Hapless
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Posts posted by Hapless
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Ok then, the stab-in-the-back platoon are doing one, they’ve lost a halftrack to a panzerfaust and two squads didn’t make it to the halftracks because they were pinned down- none of that “no man left behind” crap for my pixeltruppen! They’ll either have to leg it out or die in place. I’m moving a couple of Shermans over in that direction to take advantage of any Panther muzzle flashes. The infantry might be all set to die, but hopefully they’ll die in a useful way.
Overall, I’m thinking it’s time to reorient a little.
The original role of the right hook was pretty much entirely dependent on encountering isolated enemy positions or catching them on the move, using the poor visibility to fight on my terms. Due to a combination of bad luck, incompetence and the fact that AjarmanG seems to be concentrating everything in Noville, it’s looking like that plan is out the window. And I’m coming off worse in the attrition game in these engagements.
On the plus side, I’m pretty confident I’m on top psychologically- I’m not the one getting attacked on all sides and if he wants to dig in and stay in Noville that removes an awful lot of uncertainty for me.
The downside is that if he digs into Noville it’s going to be a pain getting him out, perhaps to the point that it would be smarter for me to dig into Cobru to keep my casualties down.
So I’m considering a few options:
1 Continue Raiding and Probing:
I could keep the pressure up with the right hook, maybe supplement it with some pressure from Cobru. Visibility is better than I was hoping, but it’s still poor and exploitable. Most of my casualties have been the result of either bad luck, misinterpreting the conditions or opening fire too early and this approach is still set to produce results if I adapt. It might even be possible to lure the enemy into an ambush or two. I want to see more burning Panthers before I'm happy.
2 Pull Back to Cobru:
Sack off the right hook- it’s achieved its objective of putting AjarmanG on the psychological back foot but I’m losing out attritionally. It would be best to pull the right hook back round to Cobru and concentrate my forces to either push or defend from there.
3 Lay siege to Noville:
Noville is surrounded. Best keep it that way. Spread the right hook out into a couple of mutually supporting hedgehogs and wait for AjarmanG to attack (we’ll see how he manages!) or stand by to start identifying and destroying enemy positions by fire as it gets lighter.
4:FIX BAYONETS:
All out attack. Mob Noville with everything. It’s still dark, it’s still foggy, he can’t resist everywhere at once- he’ll have to crack somewhere and then we’re in. The faster it happens, the more confused things get, the closer my men get to those Panthers the happier I’ll be.
I like 4, but it's on that bloody knife edge between boldness and stupidity. I've probably got a few turns in hand before I have to commit to anything and AjarmanG might do something that opens more options or closes some off. Plenty to be considering...
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16 hours ago, Rinaldi said:
You have my full empathy with the Panther, very frustrating that the crew had the wherewithal after two clean penetrations to fire off two shots. I wouldn't be surprised if the crew is set to a high motivation and veterancy, they tend to lock up otherwise after a hit.
Thanks. The cookie is not crumbling to my advantage at the moment, but hopefully he might have spend a lot of points on his tanks and be a understrength somewhere else. Mystery for now.
But good news though! The Panther got immediately nailed at the start of the next turn, though some git in a snazzy hat managed to escape. When we clear Noville out we’ll make sure we catch him by shooting everyone wearing a snazzy hat.
There’s still at least one Panther (or other tank) lurking down there- something has been taking potshots at my hapless infantry stuck in the field, so its time to pull away from that direction and find another one.
Round the back of Noville, the halftrack platoon has been having a whale of a time shooting everything that moves. Unfortunately, this has attracted the attention of a mortar team in a back garden further on- you can see it hitting them towards the end of the gif below.
Direct firing mortars aren’t a fun thing to go up against. The scary thing is how far away that sound contact appears to be (pops up in the top left of the gif)- if he can see my muzzle flashes from there then I’ve got serious issues.
On the right of that platoon they’ve taken a few casualties to an enemy HQ team having a group grope behind a hedge, but the nearest halftrack has laid into them with the .50 cal and hopefully dissuaded them from putting their heads up.
On the plus side, this has really upset him. I can see tank sound contacts dropping everything and zooming towards that platoon. One of these sound contacts is the original Panther (judging by the custom paint job) whose path takes it right past the new position of the recently recovered Recce One Lead Team. However, now everything is backwards and the Panther does a drive by on the recce guys. It’s really not their morning.
Again though, they seemed to be worrying visible. (Espescially to a buttoned up tank moving at speed, grr).
I really need to decide what to do with the rear attack platoon- at the moment they are really not in a good position to repel tanks.
The most sensible thing I can think of doing is legging it back into the halftracks and disappearing off into the night. But 1) It’s not as night as I want it to be and 2) those tanks seem to be coming in quick and it might be too late already.
Hanging around under direct mortar fire waiting for enemy tanks to turn up seems a bad idea. I could try and rush some Shermans over there for support- they’re going to be disengaging from the highway fight anyway (I’ve no intention of trying to fight big cats on his terms)- but again, might be too late already.
Withdrawal seems the best option, but there’s a good possibility that I’ve thrown that whole platoon away there for little gain by rushing.
We’ll see.
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Ok, let's start with the obvious stuff.
First of all, its a dawn mission genius! It is getting lighter. Facepalm doesn't quite cover it, nor does whining about it being hard to tell exactly how light it is.
Second, despite that the actual tactics aren't entirely off. The idea was to send the infantry forward to provoke the enemy into firing and revealing his position. The concept is sound- it just didn't pan out as intended.
We need to rewind a bit. There was actually a little bit of contact in the last turn. An enemy HQ team popped up next to Recce Three and shot them up a bit, causing a casualty.
The Sherman Platoon HQ which was a little way behind Recce Three and flanking to the right of the suspected enemy position on the highway spotted the enemy team and opened up on them.
Cue the start of Turn 14 and the video above- the gunfire you can hear is the Sherman Pl HQ laying into the enemy just off screen to the right. This revealed its position to enemy infantry in the woods and a little later to a Panther squirreled away in there. The Panther took a shot (at about 0:21) but hit a tree.
This revealed the Panther to some of the Shermans, who started plugging away at it. The only problem is that the angle for the three Shermans aiming at is is pretty poor- lots of bouncing going on.
Like you see in the video the Panther causally ignores all the incoming fire- including two penetrating hits!- and blows away two of the Shermans. The first one could and should have been hull down behind that crest- but I was pretty sure that it was safe in the darkness and the fog (which it was until it opened up). The second Sherman, well, its in an open field on the flawed assumption that its difficult to spot.
The hits on the Panther are a bit aggravating, especially seeing as though it knocked out the second Sherman immediately after suffering them, but hopefully it'll realise how dead it is next turn or the Shermans will finish it off.
Meanwhile my infantry is pinned down (though they nailed a Panzershreck team in the stream) by fire from across the road on the edge of Noville and a squad just beyond the Panther.
I wouldn't exactly describe this as the kind of 'engagement on my terms' I was looking for here, but we'll see what happens.
In other news, Recce One’s trail team (the ones hiding in a garden in Noville) finally got spotted and wiped out by enemy infantry in the house next to them. The lead team is still bombing around in its jeep, so they can take over listening duty from the apparently less German infested edge of town.
The halftrack platoon around the back is dismounting and pushing into the edge of Noville, hoovering up enemy transport vehicles as it goes- 1 truck so far, with another engaged and a kubelwagen about to get grenade. That should take the heat off the engagement down by the highway if nothing else…
Things are getting interesting!
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1 hour ago, Artemis258 said:
"Sir.... I think they see us!"
"Pipe down private and stay still! The germans can only track movement!"Got a giggle out of that one! Probably needed one...
The right hook has started an engagement with the (no-longer) suspected enemy forces on the Highway near Recce Two. Its a little complicated and its gonna take me a little while to crack it open, tear it apart and get at the juicy throbbing lessons inside (and I definitely need to learn from it before I start doing anything else!).
So, analysis later, in the meantime here's the raw video for you guys to digest:
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Quick update:
Its not as dark as I thought it was.
This is not good.
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Turn 13
The lead Halftrack platoon on the right is crossing the stream and getting behind Noville. This is a little risky- you could argue that I should have dismounted a scout team and probed the stream just to be sure- but I'm confident that AjarmanG hasn't installed steely eyed panzerfaust crazies in every scrap of cover on his side of the map. If he actually has then excellent! We can get stuck in.
The platoon hedgehogs in Cobru are coming together, freeing up the halftracks over there and I'm considering using them to demonstrate on that flank and get his attention- a bit of noise, maybe some optimistic area fire (might be too obvious), anything to get him looking towards Cobru and not at the highway or his rear.
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Ok, a couple of turns on now and its all pretty steady, nothing particularly new:
I'm still standing by the general thrust of the plan:
The interesting part is the massing sound contacts to the left of Noville in between the question marks- potentially that's a clump of tanks and halftracks that's going to push on Cobru. From where he's stacking up he can either go straight up the road or through the fields around my left. Either way, its time for the guys in Cobru to get their act together and hedgehog up.
On the right at the moment I've got one halftrack platoon going far right to get behind him, the tanks and the riding platoon are pushing towards the sound contacts on the highway and the last halftrack platoon is lurking in reserve. On the one hand I know that splitting my force like this into non-mutually supporting chunks isn't that good an idea, but on the other its so dark and so foggy that they can't mutually support each other anyway so it feels better to disperse.
The next big thing is probably going to me having a go at the sound contacts near Recce Two on the highway- the tank platoon is going to roll up and follow the dismounted infantry in. Obviously this is not quite the elegant kind of fire and movement most people here are familiar with so I've taken the time to test the procedure out under the same conditions. There's a very simple chain of events:
1) Infantry scouts find enemy unit by touch.
2) Chaos ensues.
3)???
4) Victory.
Simple.
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On 16/07/2016 at 6:15 PM, c3k said:
Just stumbled on this...much as your recce team stumbled on that Panther! I like it: when a commander is confident enough to send a jeep to take out the enemy's spearhead, victory cannot be far behind.
My one regret is that that recce team didn't attempt a boarding action.
Just waiting on the next turn at the moment, shouldn't be too long.
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Not much to report, everything is pretty much carrying on as before.
The sound contact approaching Recce Three stopped outside the house nearby, stopped and then moved off as if it was heading to link up with sound contact near Recce Two.
The contact never resolved, but it could well have been dropping off an outpost team at the building. There’s not sign they ever noticed Recce Three. I did manage to remember that Recce Three has the Platoon HQ and a halftrack and that the Halftrack has a bazooka in it, so on seeing that the tank was stopping I got the HQ team to acquire it and set off to beef the lead team up. Now that the tank has they’re going back to the damn HT where the radio is and they can be a lot more useful.
The surviving jeep of Recce One has recovered somewhat and I’ve trailed it round the back of Noville, but its not picking anything up. Chances are I never had much chance of catching AjarmanG as he deployed, but that jeep team is going to be doing a good job by just surviving and listening to engine noises.
The right hook is steadily getting there- once the tanks have all moved up I can kick the party off- I want to have a go at those two sound contacts near Recce Two and see how these tactics are going to work out.
Some quick testing reveals that I might be massively optimistic about actually spotting the enemy though. Things could get down to walking bazooka teams forward until the muzzle hits something metal...
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Cheers Heinrich! For meeting engagements at least I think that the game sidelines recce to some extent: you know that you're actually going to run into an enemy force, you know from the QB settings roughly what size it will be and you can take a reasonable guess at their options from examining the map. Obviously circumstances vary, but if one player sacks off his recce and the other doesn't then the battle can quickly stop being a meeting engagement and become an attack-defend with the advantage to whoever got into position firstest with mostest.
Turns 7-8
The recce teams are doing their job of keeping tabs on enemy activity in Noville:
It looks like AjarmanG might be digging in to Noville- those tank sound contacts look like they might be spreading out to cover the roads. Recce One's lead team has stopped panicking and the trail team is having to be very quiet because it looks like there's infantry in the houses opposite.
There are sound contacts closing on the other recce team positions- would be nice if they could turn the damn jeep engines off when they disembark!
Recce Three's lead team in particular looks like it might be about to get bumped. Worst case- that Panther is coming out to investigate their jeep's engine noise. Best case, its going to drop off some infantry at the house ahead of them and they can ambush them before legging it away into the night.
The right hook is still moving in- though I'm wondering if I should divert the tanks to take a less circuitous route and be in position to flank anything coming down the highway or pushing past Recce Three. Suddenly I feel I need to know whether the shermans will identify and engage targets from their muzzle flash alone, and at what distance. If they will and the range is fairly long then the H/T platoon may not like what comes next...
The footsloggers on their way into Cobru are a bit knackered, so they're slowing down, but I've got some ambushes in place on the connecting roads to Noville. They might be fairly porous, depending on the difference between how far the game tells me they can see and how close any enemy vehicles need to be to resolve a spotting contact, but the sound contacts in Noville don't appear to racing forward right at this moment so fingers crossed I don't find out.
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Turns 5-6
I actually ordered the Recce One trail team to ditch the jeep and leg it into the adjacent garden, which they managed to do with only a single casualty.
The enemy flamethrower teams disembarked- one of them got nailed. Recce One is still panicking, but at least they’re panicking with the pedal to the metal and they seem out of the immediate danger zone, picking up sound contacts as they go.
After that they withdrew to the back of that garden and took another casualty as what I assume was the Panther did a drive by on them on its way to Cobru.
The most interesting part of this is the sound contacts. Here’s an overview for Turn 5:
Wondering what I’m actually hearing aside, it’s clear that AjarmanG is piling into this end of Noville. Of the left and right roads between Noville and Cobru he looks like he’s stopped on the left after running into Recce One. Or at least, the lead Panther has stopped. There is another sound contact- a probable tank contact- heading for the right side road.
The halftrack platoon moving into Cobru is deploying into ambush positions now, the dismounted company has actually reached the village now but is basically knackered. Well done me. On the plus side, AjarmanG is potentially leading with isolated tanks here, so a few squads of GIs with bazookas should hopefully get the drop on noisy blind tanks. Or at least give him second thoughts.
Recce Two’s position just outside the edge of Noville is good- they can hear something tank-like from where they are, Recce Three’s lead jeep is just about in position.
The right hook feels like it should be moving a lot faster and I am questioning whether it is actually a good idea: I’m splitting my forces in two where my opponent isn’t. It might be a good idea to either bring it in closer to Noville and attack along the highway to speed things up, or leave the forward platoon up there to move in as a deception effort (I think he knows how much I like big dramatic manoeuvres) and pile everything else onto the left flank.
This is probably too much thinking, too early and I just need to be patient.
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8 hours ago, Erwin said:
My point was is that a RL use of recon?
It really surprised me to watch soldiers in Afghanistan wandering over open fields devoid of cover- but its frequently a sort of "provocation patrol" or "recon by exposure" designed to goad the enemy into exposing himself. The risk is balanced out by the fact that most Afghans are apparently terrible, terrible shots and that NATO forces could call in overwhelming firepower in a matter of seconds. Recce by fire is similar and like Combatintman says, its a recognised option.
For this game, in an ideal world Recce One would have had some backup to counterbalance the risk of hurling them towards the enemy. Maybe I should have beefed up the recce platoon with some greyhounds or reinforced them with some bazookas (if those guys had bazooka's that Panther from the backseat of the jeep then I would give them all Medals of Honour as soon as I'd stopped laughing like a maniac), maybe I should have even had some tanks to back them up, but at some point they stop being recce elements and start to become something else. A couple of jeeps are nice and low profile- these guys had some bad luck (or dumb orders, your mileage may vary!).
23 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:I wonder if you need to worry about bogging / immobilization at all.
A little pre-game testing showed that things would bog occasionally when trying to cross the streams. I think the fields under the snow are all fairly passable, I'm just trying to stick to the roads at this point for the speed.
18 hours ago, benpark said:I'm a little biased since I made the map, but I sure would like to see that left hook through Cobru!
Definitely on the cards now I think. Fantastic job on this map man, I'm loving it!
6 hours ago, General Melchid said:Thanks for doing this, big fan of your writing/presenting style ; enjoy the vids but always seem to glean more tactics from the written word.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks very much. Believe it or not, I'm finding writing it out like this is much easier than speaking it, so its a nice change.
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Well, Recce One did its job and found something German:
A Panther covered in flamethrower teams. They only took a single casualty before Recce One’s lead car evacuated the area (and likely their bowels), but the Panther gave them a few squirts with the coax and the two backseaters got drilled. The guys in the front are now in a panic, justifiably so. The best part of this is that they actually ran out of orders just as they met the Panther and the whole encounter was basically AI driven. At least Recce One gets style points for conducting a drive by on a Panther!
Style points aside, Recce One’s lead car is out of the fight for at least a while. The much more important radio carrying trail car (which is supposed to be comparatively safe at the back) now has an angry Panther bearing down on it and I’m not too optimistic about its chances. The Tac AI is reversing it away, but I’m not confident that it’ll disappear from view in the time and I don’t think changing its orders in any way will help, so that’s a wait and see. Getting the Thompson maniac in the front seat to stop shooting will probably help.
On the whole, though, prospects do not look good for Recce One so let’s think about what information they gathered with their virtual lives:
They bumped into a Panther carrying 3 flamethrower teams, probably with more vehicles following.
First of all, they bumped into it, which implies that either AjarmanG’s recce elements have passed me by OR they’re somewhere else OR he’s not got any.
This could well be another opportunity- I need to get some troops into position in Cobru quickly and ambush that tank if it pushes in. He might be a bit more cautious now, but if he is then I’ll have gained some time.
Secondly, he’s brought at least one Panther along, there’s probably going to be more. Panthers are scary, but at the same time close ranges aren’t going to play to their strengths. The sides and rear and nice and flimsy and the front may even be vulnerable to Sherman 76s at these close ranges (still want to avoid that though).
Third, flamethrowers.
Not sure why they’re out in front (if they are actually in the lead), but it looks to me like he’s thinking about fighting the house-to-house. On the plus side, that lead Panther is supported by five infantrymen (one got wasted by Recce One) and that should be fairly easy to deal with, flammenwerfers or not.
Lastly, looking at the way Recce One’s sound contacts developed it looks like there might be another three enemy vehicles behind the first.
Panthers come in fives so maybe it’s a panther platoon, maybe it’s something else. If I’m lucky and Recce One survives they might be able to keep tabs on the traffic.
So planning wise, a cheeky quick toehold in Noville is out because I don’t want my halftracks anywhere near enemy tanks if I can help it, but the Option 3 transport juggle is in progress and almost certainly necessary now to get some troops into Cobru quick. That Panther wants ambushing if it carries on, but I need to beat it to the ground. I think I’d better resort to mixing up my companies and quickly get one of the right hook platoons to rush into Cobru to get boots on the ground and then send the Option 3 platoon loading into the halftracks to the right hook. Hopefully spaghettifying the command links isn’t going to end in disaster.
In other news, Recce Two is in position at a bottleneck on the highway out of Noville, they’re going to go to ground there and keep their eyes and ears open.
Recce Three is rushing down the backroads parallel to the highway to investigate the right flank.
The leading right hook halftrack platoon is currently having some traffic issues trying to cross the bridge, which is a pain because I need them up forward to complement Recce Three (they might be armoured infantry, but they’re still on recce duty). It might be worth risking the chance of bogging in the stream with the other platoons to avoid bottlenecking at the bridge.
I’m slightly worried that I might have to sack off the right hook to bail out my left, if he bumrushes Cobru in force, but we’ll see how things develop. I’d still rather have him react to the right hook stabbing him in the back than sack it off in favour of my reacting to him.
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Turn 4 is in. Bit late over here, but I ripped out some audio from Recce One:
First blood decorates the streets of Noville. More details in the morning.
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1 hour ago, Erwin said:
It's a bit gamey, but so is treating recon units as expendable.
"Just drive down that road until you get blown up".
George S Patton, being a bit gamey.
I wouldn't go out and out and say that I consider my pixeltruppen totally expendable, but I would say that you can't play chess without pawns.Here are the options I'm considering with regards to the Recce 1 situation:
Option 1: Low Risk, low reward.
Continue as planned- leave Recce 1 as an OP in Noville and concentrate on delivering the right hook.
The fact that I’ve almost made it into Noville without the slightest sign of any enemy activity means nothing on a dark foggy morning and the absence of contact icons shouldn’t be taken as a sure sign that the area is clear, especially at such an early stage. There’s no need to weaken the right hook and get involved in street fighting based on the fact that a recce team can’t find the enemy in the dark. I’m getting excited about nothing. Its Turn 3. Calm down, wait and see.
Option 2: Potentially high risk, potentially high reward.
Send one of the Mounted Infantry platoons to reinforce Recce One and secure the roads leading out of Noville towards Cobru.
A presence in Noville would be a fantastic brake on enemy progress towards Cobru and hopefully help pin him in place for the right hook. A rifle platoon split into as many teams as possible, spread out amongst the buildings and aggressively handled could look like a significantly larger force than it actually is and lure AjarmanG into thinking that my main effort is a frontal push from Cobru to Noville.
This would also free up Recce 1 to go and recce or set up somewhere else.
I might be worried about getting involved in some urban/suburban warfare, but if I can get set up first and be defending an urban area then the advantage should be on my side.
Furthermore, the halftracks used to transport that platoon could quickly turn around and start shuttling the dismounted infantry company forward: it’s faster than walking and they won’t be knackered.
The downside is that it’s easily possible that Recce 1 bypassed enemy scout elements who are now in position covering the road. Any reinforcements heading for Recce 1 could easily be ambushed or at least observed or heard moving up. Even worse, I’d end up with two widely separated non-mutually supporting forces that could be destroying in detail (but on the flipside I was in that situation already with the logic that they’re too big to be destroyed quickly and would serve to pin the attacking enemy in place.)
Option 3: Compromise?
Offload one of the halftrack platoons onto the tanks and then start loading and shuttling the dismounted infantry company forwards with the empty halftracks.
Will an entire armoured infantry platoon fit on the back of six Shermans? How are they going to retain their mobility once they dismount and the tanks are in action?
Also, why didn’t I think of this when I was setting up?
What I think:I'm currently leaning on 3, but I'll need to check if the tanks have the carrying capacity. It shouldn't slow down the right hook too much and it'll speed up all movement on my left. Even if Recce 1 gets wiped out at the start of the next turn its probably still worth accelerating the occupation of Cobru and injecting some extra flexibility by juggling the transport arrangements.
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Thanks guys! Hope its going to turn into a suitable interesting, dramatic game for everyone.
We’re up to Turn 3, most of what's going on is traffic control, except for the spectacular progress of the recce elements:
Recce 1 has almost reached the highway (N30) in Noville. They haven’t seen or heard any sign of the enemy. This might mean that he hasn’t reached Noville yet, or at least not this part of Noville.
Of course, this is early days yet- as soon as the recce troops get out of the jeeps they might start picking up sound contacts galore. Or they could be seconds away eating from a torrent of enemy fire (who said reconnaissance by fire meant outgoing fire?) or they could even have bypassed some equally speedy Germans going the other way without either side noticing the other.
But if it is quiet then I’ve got a decision to make:
Do I treat this as a solid sign that the right hook is going to succeed because AjarmanG is moving slowly and stick to my plan?
Or do I treat this as an opportunity and quickly reinforce Recce 1, aiming to knock him on the back foot and get into his face in force early on?
Command Push or Recon Pull? (Slightly more nuanced than that I know).
What does gut instinct say?
Gut instinct says: “Its nearly lunchtime.”
Weighing this up is going to keep me busy all day. I’ll post again in a while and lay out what I'm thinking.
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I fancied a little break from doing video AARs for a bit so here's a text and pic During Action report!
AjarmanG and I are squaring off in a meeting engagement at Noville, north of Bastogne or just off the eastern edge of the map of Bil and Baneman’s beta AAR:
We’ve played a few games so far and I’d say we’re fairly evenly matched, but something that came up out of our last Meeting Engagement was that there was an initial rush for position and then the game pretty much stagnated.
So we put this one together with an eye on keeping things fluid: we’ve got 2km2 of rolling countryside to manoeuvre in and it’s a foggy dawn to boot. Flush with an unanticipated appreciation for the US Army after winning our last game with them, I plumped for the Americans.
Thinking about it now, I won that game mostly because of P51s which are going to be useless here and I really wish I had squads full of Mp44s riding Tiger tanks instead of Garands on Shermans, but hey ho.
This is a different kind of battle to that which I’d usually want to fight- usually I’d be looking to take and hold chunks of key terrain and exploit them to get my opponent to fight on my terms. That kind of approach doesn't really work when the opposition can walk right past your positions without you ever knowing.
So its time to wheel out the standard backup plan, which is pretty simple:
Stage 1: Find the enemy
Stage 2: Kill him
I can quickly split the map into two sections: an arc through Cobru, the centre hill and Noville which is all close suburban, urban and forest terrain:
and then a big arc around the outside of that from deployment zone to deployment zone is which is full of wide open spaces:
Gut instinct took one look at the map and said “Go right.”
The darkness and the fog make the wide open spaces over there an area I can exploit for manoeuvre rather than the deathtraps I’d usually see them as, so going right isn’t as daft as it might sound- though I might be changing my mind about that pretty quickly.
If I'm fast enough and can push round the right with some tanks and mechanised infantry I can hopefully catch my opponent in the flank as he moves from his deployment zone into Noville. If I’m too slow to catch him (much more likely), then I’ll be behind him, which should upset him some and maybe get to snack on some HQ elements, on-map mortars or unlucky stragglers. Whatever happens I want to be in his face (or behind his back) giving him a good kicking instead of sitting back and handing him the initiative.
There’s always the possibility that he’ll push the same flank and we’ll end up with a messy knifefight as we run into one another, but I’m confident that I’ll come out of that fairly well: my Shermans will be at their best against German armour up close (read "actually have a chance") and anything lighter than a tank should get shredded by all the halftrack mounted .50cals I intend to bring with me.
My biggest worry here is having to really get stuck into streetfighting. This is an area where I’ve struggled against AjarmanG in the past (damn Oosterbeek!) and chances are he’s going to have time to set up shop in Noville no matter what I do. I’m currently thinking I’ll have to wait until it gets lighter and my tanks can engage enemy positions from outside panzershreck range before I try to wrinkle him out Fallujah style. Assuming I have any tanks left by then- we’ll see.
Speaking of tanks, I always agonise over how many to take. In the end I could only afford to bring along six Sherman 76s- more would be better, but at some point I'm going to have to knuckle down and clear out Noville and for that I'm going to need plenty of manpower. The tanks are going to be beefing up a mounted armoured infantry company led by a recce platoon as they go for that right hook straight off the bat. The rest of my force is a dismounted armoured infantry company that’s going to be tabbing into Cobru to set up or push from there as things progress- I can't just let him have that village. In an ideal world, an occupied Cobru would be the anvil to the right hook’s hammer, but unfortunately Noville is in the way.
Planning beyond the basics seems fairly redundant here- exact details will depend on exactly what circumstances I find myself in. Best case scenario: I manage to isolate, envelop and destroy helpless pockets of enemy troops out on the right flank and AjarmanG will find it tricky to manage to defend his inevitable position in Noville from two sides. Worst case scenario, that open ground out there really is the deathtrap it usually is...
Should be fun whatever happens!
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^ I've found daring assaults to be consistently decisive... though not necessarily always decisive in a way I would like.
Hapless' One Golden Tactical Rule: Keep it Simple!
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Cool stuff Wham, been playing about with that kind of style myself. It just takes so damn long to edit!
"Oh dear!" lol
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Well, I've been wondering too, so I did a little testing just to see: 100 60 second 1vs1 head-to-head tank duels at 1000m over open ground between each Russian tank and each Ukrainian tank. No one has any orders whatsoever, its up to the AI to react. Obviously this is massively restrictive and thoroughly divorced from any kind of tactical reality and anything you learn from it should be treated with great skepticism, but it throws up some interesting points.
First of all the results, out of 100 engagements:
For the T72B3:
vs T64BV it went 53:10; vs Bulat it went 37:13 and vs the Oplot it went 15:8
The T90A:
vs T64BV it went 33:0; vs the Bulat it went 32:1 and against the Oplot it went 7:6
And last the T90AM:
vs T64BV it went 37:3, against the Bulat it went 32:1 and it went 10:1 against the Oplot.
It looks like one of the most important factors is whether the tanks have laser warning receivers- the T90A, T90AM and Oplot all get fewer kills and take fewer losses because they pop smoke when they get lased. The T72B3 doesn't know if its getting lased, but seems to get the first round off more often than the Ukrainians.
The T72B3 is the surprise here- I could expect highest losses because it has no Shtora, but I didn't expect it to lead in kills against all 3 Urkrainian types. Think I'll be ditching the T90s and taking the T72s out for a try.
Oh, I did a few tests with the Abrams and guess what? Its a head-to-head test, so its an invincible killing machine.
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If I could think of a way to cross the river without getting annihilated I'd be up for it!
Quick test shows that it takes about 6 turns to get across (unless you're in an MTLB- they're slow swimmers). And that everyone on the opposite bank can see you. I can't think of a way round that for the attacker- too many potential defender positions to destroy, suppress or mask. Of course, you could use the tried and true "clog up the meat grinder with sheer numbers" approach, but the attacker is going to need a lot of stuff for that.
In some respects it feels like its too big for Combat Mission (you've only got a maximum two hour time limit and this is more of a large scale operation) but you could maybe try and balance it out by making it night or giving the attacker a few small infantry only deployment zones on the other bank to simulate paras or heliborne troops, or have the defender get the bulk of his force as reinforcements- you'd probably need an impartial third party to make it into a custom scenario for you for this sort of stuff.
You could even split it into two short missions and have persistent forces- maybe Russians try to reach the river in the first one, if they win then they cross and attack the other side, if they lose, Ukranians reinforce overnight and counterattack.
That's just my opinion- great concept, but not convinced it'll work out of the box. If it weren't for the river, I'd probably be up for it straight away.
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Cheers again guys, here's Part 3:
In hindsight, I might have done a few things differently- prolonged heavy artillery throughout the punch through, perhaps, instead of the rockets seems a solid option, more tanks, more tank riders, highly motivated troops... even more tanks- but I'm standing by the hammer blow over the fire superiority approach.
In fact, the way most people seem to be recommending building up the fire superiority as a prerequisite to an attack is actually encouraging: sounds like you guys wouldn't expect the crazy approach either :P!
But more seriously, the whole thing is based on concentration of force, speed, surprise, and a willingness to take casualties. In a lot of respects I feel that building up the fire superiority takes a long time, tells the enemy what you're doing and can actually make life more difficult.
Take the Panther, for example- how do I gain fire superiority over that? Engaging in a long range, head-on fight against a hull down kitty is not fun for T34s. Fire superiority is borderline irrelevant in that fight and trading T34s for the chance of a lucky hit seems wasteful. I got very lucky in Part 2 with disabling the Panther's gun, but if that hadn't happened then it would have been mobbed and flanked by my surviving tanks the next turn.
I'm not trying to rubbish fire superiority here: its solid but its not the ultimate in tactics and occasionally you can get away with sidestepping it (he says, standing on a pile of his own dead). It worked here and it was decisive. The next time I tried it against the same opponent the prevailing circumstances weren't so suitable.
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Cheers guys, its good to know everyone is enjoying it!
Dramatic value aside, was the tank bumrush worth it? Would it have been smarter, less costly and more effective to sit back and establish fire superiority first before going in?
How would you guys have done it?
Any ideas on how I should best sort out the mess I've gotten myself into?
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Part Two is up, enjoy guys!
domfluff: Thanks very much man. I agree: its all about the plan. And scrambling around trying to sort things out when it inevitably goes totally wrong.
DAR- Breakfast in Noville
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted
Another little engagement- a German halftrack came in behind the platoon retreating from Noville. One of the squads had detached a scout team to spot the sound contact coming in, but the Germans saw them first and nailed one with the 42.
That lit up the German halftrack and it got rinsed from the front by one of my halftracks (all hail the mighty .50cal!).
Then lead Sherman moving up spotted it and blew it away. That’s how its supposed to work- blind infantrymen aside.
One of squads retreating on foot has made it to cover, the other has taken a casualty to MG fire from Noville and is now panicking and running around out in the open like headless chickens.
I was tempted to open on the enemy MG team with some halftracks, but there’s a couple of tank sound contacts lurking about and I don’t want to attract their attention until the Shermans are in position.
Apart from that, not much has changed. Still no activity over Cobru way.