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is our second epic battle. The first, on the same map with the same sides, was 12,000 points. Normally I would play the axis side since I am so found of German armour, but when Common Wealth was released I wanted desperately to try the Churchill. Things were going well until he found my trap before I could spring it. That's when I lost something like 12 Churchills in 2 minutes. It was insane. I learned a lot from that engagement and I hope to apply that learning here. First, I had engineers expecting they could use demo charges to ambush tanks. That did not end well. I also had a ton of large caliber artillery...even a battleship. It was great for moving dirt and making an impressive mess but did little. The Achilles was a deadly weapon when positioned properly. I did not have nearly enough recon to know what was happening. So, this time, I chose differently. No artillery. The map is too large to know where he is going to be and it takes too long to call in large caliber ordnance. I'll use the points for armour. Knowing my friend, he's going to have a well balanced force which means infantry. This is especially true since last game it was his infantry that spotted my trap, not his tanks. However, I'm not going to take much infantry. I find it tedious on this size map. Instead I will rely on armoured cars to shred his infantry and provide me good recon. In the end, this is my force selection: Tank Battalion (all Churchill VII, Churchill VIII and Stuart VI) - deleted C Squadron Antitank Battery [self-propelled] (all Achilles) - deleted 4 Troop Armoured Car Squadron (all Daimler II) - deleted 5, 6 and 7 Troop 4 x Scout Detachments to round it out to exactly 20,000 points All units are Veteran, High motivation, Fit and +1 leadership. By selecting all the same it made it easy to select the forces. For setup, I just tried to keep all the units together and place them in a way they could move out quickly. I hate convey problems in this game. I intend to rush the closest two objectives with Stuarts and armoured cars these would be "Town" and "Village and Railway Crossing". No way I can get to the other one before him.

This will be the allies side of the epic quick battle I am playing against my long time friend Ian. Read the beginning of his post (same title but with Axis Side) for details of the game. I will not be reading his posts but will be posting all my notes, thoughts and progress here. Obviously, please don't spoil it by adding operational details about his side to this thread! I want it to be a fair fight. Let the games begin....

For hardware, I have a Windows Vista 64-bit machine. It is a quad core Intel i7 with 12 GB of RAM. I recently upgraded the video card to something crazy so I could play Battlefield 3 at high resolution. It is a Radeon HD 7800 series with a stupid amount of memory.

Thanks all. I agree it was a weapons hit in the end, after the tiger died so no text. BTW, I'm working on a good video of how the Achilles died the next turn. Far more dramatic. Now to see what happens this turn!

Other than enjoying the demise of my friend's King Tiger by my British Achilles, have a look at this video. http://youtu.be/5aundUbB5ew At the very end, after I hit the tank, there is another flash from near the muzzle break. What happened? It was not a shot (according to my friend and it did not sound right). It looks to me like a shell exploded in the barrel. Did they model that?