PEB14

I didn't even thought it was possible! Isn't it just a coincidence? I was pretty sure that vehicles cannot harm pixeltrüppen by running over them! Nice cap anyway!

If he indeed married in 1944… not sure he does anymore!

The picture is dated 1944, not Falaise's marriage!

It's not really that it's too slow — as noted by @CarlXII, you have no time to read the end of the text because once it end rolling it disappears lightning fast! Indeed I agree with @CarlXII, having a faster rolling text with longer pauses once text is fully expanded and before the next picture/slide would be perfect!

The Scottish Corridor.

Mondrainville, June 27th 1944. Enemy tank spotted!

I completely agree. And with potentially very different possibilities for scenarios: mountains, snow, hot summer, mobile warfare, trench warfare… And a completely new opposition: WW2 era russian stuff vs. WW2 era allied stuff.

Well finally even the driver wasn't able to use it…

In the Mondrainville mission, I tried to acquire the 2-in mortar with the ammo bearer who rides the Carrier. Nope. Nothing in the inventory, the mortar is lost forever. And as I was stupid enough to acquire the HE shells as well, all the stuff is lost forever, as the ammo bearers won't share. It definitively looks like only the DRIVER can successfully acquire weapons from a Carrier. That wouldn't cost much to indicate it in the game manual…

Of course I do! But sometimes they don't pop, generally they pop away from the target, and,… sometimes… they pop at the right position!

Thank you, that's exactly the behaviour I observed in my own Hansel and Gretel game.

I'm playing with the latest CMBN game engine and I'm able to "pop" smoke both with squads and vehicles (though never in the place I would like to ), and to "fire" smoke, both with artillery, light mortars and tanks… (I don't use Steam, all my CM games are Battlefront installations…)

I checked another of my games and, once again, all my vehicles are "destroyed" while my enemies are all "knocked out". It looks like in CMx2 the only difference is there: your vehicles get destroyed, while you knock out your opponent's…

I checked in my last game: both enemy vehicles are "knocked out", including a burning one that seems to be beyons repair, while all my vehicles are "destroyed"…

Do you mean that you loaded scout teams from a DIFFERENT unit before game start, and then acquired the stuff AFTER game start? And this way you were able to get the PIAT and mortar usable?

Well, I don't remember to have ever seen "knocked out" vehicles on my side, but it is very likely that I didn't pay attention to it before; moreover I didn't play thousand of games so my statistical data is quite low. But your explanation makes a lot of sense; knocked out vehicles might very well be repaired in the frame of a campaign. And honestly I don't believe that only AI's or opponent's vehicles might be knocked out and not your own side's - I'm not aware of any occurence of such a distinction between "own" and "opponent" in the CM game mechanics.

Hello, I just noticed that I "knocked out" an enemy panzer, while my own tanks were simply "destroyed". Is there any difference in game terms between those two status?

That's the one I was thinking about. The problem with a Bénouville campaign is that, apart from the initial British assault on the bridges (completely bland from a gaming point of view, according to your account above), all other actions are defensive for the British. So a GERMAN campaign would be more interesting… Your 82nd Airborne campaign is very nice thanks to the balance between offensive and defensive missions. A purely defensive campaign would be definitively unattractive… I don't think that diverse, small actions is really an issue. As long as you can track down core units and tell a coherent story with them, you can build a campaign. So perhaps you should look for an interesting core unit to build a campaign around, leaving geographical considerations aside… Interesting meaning that the core units took part in diverse actions… I'm just reading a French book which mentions that very bloody fightings occured when the German 346 ID tried to reduce the British pocket east of the Orne river, from 8th to 10 June. These fighting have been completely overshadowed by the Panzer Divisionen actions. Unfortunatley, your Bénouville map focuses on the Western bank of the Orne river, so it is not a topic of interest for your campaign…

Yes, British light mortars are intended to be used in direct fire mode. You are facing exactly the same issue that I did. You should have either the Carrier's driver or the initial Carrier's passengers acquire the mortar, and it should appear in their inventory properly.

I don't know if anybody played this game recently. Only two results listed at the Blitz website. I just surrendered as the Brits, IMHO the scenario horribly unbalanced: I don't know how the author intends the Brits to hold against 5 Tiger and 4 Panther tanks (let's forget about the couple of StuG and the pair of Panzer IV ) with 2 Stuarts, 3 Firleflys and some 10 Cromwell… In addition, initial placement for the Brits is terrible and they have no room to manoeuver behind their VP areas… I certainly don't recommend this scenario for H2H!

I see, you suggest that @Paper Tiger had some reinforcements hidden behind the clock in this game. That's fine for me!

Correct. What unit did acquire the mortar? IIRC the PIAT was in a Support Company's carrier, and the mortar in the AT unit's (Loyd?) carrier. But it may be the other way round. You're correct; I didn't because I haven't considered this as a "wrong issue"; I tried to acquire weapons using "non proprietary units", so I thought it was working "as intended". As a matter of fact, in the fourth mission I was able to acquire a PIAT using the carrier's driver, exactly as depicted by @chuckdyke. That's why my interpretation was that only the carrier's "proprietary" unit may use weapons that may be acquired from the carrier (not ammo). By the way, Bren carriers are really gamey; any unit can drive them, and you cannot dismount the vehicle's Bren, like it was supposed to be in real life. Protection offered by the carrier for both driver and gunner is gorgeous, which makes the Bren carrier more powerful than a German SdKfz 251/1: protection is better, cross-country ability is better... In the game they are best used as suppression tool, something they were clearly not designed for.

In the third mission of the Scottish Corridor Campaign, I had an IC Team and a standard (Scottish!) infantry team acquire a mortar and a PIAT from the Support Co Carriers, respectively. None of the acquiring teams showed any of the acquired weapons in their respective inventory, which leads me to think that not everybody can use these weapons. I nevertheless agree that more tests are required to confirm my assessment...

I remember that the 21 Pz Div counterattacked towards Bénouville on D-Day, but I don't remember where the fighting actually occured?

As long as you stay out of AT weapons range (PzFaust/Schrecks), these Bren carriers excellent suppression tool as the protection offered to the driver and gunner isinsane and they are usually not targeted by the AI... It looks like the mortar can only be used by the unit traveling in the carrier (or the carrier's driver). Same thing for the PIAT.