TF-Thunder Campaign: Into the Valley

[Sulman]

I thought I'd try a little recap of my 2nd attempt at this map. The first did not go well and I decided to give it another go. Fresh of my success with 'Dagger Fight' which ended in a Total Victory when the computer surprisingly threw in the towel, I thought this would be a nice change of pace. First, the briefing:

Generally, CM2 briefings have a lot of hidden clues. This one is vague and really once you start this mission you'll want to punch the intelligence officer. The map is anything but clear. Combined with the fact you have a Coy of tanks you know things are about to get spicy. The farm is merely one of many locations with ENY activity, so yes, it's one of those. The scenario 'ATGM Ambush' is good training for this mission.  This is essentially the same thing on a much bigger scale.

The map, and some general ideas about strategy, with a caveat:

1st Attempt:

My original strategy was to dismount my mech inf platoon, get them up the hill and occupy the buildings circled in yellow. I did achieve this, but at quite high losses to one of the squads. I mistakenly - stupidly - thought I would have some arty assets later as there is an FO, and my plan was to get him in that building which could observe the map exit where there would no doubt be plenty of ENY units.

I did not count on a couple of things:

• How hard it would be to dislodge the few infantry in that building, occupied by apparenlty the world's toughest ATGM crew.
• The whole northern portion of the map being lousy with ENY.
• Mutual support for ENY in this hilltop complex from the high ground to the N and NE.
• ATGMs as a close-support-weapon (devastating, and new to me)

One syrian ATGM squad displaced about 80m to a nearby field and started pounding the building with missiles. I lost a whole squad to ATGM fire when the building collapsed, and the others only survived when I hid them deep in the complex, which rendered them ineffective. I rushed a bradley up the hill but left it's right flank just momentarily exposed and it got deaded by ATGM fire from the NE. I decided to push the tanks forward and they got so beat up mid-way through I decided to think about it and try again. No shame in admitting you get it wrong occasionally.

If at first you don't succeed...

I thought my general idea of clearing the nearby hilltop was fairly sound, especially if my inf had javelins (they did!) they could use against the Northern ATGM teams. I needed to be very careful to keep them in defilade once they were up there. I was really missing some LMG support too. They would have been very handy.

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The 'suspicious activity' reported by the lead tank (as per the brief) is just out of the frame on the right, a small farm complex. Now,  bit of a moan from me; I do not like missions that have your units starting in danger. The farm is ~250m away, which puts the lead elements easily in range even from RPG fire.

Like most players I like to do a little 'walk' around the map at truppen level, you can see that at 3x magnification two of my M1s are easily visible at their start line from a rooftop just down the road:

Starting T1  I sent my infantry up the hill, classic two up, one back formation with a Bradley watching over them. I was well used to CMBN where scrub and woodland usually held small units waiting along avenues of approach:

My lead M1s immediately (and somewhat predictably) picked up targets in the farm complex and further north - ATGM teams - and engaged them effectively.

Although potentially vulnerable in this position, I think they were generally out of harm's way and did not want to move them just yet. They also took out a lone sniper on the nearby hilltop that was near my infantry but had no LOS to them.

 

More to come!

 

[Sulman]

Once the infantry platoon got near the complex at the top of the hill, I set them fire arcs and moved them in a roughly 80m line to the edge of the treeline. They immediately got engaged by the building occupants and returned fire. This went on for a turn or so and nobody was getting anywhere. I did not want to try and assault the building as this did not go well before, I really needed more firepower to decisively evict or kill the occupants. I had no crewed machine guns, so my attention wandered to the M2s waiting below the hill. I'd seen Syrian APCs trundling around this type of terrain in many previous battles, so perhaps I could use my Bradleys to supplement my base of fire?

The M242 Bushmaster is devastating against infantry, but the Brads do not survive anti-tank environments very well, but I had to risk it. I ordered a single M2 to move alongisde my platoon line.  He parked up and immediately destroyed the AT-14 team on the rooftop:

As often happens, the mere presence of an AFV caused another ATGM team to reveal themselves (my infantry never spotted them) but they to did not last long, facing the collective fire of my platoon and the solo Bradley. No casualties so far.

[Sulman]

Although the briefing mentioned minimising collateral damage, the Syrian units didn't seem to care about this, and politely asking them to leave buildings so they could be shot at didn't work either , so the bushmaster HE did its thing: This is a typical sight on this map: An AT-14 positioned near a window (or the remains thereof..)

A note about these units, I am unsure of their skill level but they are bloody hard to kil. The gunner usually goes down quick, but the asst. gunner usually survives the most diabolical incoming fire. This actually led to the platoon commander's loss - I sent the HQ unit forward at the same time the squads moved up, and as they approached the pinned unit the Bradley let go some HE, unfortunately killing the LT. This wasn't area fire, the Bradley was reacting to a spot on the asst. gunner, and he used the big boom stick. 

With my platoon squads up I issued fire arcs to stop them immediately engaging ENY units they saw, and on the villa below the hilltop what did they see?

 

You can appreciate the difficulty with this map. That's 2 AT teams on that roof, with one being an AT-14.

I wanted to smack it with that squad, but I was well aware from the previous game that the northernmost AT-14 team would support them, and I hatched a plan to use my Bradley as bait  a big stick. In no way did I want to lose that Bradley, but I realised the foundations of this hilltop house were on a raised berm, so the Bradley would have some protection. I moved it forward:

 

He was a little far forward as you can see from the picture, so I moved him back. They actually hit with a Kornet and it damaged the TOW launcher, but the Bushmaster sang and pinned them.  With that done my squad were free to engage the rooftop team on the closer house:

Both this building and the much further one engaged by the Bradley had good observation on the exit road, so they had to be dealt with. Around this time I realised that I'd actually lost an Abrams to fire from the farm, very early on. Because they weren't moving I had failed to keep an eye on them, and when cycling through units (I do this as a sanity check to ensure I've not forgotten anybody) I found a crew cowering in a garden.

It had been hit between the roadwheels on the right hand side. It looked otherwise undamaged. I was annoyed with myself for not realising it was exposed but this is part of the game too.

 

More to come!

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Sulman
I spel gud

[Lethaface]

Nice AAR!

I remember that mission and got stuffed on my first try similar to you. IIRC i moved infantry on the buildings on the hill and they got slaughtered while M1s were taking AT-14s to the face. I retreated and didn't came back yet lol.

Definitely one of the harger battles against the AI in CMSF2! 

[landser]

Nice AAR. I played this one last November and it's a tough one. I made a brief report about it here

https://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4495837/re-combat-mission-campaign-reviews#Post4495837

I noted in that post that I suffered my first M1 losses of the campaign in this mission, scored a tactical defeat. The map is a ATGM trap of the first order, with the terrain being ever so devious, especially on the left. Because you must exit the map on the far side you have to cross it which exposes your armor's flanks to those elevated positions in the upper left. Quite difficult, and combined with the 'ambush' at the start it's quite a challenge. This was the fifteenth mission of this campaign for me and the first really dangerous one as shown by my first battle tank losses. Until this mission you're able to use your superior firepower, frontal armor and range, but the terrain here partially negates this as the hill screening the left side falls away as you reach the center, leaving me feeling quite vulnerable. Good mission. And good hunting commander!

[Sulman]

Once the hilltop squads could not see any more targets on the high ground that observed the exits, I had to make a decision: Move infantry down onto the plain, or push the tanks? I might be wrong, but I just wasn't confident moving infantry off just yet -

• There's very little cover on the map
• The squads lacked frepower
• No support assets
• I could not roll the Bradleys out of defilade yet until the area near the exit was clear.

I took a gamble and thought the Abrams should be able to make it with a bit of luck, so I moved them up and they immediately found infantry a couple of hidden Kornet teams. Thankfully, the only cost was minor track damage (slowed it down a little) to 1 Abrams I moved onto the rise to cover the NW high ground in case there were units that had not revealed themselves.

I decided it was safe to pack up my infantry into the Bradleys and roll them down the hill. The risk seemed to have greatly reduced and they had plenty of support from the tanks. You can see the ENY observation posts clearly in this picture, but the contacts are old (they're all dead or ineffective at this point):

No other AFV would take damage for the rest of the mission. Progress was slow towards the exit because the TAC-AI kept changing orientation to deal with threats. one would not quit until it had obliterated an infantry squad hiding in a building. The AI changes which keep infantry in defensible terrain longer were brought sharply into relief on this map; I could not get any units to flee. They fought to the bitter end.

There's a point in every CM2 game vs the Ai when you know it's basically over, and you're just running down the clock. All my units (less 1 abrams) exited without incident, but shis mission did not go the way i had hoped. After my problems with Nightstalkers resulted in having to take a defeat I was disappointed to encounter another.

It is what it is, but I must admit I felt a little short-changed and didn't fully understand the accounting. The Syrians got 300pts for casualties inflicted, and 1900 for reasons I didn't see - they weren't listed in the breakdown. I am not going to retry the mission, because at my level I think this is about the best I could do on what is a very dificult map. There's not a lot I could do differently, I think my basic strategy was fine. The right flank of the map is also a possibilty but you've still got to deai with all those AT-14 teams (at least six) that have flank shots.

Oh well, onwards and upwards!

 

 

[THH149]

I suspect that the Syrian bonus points come from damage to civilian buildings and/or insufficient damage to the ATGM forces.

Great AAR.

Best

THH

[Sulman]

2 hours ago, THH149 said:

I suspect that the Syrian bonus points come from damage to civilian buildings and/or insufficient damage to the ATGM forces.

Great AAR.

Best

THH

That's probably it. Difficult to avoid, imho. You've not got nearly enough infantry to clear out the AT teams the hard way, so at some point HE is going to be involved.

I did well in the following mission - a cakewalk in comparison - so I'm in a much better mood!