Battles of Ramadi

[sburke]

Despite really enjoying CMBN I keep going back to CMSF and I think largely due to this scenario. I finally went out yesterday and bought Joker One to read and know a bit more about the unit involved. It gave me a lot to think about as I once again tried to figure out this battle.

First off to all the guys on this forum who actually spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan, thank you. I realize this game can in no way truly replicate your experience, but if nothing else is it does cause us to at least stop and think about what we asked of you and what some of you are still going through. On that subject - you guys suck. How the hell am I ever going to be able to achieve the high standards you accomplished, you set the bar too high. :-P

As I sit here drinking my coffee with all the time in the world to figure how to maneuver my units to achieve my objectives I can only ponder slack jawed how these guys did this in real life with all the confusion and chaos of combat. I am not normally a strident flag waving jingoistic rah rah American most folks overseas see us all as, but in reading of these soldiers from their own perspective I have to say it gives me an enormous amount of pride and respect in the men and women who serve. Again Thank you.

Secondly to BFC, I know there has been a lot of back and forth about why CMSF and there is a fair amount of folks who were disappointed with the setting. All I can say is I really appreciate that you did choose to tackle this. If you had not I doubt I would have had the same drive to understand more about it and my apologies to those who have served for that. It is a world apart from the one I live in as you know better than anyone. Honestly I doubt this game brings me any closer to bridging that gap, but it has made me more acutely aware of it's existence and the debt of appreciation that is owed.

Lastly to LLF, thanks for doing this.

Okay enough of the maudlin sentimentality. I need to go back and make sure of the mods I have downloaded.

[LongLeftFlank]

Aww shucks. Make sure you also skim the Ramadi chapters of No True Glory.

The "Shootout: Ramadi" documentary is also viewable on YouTube, although (a) it gets a lot of locations wrong, ( says virtually nothing about the relief effort, and © the townscapes they used as a setting to recreate the fight are too "commercial" (storefronts) and not residential (compounds) enough.

CMSF / CMBN is it, folks. With all its imperfections and inconveniences, this is the only commercially available engine that weirdo armchair historians like me can use to recreate this kind of tactical action and "get in the boots" of the company and platoon commanders inasmuch as that's doable without being there.

- Shooters by definition give superhuman qualities to the player.

- CMx1, ASL and other wargames are basically abstracted to the "counter" level, which works fine at battalion command and up but doesn't truly give the feel of the fight at subunit level (well, perhaps the armoured fight, but certainly not the infantry fight). There's just no way to grasp at this level how two platoons can be pinned down for 2 hours by a couple of a*****es with AKMs (or Kar98s), and how they finally break the deadlock. But that stuff is fascinating to me.

Once you read the books and then go into it in 3D you really do start to understand why things went down the way they did, and appreciate the skills and courage of those who fight. I feel like my modern warfare knowledge, and now my WWII knowledge has gone up to the third power since undertaking these projects.

I am deeply saddened that the military has not grasped the incredible power of these games off the shelf as tactical training and orientation tools.... I think that even a primitive form of CoPlay would turn that corner rapidly, and believe that adding this feature really should be BFC's Top Priority even if it isn't perfect at first.

On the other hand, I hope that there isn't some gang of Jihadi shmucks out there using the game to refine their ambush skills (doubtful, since it seems they've decided that mine warfare and sniping deliver better returns for them in terms of "Crusader" blood than complex attacks).

So anyway, I want to finish the CMBN Carillon project and then get back to Ramadi. I think my next scenario will be Army only, so that owners of the base game only can play. As I mentioned a while back, I think that there are a lot more Ramadis and Basras -- holding the lid down on a hostile city with limited forces -- in the future of the NATO armies than there are Fallujahs and Hues.