CM Cold War - Beta AAR - Soviet Thread - Glorious Soviet Victory at Small German Town 1980

[Holien]

Nice 2 others, there's lucky.

[The_Capt]

Ok let's go with The Plan:

I am going to push some BMPs into a screen to try and take out those M60s on the left, also will re-push my T64s on the left.  Then I am going to 1) continue to push dismounted infantry forward and 2) push the Tank Coy and a mounted Inf Pl into a slot I call "Slot 2.5".  That is some dead ground (I hope) that is also covered by my Eyes on the right.  Once we make it to the dead ground in valley center we fan out and start pushing (I have an arty line up there too to screen).  So this turn I will position to the Slot and push out the screen, then next turn we go for it.  Wish me luck and see you on the other side.

 

[Jotte]

21 hours ago, LastLeigh said:

I mean, it's nice of the Americans to ring the tank crew's bell to let them know it's time for lunch.

Now playing on Radio Berlin: "Bil Hardenberger and the Door knockers"

[Lethaface]

1 hour ago, LastLeigh said:

I advocate running it down center, in true Russian fashion. Dead ground is nice, but better yet is throwing your mass as tightly as possible against a section of his line, and then exploiting your breakthrough. It'd be even better if you could throw your artillery at him just before you smash him with your mechanized attack.

+1

AFAIK he has artillery underway and coordinating that with the push

[landser]

On 3/3/2021 at 9:07 AM, The_Capt said:

Such a delicious tactical dilemma, wish it was someone else's.  

Haha, well said.

Quote

Bil also has DPICM, which stings like iodine so I would rather keep going once we get to the other side.

How did you know this? Not saying you shouldn't. Is it in the briefing?

Good luck commander.

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, landser said:

Haha, well said.

How did you know this? Not saying you shouldn't. Is it in the briefing?

Good luck commander.

Well even if we did not discuss ahead of time (which I am pretty sure we did), we were not going to lose an opportunity to show it off here....right on top of my troops no doubt.

[landser]

Ah yes, that squares it.

Following along I didn't know you knew this was in his bag of tricks. You must always assume it is, something about basing your plans on enemy capabilities and not intentions, so even if you didn't know, you would have allowed for the possibility all the same. Thanks for the reply Captain, good hunting.

[sfhand]

The_Capt, sir! Thanks so much for the AAR. Your wit and wisdom are top notch. I'm surprised you aren't The_Col or The_Gen. 

[sfhand]

double post... sigh

Edited March 4, 2021 by sfhand

[The_Capt]

23 minutes ago, sfhand said:

The_Capt, sir! Thanks so much for the AAR. Your wit and wisdom are top notch. I'm surprised you aren't The_Col or The_Gen. 

LCol actually, but I try not to mix work with...er, other work...kinda.  The handle is how long I have been here.  Thank you for the kind words.

[rocketman]

On 3/3/2021 at 6:10 PM, The_Capt said:

No, I have two other FO teams.  They came together, I was going to dismount as soon as they made that forward tree-line...which they did not make it to.

My rule of thumb is: "better dismount too soon than too late" (i.e. anything you ride in/on is a potential death trap). Make the grunts run a bit. As long as they run, they are alive.

[MikeyD]

You're caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to dismounting when there's cluster munitions involved. Part of you wants to get the men out of their death traps ASAP, another part of you wants to ferry your men onto the objective ASAP. Russians are facing American dual purpose cluster munitions, Americans are facing Russian single-purpose munitions, either artillery dispersed anti-personnel munitions or super-lethal air-dropped anti-armor munitions.

[General Jack Ripper]

On 3/3/2021 at 6:50 AM, The_Capt said:

Right now, I am thinking about not swinging to the left and up but going straight through the town and up.

I like the way you think.

On 3/3/2021 at 10:06 AM, The_Capt said:

The problem to my front would be recognizable to Grant or Lee as fundamental: how to get my mass to a better position than my opponent without getting it destroyed in the process?

There is another angle you may not have considered, which is strange because the rudiments of it were demonstrated in the opening part of this battle.

If the town is the objective, then you need to get your mass (I.E. your infantry) into the town. To do this you are confronted by one big problem, all that open space between you and it.

That being said, I have one question that might shed some light:

How many smoke rounds does a T-62 carry?

Once upon a time I was confronted by a similar but much smaller scale tactical problem, how to cross an open area that was covered by machine guns and cannon. I partially solved that problem with the creative use of smoke.

(Video time-stamped to relevant turns.)

While my idea is a mere embryo born from a single seed that began and ended it's brief lifetime before it could even learn to crawl, perhaps an entire tank Company on some rolling green hills of Germany can develop this embryo into a fully-fledged creature?

TL;DR - Blind him with smoke, then CHARGE!

[General Jack Ripper]

On 3/3/2021 at 12:15 PM, The_Capt said:

So this turn I will position to the Slot and push out the screen, then next turn we go for it.  Wish me luck and see you on the other side.

Never mind I see you've gone off already.

[IICptMillerII]

15 minutes ago, General Jack Ripper said:

TL;DR - Blind him with smoke, then CHARGE!

One of the really cool elements of this title is the shift from "smoke is my best friend!" to "smoke just blinds my men as I die from targets I can no longer see."

This is part of the technological shift Warren has mentioned a few times. In 79 there are essentially no vehicles with sights that can see through smoke, so the use of smoke can be very important to blind enemy positions and protect your men in the open. 
However, by the end of the titles timeframe (82) there are a handful of vehicles on the US side (Abrams, Bradleys, M60A3 TTS, M901s are the big ones that come to mind) that all have thermal imagers and can see through smoke no problem. The Soviets employing smoke to conceal their men will not work against these threats. Anyone who has played CMSF2 or CMBS is aware of this. 

Luckily for Warren, Bil has very little assets that have thermal imagers, so heavy use of smoke will likely benefit him greatly. Just thought I would point out that dynamic. It is another element of this title that makes it unique. 

[The_Capt]

I considered smoke, it may have worked as Bil has M60A1s but they see better than I can so either I do it close to me and blind my guys or fire a lot up on the ridge, which I probably do not have enough for.

I prefer to give my covering guys a clean shot if they can take it, that and there looks to be a nice slot of some covered ground up the center. I guess we will see if I was right or wrong.

[BletchleyGeek]

Good luck @The_Capt thanks for sharing your thoughts. From our vantage point and the topo maps there is a lot of tactical detail that escapes us.

What does this "slot of covered ground" look like? From the pictures and the topo maps the "central approach" looks to me more like a gentle ravine which is somewhat restricting your maneuver options in the center to moving in column formation. That kind of channeling looks dangerous - but from what you say the terrain is more complex than my perception.

[c3k]

A glorious charge for the Motherland! Strike the capitalist warmongers! Or something. 

Perhaps your follow-on echelons can send up a few tank regiments?  The Americans will run out of shells before you run out of tanks!

You DO have follow-on echelons, don't you?

 

[The_Capt]

37 minutes ago, c3k said:

A glorious charge for the Motherland! Strike the capitalist warmongers! Or something. 

Perhaps your follow-on echelons can send up a few tank regiments?  The Americans will run out of shells before you run out of tanks!

You DO have follow-on echelons, don't you?

 

This is not an appropriate question...the type that makes the commissar unbuckle his pistol holster.  Of course there will be endless follow-on echelons of brave sons of mother-Russia!!  They may just have to slow down slightly as they drive over our corpses.

Seriously, I am waiting for a turn from Bil and then should be able to get another update.  For BletchleyGeek, yep column right down that slot, then we spread out.  Yep, dangerous, it is all danger at this point.  Not a question of good and bad, but bad and worse.

[The_Capt]

March to Glorious Victory - Post #6  "The Devil's Red Right Hand" (12-15)

First off I apologize for the long return on this one, beyond Bil's glacial return pace, the main reason is that nothing really happened on the Soviet side of this thing.  I am sure Bil is doing a frame-by-frame Warren Commission-esque analysis (because that is what int nerds do) but frankly he has already missed his early victory boat.

When I left you we were discussing options and landed on the least suicidal of the bunch given the somewhat less-than-optimal starting position.

The only question left is "what will Bil do?".  I have thoughts on this but let's leave them til the end (someone remind me if I forget).

So the only interesting thing to happen before the big push was the loss of another T64

This little fella bought in on my left, which was unfortunate but I also observed something interesting before the kill.  

These two T64s soaked up over a dozen hits between them from those M60s on the ridge.  Clearly not bullet proof but from the front these beast are very hard to kill.  This also speaks well for the Plan, as I would rather Bils tanks pinging off my T64s rather than killing my BMPs and T-62s. 

So here was ol Bil's shot to end this thing about 13-14 mins in:

You can see here we are all bunched up moving into position for the slot.  If Bil had DPICM'd this traffic jam, that pretty much would  have been it.  The bridge may have saved a couple but it would have been a bloody massacre.

But he missed that boat.

Turn 14 and I can start to breathe, the troops moving up the slot saw no direct fire.  Bil is lobbing shells into the area but frankly the steel soldiers of mother Russia give exactly zero F's about artillery.

All that arty has about 2-3 casualties on me so far but I am sure it makes the old man - sitting in a faded bathrobe, the one from the 70s, his old-lady slippers, old man underwear with the torn waistband - feel better.   By end of Turn 15, we are about 1/3 through.

So on the far side of the slot we have pretty much a tank pl and 3 x BMP.  In turn 16 I should be at 50%.  The dismounted pl on my left is looking good and pretty much unmolested.  They are going to link up with that scout pl and be my hands.  You can see on my left I have a screen in place of 2 x T64s and about 4 BMPs, that is a very good position in case Bil gets frisky on my left, which based on that smoke I am guessing is a possibility.  The biggest threat now is a DPICM strike but I am less worried about it now as my Tank Coy and BMPS are spread out and moving fast, so at worst I may take a few casualties.  Main concern now is getting that inf platoon on my right into those buildings.  The HQ and squad did get pinned so I need them to get going.

And let's not forget the Eyes on my Right.

 So I have 2 x T64s on the right with good LOS (I just noticed one got immobilized, which is a pain but it is in a solid position).  That little BMP in the little clump of woods nails another M150.  These guys on my right can actually cover the ridgeline and the left, so pretty happy with that for now.  I am very happy at nailing the M150s.  It may seem odd to a bunch of tank nerds but these thing are actually more dangerous right now.  They have TI, so can see through smoke and those TOW are not going to take 6 hits to kill me.

So now what?  Well finish moving through the Slot and then we spread out and start the knife fight in the woods.  So what is Bil going to do?  Well my bet is he is looking longingly at my left flank, two or three columns of smoke are singing sweetly to him do doubt...I welcome him to try.

Next he could focus on the village and do a center push but in about 120 seconds I am going to have 2 x Inf platoons at near 100% with options for tank and BMP support.  Bil has ACR scout teams, M113 which are basically halftracks and a bunch of M60s who will not do well in an urban fight. 

So that leaves the woods on my right.  Here he has better approaches but if thing go even half decently I will have a another Soviet infantry pl back up by a lot of armor for this little dance against Scout teams, who are not really designed for this sort of thing.  So all in all, I am liking my odds...but...and there is always a but....the next 120-180 second have to go well.  That and I know that Bil has Cobras...so this thing is not over yet.

 

[Freyberg]

That looks like Accelerated Assault - good Soviet doctrine

[The_MonkeyKing]

well, that went surprisingly well

[The_Capt]

March to Glorious Victory Post #7 - "Take Me Out to Decadent Capitalist Balls Game" (16-17)

Short update/follow up:

So at the end of turn 17, that is 10 T62s, 7 BMPs, 2 x dismounted inf pls, 1 x mounted inf pl and some scouts on the other side of the valley...I think we can call this a horde.  Total casualties were 4 infantrymen.

So plan now is pretty simple.  I am going to shore up the town with the dismounted infantry and a tank platoon.  A counter-attack for them is a certainty.  I will also leave the covering force in place for now.

The rest of the force, 7xT62s, the BMPs and an infantry platoon are going to push up Slot 2 and execute the "Kill Bil" portion of the plan.  I can see an armor icon up there so my guess is Bil has a tank platoon with M150s on that ridge and two tank platoons on the left.  I am going to get all up into Bil's business up top and then work my way to the left.  Bil can either get in the game or just keep hiding out in that wood line.  Not sure how this will end but I am getting the value of Soviet doctrine, they were not interested in playing "hidy-peeky-blamo", more "blamo-charge-more blamo"

Edited March 12, 2021 by The_Capt

[The_MonkeyKing]

@TheCaptain

How on earth did you get away with so few casualties? I think you are now very muchly back in the game.

[riptides]

23 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

@TheCaptain

How on earth did you get away with so few casualties? I think you are now very muchly back in the game.

Casualties? Comrade....please...we are running to our objectives in glorious fashion! Waste no time with this frivolous talk...the capitalist swine are in full retreat! Advance for glory!