***ROW III Finals***

[Redwolf]

If any of my opponents want to get the game done by TCP tonight I am up to it. Email me (don't just post here).

[JPS]

The last minute of my game against Bryce has been calculated; results coming real soon...

[JPS]

Score for Koltov sent. Sorry about the delay.

[Kingfish]

Quick update

I've just received the last result from the finalists, so I can now posts the scores here for everyone to review. Please look them over and verify that everything is correct. As before the finalists are listed first, with the allied player listed on the left.

The Petroskov River Bridge

Wellsonian - 39 / Lt Bull - 61

Juha - 66 / Holien - 34

Bryce Baker - 29 / Frunze - 71

mPisi - 41 / Pacestick - 59

Shock Trooper - 8 / Deadly 88 - 92

MikeyDz - 51 / JPS - 49

Wade - 65 / jjelinek - 35

Stoneage - 11 / Kanonier Reichmann - 89

Tweety - 41 / tabpub - 59

Combined arms - 66 / Spanish Bombs - 34

The Koltov Corridor

Holien - 32 / Pacestick - 68

Lt Bull - 18 / Shock Trooper - 82

Deadly 88 - 85 / Wellsonian - 15

Juha - 28 / mPisi - 72

Frunze - 81 / MikeyDz - 19

JPS - 42 / Bryce - 58

Flammenwerfer - 42 / Tabpub - 58

jjelinek - 37 / Ted - 61

Combined arms - 22 / Stoneage - 78

Kanonier Reichmann - 57 / Spanish Bombs - 43

The High Road

Shock Trooper - 65 / Wellsonian - 35

Pacestick - 62 / Juha - 38

Frunze - 54 / JPS - 46

mPisi - 77 / Holien - 23

Lt Bull - 19 / Deadly 88 - 81

MikeyDz - 44 / Bryce Baker - 56

Tweety - 59 / Flammenwerfer - 41

Kanonier Reichmann - 55 / Combined arms - 45

Spanish bombs - 77 / Stoneage - 23

The average allied score for Petroskov is 41.7

The average axis score is 58.3

Average allied for Koltov is 44.4

Average axis for Koltov is 55.6

Average allied for High road is 56.8

Average axis for High road is 43.2

Note that these are pre-Nabla scores. Also, I will still accept scores (and AARs) up until tomorrow morning, so keep cranking away.

[ November 11, 2003, 05:26 AM: Message edited by: Kingfish ]

[Deadly 88]

Greetings Kingfish,

Not that it matters...but I think I scored a 92%, not a 91%...

The Petroskov River Bridge :

Shock Trooper - 8 / Deadly 88 - 91 ? (should read 92)

Thanks again for all your time & hard work

[mPisi]

Three AARs sent. Lucky I looked at the board tonight. Must sleep now...

Thanks to Kingfish for all his hard work!! This did drag on but we got some good fights out of it, and I look forward to seeing the comments on the battles.

[Frunze]

Clearly Deadly-88 in Section III. Possibly yours truly in Section II. I'm guessing mPisi in Section I. That one's the closest, and probably the toughest - I know Holien and Juha, who're at the bottom, thrashed me in RoW II. 'Course that was CMBO. I got a draw Juha in a CMBB game once.

Maybe the champions, once the results are announced, could informally play a couple games to check this out?

[JPS]

Congrats Frunze! Glad I was able to reach average score against you

I hope to meet many of you guys again in the next RoW!

[mPisi]

In talk during the games, Section I throught that Pacestick had it all wrapped up, as I lost to him. But it might be closer since my two wins were a bit bigger. Certainly it was kinda anticlimactic, with Juha annoyed at Koltov Corridor and Holien extremely annoyed at High Road. But looking at the score maybe I should have accepted Holien's surrender offer after all, instead of talking him out of it

mPisi, swaying from foot to foot, muttering "is it done yet? is it done yet?"

[Holien]

Well done mPisi, Pacestick and Juha.

mPisi if you could send me copies of your AAR's I would be very grateful.

I am glad the winner (it would appear that way) has produced some AAR's for others to read and learn from. That is important as it raises everyone's game.

They were all hard fought battles in the final, and I only wish I could have offered a better opponent to you all.

I played poorly in many ways and I am afraid the whole tourney proved too much to handle.

So I give my apologise for poor sportsmanship and any misunderstandings there might have been.

Mind you it is only a game so I am sure to be forgiven.

FWIIW my views on the scenarios in the finals.

The best scenario was by far was The Petroskov River Bridge.

This had a lot of action and while I failed to mount an effective defence in the face of my bold opponent I can reflect on a good if frustrating battle. There are memories from that game which will remain with me for a long time.

A good solid design and any people reading this who want a real test should play this when it is released. Hats off to Kingfish for the design and balance. If he can remember to set-up reinforcements I would give him 10 out of 10. It also seems reasonably well balanced.

The next game would be The High Road but that is purely on the design of the map and the premise behind the game. The game as it now stands is unbalanced and requires tweaking. IMO.

mPisi used the terrain well to place his bunkers so I could not get at them and with his use of TRP's and other defensive items I stood no chance.

Breaking point came when I retarget a 81mm smoke mission to a new location using the T command. Of course this was on where I expected my men to rush across the open ground and give them some smoke cover.

Instead a T command gave them a whole lot of bother and was the straw that broke the camels back.

(Note to self remember difference between T and K :eek: )

The Koltov Corridor was rather a bland map and I came up against Pacestick who is a superb player in the mould of Wreck. Very careful and exact. I played poorly and was ripped to bits by well placed ambushes and poor luck at key points. He has a very lucky Stug which took many direct hits. However, it was not all down to luck and hats off to Pacestick for a good defence.

Thanks to Kingfish, Winecape and all the designers for spending time in giving us some entertaining and many frustrating moments. I know some people don't agree with my views on some of the designs but at least you get feedback and I try to be constructive.

Cheers

H

[mPisi]

My order is like is exactly reversed from yours, Holien. I liked Koltov because I thought one thing about it at the start (i.e. Oh S#!t), got extremely worried by finding my opponent's setup in a totally unexpected place, but then found it to be winnable, and indeed balanced. It was a learning experience, where the others were not so much...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Kingfish could you re-check my score for the high road? I thought I scored the opposite of Petroskov Bridge (41-59). Particularly because in your post you do have an error involving Kanonier Reichmann v Combined arms, soring it 59-45 wich does not add up. Since I reckognize the 59 score, I'm guessing the mix up lies here.

Sorry to be a pain in the rear, again.

Could you provide me with the password of my opponent for my Koltov Game? I'd love to find a willing victim to finish that one off. (anyone here interested?)I was actually not being a total noob in that one! :eek:

Thanks for the whole thing btw. It was a pleasure participating even though you might not have thought it if you had been reading some of my comments during play. What can I say? I like to whinge.

[tabpub]

Hey, Tweet:

Get the German one for High Road. Flammenwerfer was going to finish with me, but I guess something came up and he has "dropped" from sight. I will do the honor of finishing as your Koltov opponent, if you would accept.

[Frunze]

Petroskov is definitely an original. Having the defender exit...a real puzzle, figuring out what you need and what you can spare each step of the way.

Axis probably needs to be weakened a bit, though. Based on the averages, as well as my impression. Anytime things start getting tough, the Axis player can just feed a few reinforcements into the battle instead of taking 'em off-map...then when things are under control again, load 'em back in the trucks, or in different trucks (ya got plenty.)

More defender-exit scenarios could be done, I think. Wouldn't necessarily have to be reinforcements marked to exit, either.

BTW, the Panzergrenadiers aren't padlocked in the halftracks. But I guess there's no way to do that.

The High Road is pretty much impossible to beat if the defender covers all routes, I think. I made some mistakes, for example putting a bunker in the village where JPS could get to it from the side (I thought the cliffs would protect it.) And generally not protecting the front of the village enough. And not putting enough infantry by the bridge - I was going to put the pioneers there, and they never showed up...and I still managed a draw, and kept him from crossing the bridge.

Time is a major problem for the attacker in that one - so far to walk. Maybe if setup options were changed a bit to let the attacker start more troops closer to the objectives?

Koltov I didn't like so much. I have a hard time seeing how a German player could win it, or maybe how a Russian player could lose it, even though I know some did.

I mean, the defender can't even try to hold the line of the stream, because the attacker has the option of starting on the far side of one of the bridges. If the infantry holes up in thick cover - the factories or the woods - the tanks can bypass 'em and take the rest of the map. (Mikey did that, and held the center flag in the town, but that's it.)

Possibly the attacker should not have that setup zone on the far side of the stream, and the defender's briefing should give some warning that an armored attack is expected. These changes might moderate the wide variation, reduce the random element of it, if combined with some similar pro-Allied changes to keep it balanced.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

G'day all. I wanted to thank Kingfish and the guys at B&T for coming up with another set of thoroughly original and challenging scenario's to test our CMBB skills. I certainly appreciate all the effort you've put into the ROW series to date and hopefully into the future with the upcoming CMAK.

My views on the scenario's area s follows and if others wish to play them at some future date I recommend you not read on as they may contain some spoliers.

******WARNING- POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD******

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The Petroskov River Bridge presented the defender with a choice of whether to attempt to gain as many victory points as possible with the exiting of re-inforcements or use the bulk of them to bolster ones defences. It becomes a juggling act of what to utilise in the defence and what to let attempt to cross the one bridge that leads to the exit edge. My view is that provided the Soviets haven't managed to break through the German defences early and decisively, especially around the area where the German re-inforcements appear, it would be difficult for the Soviets to pull off a victory. As the Axis side you can keep feeding in the re-inforcemnts as needed to stabilise the line but if your line is already breeched and the re-inforcements enter in the LOS of marauding Soviet units, you're in trouble.

The High Road was a very interesting (and time consuming) exercise for the Soviet defenders in how to setup a good defence against a threat that could come at you from a number of places including behind the village you hold. Placement of the 2 wooden MG bunkers and concrete gun emplacements are critical to the defence and they should be in places where they're very difficult for the attacking side to reach and close assault. Clearly I didn't place mine too cleverly as I lost both my concrete bunkers to close assaulting infantry while one of the wooden MG bunkers was taken out by a firing slit penetration.

Overall however, I was glad to be the defender in that one rather than the attacker as it struck me that there would need to be alot of movement plotting and manouevering required to play the Axis side well and that can be a bit tiresome before too long. One thing I will say, don't rely on your AP minefields to do much in the damp conditions. I had an entire German platoon run through one of my minefiled tiles while they were under fire and not a single casualty was caused! Combined Arms was surprised to see it there once the game had finished as he had no idea until the final screen appeared of its existance. So much for the idea of protecting the rear of ones bunkers with minefields.

I tend to disagree with Frunze on how much of a doddle Koltov was as the attacker. The main disadvantage the attacker has from my POV is the lack of infantry to properly scout out potential ambush spots. You may get lucky by risking a large proportion of your force in rushing through a gap in some woods or a section of town but then again you could also loose big time to ambushing German infantry that were well armed with anti-tank weaponry. I played the safer option and although my forces never came within a bulls roar of the centre of the main town that was never my objective. Realising what is achievable and what isn't is probably pretty critical with this scenario and despite my best efforts to carefully scout ahead with whatever infantry I had, I still managed to lose over a platoons worth of T34's plus almost the same again in SU85's. This scenario is truly a challenge to both defender and attacker alike and I thought it was pretty well balanced in terms of testing ones attacking skills versus the defenders choice of where to defend and what with.

Regards

Jim R.

[ November 06, 2003, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: Kanonier Reichmann ]

[Frunze]

Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:

I tend to disagree with Frunze on how much of a doddle Koltov was as the attacker. The main disadvantage the attacker has from my POV is the lack of infantry to properly scout out potential ambush spots. You may get lucky by risking a large proportion of your force in rushing through a gap in some woods or a section of town but then again you could also loose big time to ambushing German infantry that were well armed with anti-tank weaponry.

Even more than the small amount of Soviet infantry, the problem is space and time. Walking is just too slow to get you to the objective.

But I figured out where the edge of the defender's setup zone was...actually, that's another thing that should be changed. It shouldn't be a straight line across the map.

And I didn't go through the woods or the town. I stuck to the open as much as possible...and most of the map was open. By going fast through there, I had time to let the inf. go first through the closer terrain.

[mPisi]

Wine-filled bump to keep it on the front page...

[Mikeydz]

I tend to disagree with Frunze on how much of a doddle Koltov was as the attacker. The main disadvantage the attacker has from my POV is the lack of infantry to properly scout out potential ambush spots. You may get lucky by risking a large proportion of your force in rushing through a gap in some woods or a section of town but then again you could also loose big time to ambushing German infantry that were well armed with anti-tank weaponry. I played the safer option and although my forces never came within a bulls roar of the centre of the main town that was never my objective.

The issue I had with the Soviet setup in Koltov in that the Soviets are able to set up behind Ahapeebka (village on Axis right, betweer the "river" and the long diagonal road. I had a platoon of men in that town. He started with 6-8 tanks on "my" side of the river/treeline. From that point he had instant side shots on my StugIIIs set up watching the roads to my front and right. Both those guys were dead quick. I also had one of my AT guns set up there, along with a Schreck. Both those guys bit it also, but they managed to take out 1 tank each. So basically, after turn 3, my at defenses consisted of 1 AT gun on the complete oppisite side of the map (which never got a good clean shot oppertunity on anyone) and a smattering of schrecks. He was easily able to surrond and pound the village defenders to bits, and raced into my empty rear.

My main point is this. If the Allied player sets, it pretty much rules out and chance for the Axis if he sets up in town. He'll get pounded from the front and right sides if he holds position in the buildings, and if he attempts a retreat through the open area to the rear, he'll get cut to shreds by the "flanking force that now has clear lines of fire to the Axis rear areas.

If I were to change anything, I would not allow the Soviets to have a setup zone behind the treeline/river village on the Axis right. Maybe as for forward as the middle of the wheatfield with the trees in the middle, but not much more forward than that. It's one thing for a player to have to take a flank, but to be given that flank almost outright by the designer is a bit much considering the considerable force imbalance already present in the scenario.

[mPisi]

See, I ignored that town completely except for a Schreck team to hold the flag if the Russians went elsewhere. In my setup, being a small objective, I didn't think it was worth the cost of trying to hold it with any strength. I had a platoon and HMG in the forest, set up in teams to get fallback positions. I was very surprised to find the Russians right in their face. The Russians rushed the forest so fast that I couldn't get the teams back together, and I lost a squad and was forced eventually to retreat a long way east away from the flag. Luckily my opponent left two platoons on that big flag in the forest, potentially awaiting my counterattack. This use of infantry affected his other attacks.

[Frunze]

Originally posted by mPisi:

See, I ignored that town completely except for a Schreck team to hold the flag if the Russians went elsewhere. In my setup, being a small objective, I didn't think it was worth the cost of trying to hold it with any strength

Sure, except if you can't stop the Soviets at the bridge behind that village, they can do a left hook all the way across the back of the map. The Germans could hold the forest flag if they commit enough infantry to it, but the other two large flags don't seem defensible.

I had a platoon and HMG in the forest, set up in teams to get fallback positions. I was very surprised to find the Russians right in their face. The Russians rushed the forest so fast that I couldn't get the teams back together, and I lost a squad and was forced eventually to retreat a long way east away from the flag.

Y'know, that's what I was expecting to happen, so I wasted my arty firing preplan at empty forest.

[mPisi]

Originally posted by Frunze:

Sure, except if you can't stop the Soviets at the bridge behind that village, they can do a left hook all the way across the back of the map. The Germans could hold the forest flag if they commit enough infantry to it, but the other two large flags don't seem defensible.

Ahh, I wish I would have thought of that, that would have been a threat if the Russians were restricted to the eastern edge start. I suppose seeing the two big town flags and smaller ones (so many points in one area), I expected the enemy to go for the main town area and extend along the road to the two west flags on the hill.

For my part, expecting to lose the village and fight for the forest flag, I had set up what I thought was enough forces to block the south side of the town, crossing that big plain from the gap in the forest (Or was there an end to the forest on the west map edge or would they be forced to go through the gap in the forest?). I should not have been as surprised/worried, I guess the enemy setup being allowed on the south edge is not much different than starting on the east edge and moving cross country, as I would not have engaged them in that movement anyways.

[Frunze]

I went between the stream and the forest. There's plenty of space, shrecks in the forest would be firing beyond their optimum range.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Interesting place to attack Frunze. I contemplated that area as well but I was concerned that my forces could be caught in a cross-fire between enemy forces located in the town which had some LOS to that area and defenders in the woods themselves. How did you go about capturing the nearby woods V.L. without being susceptible to flank shots from the town defenders?

Myself, I simply rushed a platoon each of T34's and SU 85's loaded with infantry to the eastern and southern side of the woods losing in the process a T34 to a solitary Stug defending the gap in the woods but overwhelming it with multiple shots from my attacking AFV's. There was about a platoons worth of infantry defending near the gap in the forest but my one & a half platoons worth of SMG's plus supporting fire from the AFV's soon overwhelmed them. The only downside was, most of my squads had used up virtually all their ammo in such a close ranged firefight so early in the game. From there on in I had to tread very lightly as any further engagement would have seen my infantry on that flank without ammo after 1 more turn (at best) of firing.

Regards

Jim R.

[Frunze]

Yeah, I went after the forest first, too. But if there had turned out to be too much infantry there, I could have bypassed it.

A shreck in the village shot at my tanks across the stream, but the range was a bit long, and then it got hammered. Like Mike says, I did lose two of my tanks from the across-the-stream force, to a shreck and AT gun that were right next to where they started out, in the scattered trees.

I don't know if my plan would've worked as perfectly with some other defensive deployments, maybe it just happened to hit the weaknesses in Mike's setup.

[CombinedArms]

Quick comments:

I was clueless as the Russian attacker in Koltov Corridor. I never came up with an adequate plan--I couldn't figure out a way to attack across that map with so little infantry-- and my implementation was even worse. My opponent kept me guessing about where his forces were and I lost of lot of tanks to Stug ambushes. I also ran one of my precious platoons into an infantry ambush. Then I got desperate near the end and lost even more stuff. Not my finest hour.

On the other hand, I had a workable plan, I think, as the Russians in Petroskov River Bridge. I decided to race much of my armor down the left side of the map to get into overwatch positions on the bridge. I approached the small flag in the center with infantry and some of the reinforcement armor. I took the small central flag but basically didn't worry too much about taking the bridge itself. Instead I tried to control the exiting off the bridge. That worked pretty well.

The High Road: A draw against KR. He had positioned his forces extremely well. I went on some wide swinging flanking manuevers. I did manage to catch some reinforcements to the rear flag out in the open and gunned them down. Otherwise, it was a hard slog to try to knock out PB's and push stubborn troops out of trenches w/o much HE. I thought I might take the rear big flag and contest one of the ones in the village but ended up falling short. Just contested the rear flag due to a hidden unit I didn't see and never got close enough to the other flag to contest it. Ended up on the short side of a draw. All in all, an interesting, well fought game.