how does one assault a town?

[wamphyri]

hey all,

I'm fairly new to CMBN and am going through the campaign "The Road to Montebourg". I'm currently on the third mission, the first 2 gave me no end of trouble. I'm not proud of it but I restarted from a save midway through on each when things went south.

Now on the third mission, although it's small and I have a fairly sizable force I'm having issues when I get to the town. I can get to it without any casualties but once there it ends up being a gong show. I'll be taking fire from somewhere, don't know where, my guys are dying and I haven't spotted anything.

Near as I could figure out is having to go house to house and clearing them out one by one. But I can't figure out any way to lower my casualties since the only way to get anyone into a position to fire on any of the houses with enemies is to put them in a position where they would get fired on.. thus enhancing the blood shed. Plus, you never really know where they are until someone gets shot at, keeping me guessing as to safe avenues of approach.

I did finish it once already but only got a draw.. I had too many casualties. What am I missing in my tactics that would have allowed me to capture this little town?

For those wondering, this is an infantry only map, 3 onboard 60mm mortars, no artillery, 4 HMG.

[Pewpewchewchew]

Firstly try reconnaissance by fire. There's really no need for stealth at the point of a village assault. That was one really big problem I had some time ago. Secondly, Check if you have any demo charges. I think in that campaign you get a platoon of pioneers as a core unit. If there are troops holed up in buildings with at least a side without windows I'd just blast in there, pinning and kill the most of not all at once. Thirdly, in general it'd be better to just force the enemy out of the buildings and kill them outside. Try to "isolate" buildings with your troop's line of slight. For example, if you find a building complex full of enemies try to surround every angle of the building so that once the troops bug out, they get cut down in the streets.

[c3k]

Suppressive fire is your friend. Where could the enemy be? Suppress it. Send a scout team up. Do they get hit? Yes? Excellent: they've done their job. Suppress wherever the fire came from. Send some more scouts.

Do not ever move a full squad unless you're so sure it clear of enemy fire (including arty) that you'd let your mother-in-law walk there. Hmm. That may not be the best test...

Regardless, little dabs of men darting about while the vast majority are either watching, suppressing, or engaging, is the key to minimizing your casualties. That, and supporting arms like armor or artillery.

[JonS]

Wamp,

start here;

http://www.army.gov.au/Our-future/Publications/Australian-Army-Journal/Past-editions/~/media/Files/Our%20future/LWSC%20Publications/AAJ/2003Winter/05-RethinkingTheBasisOfInf.pdf

[womble]

You can often, in built up areas, get your troops into position to fire on the enemy without them being spotted.

1. Split your teams. This is, IMO, vital.
   
2. Give them short, circular cover arcs. Short enough that they won't open up on any spotted enemies on the other side of the street/garden/courtyard/alley.
   
3. Find some enemy.
   
4. Use SLOW moves into the buildings you know are clear that will have LOF onto the enemy position. Even give your troops HIDE orders.
   
5. Try and get elevation advantage with your troops.
   
6. Ensure you have overwhelming fire superiority available.
   
7. Drop the arcs and cancel the Hides.
   
8. Watch the fireworks.
   

You'll probably uncover another enemy element or two that can fire back at some of your elements. You kinda have to hope these won't do too much damage before you've driven off or killed the elements you had initially targetted. Once the first firefight is done, if you don't have enough firepower that can reach to neutralise the new contact, you can give the elements taking fire a short cover arc and a Hide order, and the AI will lose spot on you, and hold their fire. You've found some new guys to hunt, so reset everyone and go through that list above with step three already complete.

Also: don't neglect any demo charges you have. Most defenders will be grossly discommoded if you blast through a blank wall that they're next to, and the followup team will be shooting fish in a barrel. Smoke is another way to change the geography that can be very helpful. If you have any Shermans, they have smoke dischargers that can, with the right wind direction, fire round corners... effectively.

[wamphyri]

That was a good article. I had been using suppression at most points during the attack but for the house to house fighting I surely wasn't doing it properly or often enough. Add that to the fact I was doing russian wave style attacks on the houses thinking the greater firepower up close would be better, but that just creates more targets.

Next try I'm going to use more scouting elements while having a suppression force covering their movement.

[Michael Emrys]

It's really great if you have a tank or two to blast a building that is housing hostiles for a turn or three before you send in the troops. In situations like that, nothing suppresses like high velocity HE, but large caliber low velocity HE works wonders too. Ask the boys in Aachen.

Michael

[YankeeDog]

For those wondering, this is an infantry only map, 3 onboard 60mm mortars, no artillery, 4 HMG.

Hmmm... Battle 3. Le Grand Hameau, right? Sounds to me like someone used all his off-map support in the second battle, and didn't save any for the third. Oops.

I was able to win this battle pretty handily, but I reserved about 1/3 of the 105mm support I got in battle 2 for this fight, which I'm sure made things a lot easier.

Should still be doable without any 105mm support. Definitely harder, but doable. The trick to clearing a cluster of buildings like that is to take it very slow and try to section things off so that you're only confronting one new (possibly enemy occupied) building at a time. Not always easy, but fairly doable on this map if you read the terrain carefully.

[Holman]

Assaulting an enemy-occupied building:

Use suppression with timed movement. At a minimum, give your suppressing units a "Target Briefly" command on the objective, which will make them fire for 15 seconds and then stop. Time your assaulters' movement so that they reach the objective just as this 15-sec's of covering fire lets up. (Friendly small arms fire won't hurt your own men here; friendly tank rounds will.)

If the assaulting unit won't be under fire from another direction while they do this, you can also give *them* a 15-second Pause just outside the building combined with a Target Briefly before they actually rush in. This will mean point-blank fire against (hopefully) already-suppressed enemies immediately before you charge in on them.

As has already been mentioned, split your squads for maximum control. If you're playing WeGo (and you should), remember that the Assault movement order was designed for real-time play. You can really do it better manually by splitting your squads and arranging your own fire-and-movement.

[wamphyri]

Hmmm... Battle 3. Le Grand Hameau, right? Sounds to me like someone used all his off-map support in the second battle, and didn't save any for the third. Oops.

I was able to win this battle pretty handily, but I reserved about 1/3 of the 105mm support I got in battle 2 for this fight, which I'm sure made things a lot easier.

Should still be doable without any 105mm support. Definitely harder, but doable. The trick to clearing a cluster of buildings like that is to take it very slow and try to section things off so that you're only confronting one new (possibly enemy occupied) building at a time. Not always easy, but fairly doable on this map if you read the terrain carefully.

Right you are, didn't have any off map artillery left for this one. I finished it second time through with only 5 men killed, not bad. I had finished it once before as I said but the town fight was a mess and my second time through would have been a mess if it wasn't for the advice here.

I went about it a little bit different this time. I studied the terrain and window placement of the buildings, as well as the doors. This helped me determine what attack angles the germans had from the buildings, this made me realize that I could get a machine gun up the small strip along the one side then I could park my HMG on the road and none of the buildings would have LOS to him. I used a platoon as support and got it where it needed to be, now anyone running across the road was getting cut down as my main force advanced.

I used lots of suppression like everyone said and it worked well. I found that the heavy fire would often cause them to break and run (to be cut down by my HMG). I just slowly advanced one building at a time and used this as a learning exercise.

Only issue is I probably used a little more ammo then I should have which will make the next mission interesting.

[Peregrine]

The campaigns are great but for new players I would recommend playing more scenarios first to learn the game.

When learning you can make some really big mistakes and this may mess up campaigns if you do not restart.

[womble]

To expand a little...

Assaulting an enemy-occupied building:

First decide if you really need to. As has been noted, you can often just sweep them out of their holes with the lead broom. If you can get some enfilading fire on the open space behind the place they'll be fleeing from, all to the good.

Friendly small arms fire won't hurt your own men here...

It will begin to suppress them though. If you've got a lot of covering fire, you can even pin your assaulters, if they hang about too long. They recover from "friendly" pinning pretty quickly, but best to avoid in the first place.

...friendly tank rounds will...

As will friendly "light HE" such as rifle grenades and bazookas. If any of the fire support teams have those weapons, have them Area Target Light and they won't use them. If you don't give them a target order, they'll use them. If you give them a Target order, they'll use them. If you give them a specific aimed Target Light, and that target ducks out of sight, but another pops up, they might use them.

...a 15-second Pause just outside the building combined with a Target Briefly before they actually rush in. This will mean point-blank fire...

And a good chance of a couple of grenades, which can only be a good thing, for your assault.

The campaigns are great but for new players I would recommend playing more scenarios first to learn the game.

When learning you can make some really big mistakes and this may mess up campaigns if you do not restart.

As an extension to this, I'd recommend playing some small QBs against the AI first, because there's a finite number of Scenarios, and a good chunk of the charm of a scenario is the surprises it contains, which you can only experience once. QBs are entirely good enough to use to develop your SOPs.

[YankeeDog]

I went about it a little bit different this time. I studied the terrain and window placement of the buildings, as well as the doors. This helped me determine what attack angles the germans had from the buildings, this made me realize that I could get a machine gun up the small strip along the one side then I could park my HMG on the road and none of the buildings would have LOS to him. I used a platoon as support and got it where it needed to be, now anyone running across the road was getting cut down as my main force advanced.

I used lots of suppression like everyone said and it worked well. I found that the heavy fire would often cause them to break and run (to be cut down by my HMG). I just slowly advanced one building at a time and used this as a learning exercise.

Only issue is I probably used a little more ammo then I should have which will make the next mission interesting.

Sounds like you came up with a good plan. Interdicting line of retreat is very important when attacking into built-up areas because if you don't you just end up fighting the same guys repeatedly in different buildings.

MOUT fighting does indeed burn a LOT of ammo; there's pretty much no other way to do it if you want to keep casualties down to a reasonable level. I wouldn't worry too much about your ammo consumption in this battle, though. In the RtM campaign, small arms ammo resupply between battles is generally good. It's mostly the off-map support supply you have to be careful with as you may get one module that's expected to last you over 2-3 battles. IIRC, there are details of how much resupply you can expect, and when, in the campaign briefing.

[wamphyri]

As an extension to this, I'd recommend playing some small QBs against the AI first, because there's a finite number of Scenarios, and a good chunk of the charm of a scenario is the surprises it contains, which you can only experience once. QBs are entirely good enough to use to develop your SOPs.

Good idea. Doing some practice QB's in bocage assaulting a town would be a good way to get everything figured out.

[ScoutPL]

Check out my CMSF tutorials. First one is of a rifle company assaulting a town. Very applicable to your discussion here. There are supporting videos on Youtube.

[joeyjojoshabadu]

Check out my CMSF tutorials. First one is of a rifle company assaulting a town. Very applicable to your discussion here. There are supporting videos on Youtube.

Definately this.

I have to say scout your blog site is excellent particularly the way you plan out the mission one step at a time. This has really helped my game as I tended to lose focus half way through missions, having a plan to structure attacks around really helps.

[General Jack Ripper]

I started making some gameplay videos about the Montebourg campaign. When my computer melted down these went unfinished, but they might be a pretty good start. The list covers the first two missions in the campaign, it might help to start again to get yourself on a better footing.

[wamphyri]

I started making some gameplay videos about the Montebourg campaign. When my computer melted down these went unfinished, but they might be a pretty good start. The list covers the first two missions in the campaign, it might help to start again to get yourself on a better footing.

Thanks slim, I'll check them out when I have a free second.

I took some of the advice on here and played a number of QB's, these proved successful with giving me the experience when it came to dealing with unexpected surprises. One QB had me going over the crest of a hill without any cover right from the start point, and due to an error on my part the enemy had 3 flakverlings and I only had infantry. Minor victory for me, didn't think I'd pull it off since the first 10 minutes were not in my favor.

I've also been watching some videos by armchairgeneral(.com?). These have been a good help in trying to better understand the bigger picture and thinking of where I should place guys to be most effective. I still may not be very good but I'm getting better.

I did start the campaign over again, just finished the second mission with a total victory both the first and second. Nice thing is that the units on the second mission were in different spots so it plays nothing like the first time and gave me a whole new challenge.

Having fun, just never have enough time to play.. crazy ol' life gets in the way.