Site for "Random Reinforcements" scenarios updated

[Carl Puppchen]

Hello everyone. I am running and maintaining a small site dedicated to CMAK. Go to www.carlstumpf.com and click on the CMAK picture (actually it is from CMBO, but I won't tell ). This will bring you to the CMAK area of my site.

Of course, it is all free, no pop-ups or junk like that.

Specifically, I am focusing on the "random reinforcement" games that I am building (not historical) balanced for PBEM play. I have had a lot of fun building and testing these scenarios against my usual opponent (I always play the Axis, he always plays the Allies) and the scenarios are posted up there for anyone to download and comments are welcome.

I have a few other CMAK articles that I created along with some articles from my dedicated Allied opponent (for balance ).

I decided to focus on this tiny niche in the CMAK eco-system because there are lots of grogs that are better with historical scenarios and others with more artistic talents who create better maps.

One thing about these games is that they are a lot of fun - they have the "fog of war" characteristic in that you really don't know what type of forces that your opponent has at any point in time. This forces you to guess when to advance and when to consolidate.

I will put other of the random reinforcement scenarios up there as I build them. Hope you like the site.

Oh and I got the original idea for these types of scenarios from "A Thousand Ways to Die" - thanks for getting me started!

[junk2drive]

Nice site.

You need to update the text under links for the 1.03 patch for CMAK. It says we are still waiting for 1.02.

[Carl Puppchen]

Thanks for the catch. I threw the 1.03 patch up there, too.

[GreenAsJade]

This is a *Class Site* Carl!!

I read about the random reinforcement idea in the same thread you did, but didn't take another look after it emerged that the scenarios at that time were for AI only.

Your PBEM random map screenies look great.

Has discussion about these started up anywhere? How many times have they been played? I'm keen to hear how the play balance aspect has worked out ...

GaJ.

[Hans]

Great site Carl, may I suggest you link or post directly some of the other random reinforcement scenarios.

[johnstone185]

I am Carl's Allied opponent. As I wrote in the Allied article on Carl's site, we have played literally thousands of hours of tcp/ip, e-mail and head to head games since CMBO. As a result, we knew basically what each other was going to do in any given battle. Lots of battles were looked at or set up and not played. How fun is it to have a platoon of Shermans tee off on a squad of Lynx's? What have you learned from that? The random reinforcements have really made the games so much more interesting. We play most of our games over e-mail and are both pretty busy with other things so have only play-tested most of the games once or twice. Since I am the usual opponent, Carl consults me as to weapons and the appearance of them as far as turns go. I think once play testing is done it would be even better to play the games not knowing ANYTHING that is coming (in other words, someone other than us). It is very realistic to imagine a bunch of halftracks in Italy, for instance, on patrol and "happen" upon a Pz 4 or Panther. This is compromised a bit for us when we play since we need to be sure the scenarios are "fair" but the random reins, in my opinion, add one of the most neglected dimensions as far as the fixed battle in cmak goes - when your "good stuff" is going to get to the front to help you get forward.

[Carl Puppchen]

Here is how the results of our random battles went:

Khamsin - Allied victory. The dumb axis (me) received reins early and pushed on the far flags with guns behind trucks / halftracks. However, I couldn't get them setup and unlimbered in time and Allied reinforcements overwhelmed me and slaughtered that attackers. Some of my reins hit unsuppressed Allied infantry and received a very rude shock.

In all these random games when you are the attacker and you try to push to take the far objectives you are faced with the fact that it takes a looooong time for your attackers to cross the map while enemy reinforcements pop up relatively close to their objectives. This is the key mechanism that "self corrects" the play balance.

Another thing that made Khamsin difficult for the Axis was the tough time that the Matilda gave the Germans when they only have the III H with short barrelled 50mm and the occasional marder. The matilda really creamed my guys even when I was fighting from hull down or flanking positions - I even hit a matilda in the rear with a skulking marder and it just bounced off, leaving the marder as toast immediately afterwards.

I would say that Khamsin is pretty well balanced, given the forces at the time.

Heavy Traffic - draw (almost an Axis victory) - in this game the Axis (me) received a bunch of reins early and pushed hard on the enemy. However, some oddball reins came in for the Allies (105mm guns on halftracks) and made meat of my advancing PZ IV tanks. By the time I was able to regroup on the far objective there was a literal tank park guarding the objective. The Axis (me) also assumed I could cake-walk an objective near my reins which in fact was in play until the last turn (my men got a bloody nose). Probably here the Axis should have won given that they received more reins, faster, but they pushed too hard in the wrong places and not hard enough in others.

A Bridge Too Far - this game is totally nuts. We were saying that this was the most time consuming game to plot since "our backs to the volga". There is fighting everywhere, right away, as the green german infantry w/tank support (oddballs) try to pry the US engineers (veterans) out of the town. Then reins pour in and start mixing it up house to house. The Allies were able to take out my Elephant with a zook which really slowed the german assault, since the shermans and M10's match up well with the remaining armor. We don't know how this one will turn out but I have never seen a scenario that has more action than this one, right from turn 1. The action is due to the fact that I put a "blocking" force of germans between allied positions and these guys eventually get eradicated but they delay a link up for a few crucial turns. Then the reins come in and all heck breaks loose.

We are playing "take the abbey" and it is crazy, too. We aren't all the way through it so I can't say if it is balanced or not but it sure feels like a good, even match. This one also has action right away from turn 1. Unlike the original Cassino game in this one the Allies have a good chance to get right to the top of the Abbey. We will probably tweak the forces a bit when we are done, and I will add some more arty / TRP's to the allied side.

We didn't play bloody beach yet - that one is kooky since it has random reinforcements AND dynamic flags. Any comments on that are welcome.

Hope this helps!