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Originally posted by YankeeDog:

Another big difference is the effect on buildings -- 1-2 150mm shells will knock down a large building, often before enemy infantry can get out. It takes a lot of 75mm shells to do the same, meaning that any enemy inside has a chance to escape.

But on the flip side if that first shot happens to miss, the squad now has 20 seconds to clear the area before the next round. Given that the 150mm will most likely be keyholed into a very tight spot, this often means the squad escapes with minimal damage. In contrast a 75mm IG will get off 2-3 rounds in the same period of time.
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Jason C.,

As usual, you argue over nothing for the sake of arguing and use a haugty tone to boot. We are all saying pretty much the same thing to aid a player with his question, but you act as though we are all diametrically opposed and only you hold the keys to the Library of Ultimate Knowledge and Wisdom.

The bottom line, for keyholed guns there is often an inverse relationship between how effective these guns are (often achieved with larger fields of fire) and how surviveable these guns are (often achieved with smaller fields of fire). There is a tradeoff, see? You seem to want it both ways--you feel you can shatter your opponent without fear of counterfire. What if I never move into your vaunted keyhole? Your 150mm IG is wasted because it will be very hard to reposition. Despite what you say, these are expensive guns (with rarity on which is how people usually play).

Jason--of course it is true that an attacker / defender cannot overwatch all potential gun sites. Everyone has had frustrating situations where these guns absolutely eat them up because it will take mortars 2-3 turns (or more) to get into position. But IF YOU ARE PREPARED AND USING MORTAR OVERWATCH--a more frequent scenario is that an IG utterly devastates 1 or 2 squads and then gets nailed by counterfire. A bad trade.

Don't get more wrong--these are nasty, nasty guns. But in my experience (which may be different from yours), they don't justify their cost as much as 2 75mm IGs do.

150mm IGs get their fearsome reputation largely because many newer players do not bring any mortars to the fight or do not overwatch properly or bunch up. In such situations, a 150mm IG becomes like a 155mm arty strike that is VERY accurately directed, with a larger ammo supply, and with better AT capability to boot.

One thing I did not mention above....if you let infantry get too close to any infantry gun, they can pin them down with automatic weapons fire. It does not take much to suppress these things and you can manuever mortars into position or just kill them with small arms / mortar fire / semi-direct HE fire. So one needs to be very careful with the "point blank" keyhole.

Go ahead Jason, tell me how all of the above is total bunk. Tell me how you can have your cake and eat it too.

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July '43, rarity on

75mm IG 37 pts

150mm IG 74 pts

Same date, rarity off (so presumably the ACTUAL value of these weapon systems)

75mm IG 31 pts

150mm IG 53 pts

With rarity off you can pretty much get 3 150mm's for 5 75mm's.

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Darn, I forgot the editor doesn't take rarity into account.

However, I'd like to point out with various dates / regions the rarity points are different. Late War south the 75mm 1918 gun is nearly 42pts, but early war central it's only 22pts. The 150mm almost never changes prices, and so far I haven't seen it other than 40% rarity, 74/60pts...

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Give automatic purchase a try in Quick Battle mode. It requires something akin to a leap of faith and you do sometimes end up with a few very lopsided games. However, these are surprisingly rare and the AI does a decent job of keeping the balance. It depends on your settings what you end up with and we have found that the most balanced is Unrestricted Force Mix.

It is fun and liberating to "make due" with the forces the Ai has given you. takes the stress out of the fact that you are losing if you are not responsible for the troops you were allocated. We generally agree that the loser from the previous battle gets to declare a "redo" one time if he deems the setup to be unfavorable, but he has to stick to the second setup!

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Plenty of good info in here, plenty of bad. In the end both sides of the 75mm/150mm coin have some light. The 75’s round out as much more useful. Particularly in AK, 75mm HC is absolutely devastating. It can take out any Sherm, M10, or medium tank with ease at virtually any range . . . and is quite accurate out to 1000m at that (probably way over-modeled but what the hell do I know). So in essence when you go with the 75mm sIGs you’re buying cheap and powerful AT guns who can more of less fire at will because you don’t have to worry about them losing a few due to their inexpensive pricing. Not to mention they double in the obvious anti-infantry role. Not to mention they move so fast you can “shoot and scoot” with them. I would take 2 75mm sIGs over 1 pak40 without a second thought.

Here are a few other cents . . .

--“securityguard - Does anyone actually move AT or Infantry guns mid QB battle? How does that work? The first turn you fire with the gun, everything sees it. It will almost always be fired at and the gun will abandon, unless your opponent is unlucky and doesn't have mortars. If he doesn't have mortars, then there’s no reason to move it - huge waste of time.”

Negative. Moving AT guns is extremely useful. The majority of setup time in a game should be spent on gun positions. Take the time to study/think about where you want to place them at the start (if at all), and what forward positions you will likely move them to depending on the variables. See the skeleton of the whole battle all the way through, right from the start.

With the lighter guns like the 75mm sIG, have them open fire from one keyhole, with a movement order to a new position set for 40 seconds into the turn. If you do this in thick concealment terrain before the attacker gets close, he won’t even notice you’ve moved. You can also aid the gun movement if you know he’ll be under fire when he opens up by firing smoke in front of your own AT gun. Just remember it takes 30 seconds into a turn before smoke begins to “appear”. Practice the timing and you’re in business. This is your best way to get your opponent to waste all of his ammo on . . . nothing.

--“David Chapuis -I'd take a pair of 75's over a 150, unless I knew my opponent had no mortars. But, like you say, maybe I don’t know how to use them right.”

Keyholing is the way to go in tight terrain. Here’s an approach to a broad flat map: Place your 150mm sIG in “rough” terrain as far away from the enemy as the map sloping permits . . . . out to 1500 meters+, with broad LOS over enemy positions. If your opponent has mortars (only 81mm can reach you), they lose a good clip of accuracy at this range, and in “rough” terrain there will be no treebursts. There are never any guarantees, but you’ll be remarkably resilient setup in this way.

Another tip is to place your guns in carefully selected terrain at the start. Setup so that, they have the dullest blue line keyhole to one possible enemy position. Once that position is captured or destroyed, be set so that if you move just a meter or 2 forward, you’ll have another few keyholes. Rinse and repeat. Setup time is crucial because you can test an entire movement lane in one patch of terrain all ahead of time. This requires you get lucky with the terrain card you’re dealt.

--“Nemesis Lead -150mm infantry guns are only one of the many reasons why one should almost always bring medium mortars to a fight.”

What he said.

--“Nemesis Lead-150mm IGs are devastating in those situations where they have some time to work (e.g., when your opponent has no mortars or his mortars are not overwatching properly). Having said that, a good player will deny you this opportunity. . . . . they are VASTLY OVERRATED by players who don't know how to fight them.”

What he said.

--“JasonC -The amazing thing is that people who think they are good at CM believe it is physically possible to overwatch every keyhole location that bears on places their forces have to move through. Their countermeasures only work against dumb wide LOS gun deployments. They also say things like "use reverse slopes, they completely counter them" without noticing the same is true of mortar countermeasures. Somebody has to crest. And if there is a sIG on his side, the crest is exploding.”

This is apples to grapefruit. Mortars can use spotters and stealth . . . and so can remain totally protected in their work. If the terrain is so tight, and the 150mm keyhole is so tight, that you can literally only hit 1 small building or something . . .well . . . . it’s easy enough to get out of that situation with little loss, and the mortars aren’t even needed.

--“YankeeDog -One very important difference is that a single 150mm HE shell landing near a tank will quite frequently cause gun or track damage.”

This is a very important point. BB and AK are different beasts in this regard. In BB it isn’t usually worth it to bother unless you can get a very close area target. In AK, if you can get within 30m . . . . very nasty.

--“YankeeDog-Another big difference is the effect on buildings -- 1-2 150mm shells will knock down a large building, often before enemy infantry can get out.”

Negative. It takes 4 shells to take down a large light building, 8-9 for a large heavy (in BB and AK).

--“YankeeDog-In my experience, the AT performance, both in accuracy and BAE, of the 75mm IG is substantially toned down in CMBB/CMAK.”

I don’t know CMBO, but the difference in the 75mmIG from BB to AK is night and day. In BB the HC rounds could barely get the job done on t34s at close range. In AK the HC can take down just about anything. As with the 150, 75mm area firing is also much more effective in AK as well.

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Originally posted by Wingmanx:

What this got me to thinking of though, is what are some other weapons that might be considered 'uber' in the game that a player might be tempted to try and overruse? And how to counter them?

Soviet 45mm armed light tanks and armored cars is one that comes to mind. you can buy hordes of these fast bastards and they have ammo that can take out even Tigers. they are great battle ruiners, especially if the one playing Germans has cats or especially those turretless tincans like StuGs.

IL-2 is one super killer if your opponent doesn't invest in AA. recently a single IL-2 got eight German tanks when my opponent didn't buy any AA.

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Another advantage of the 150mm gun is its ability to "rubble" enemy positions. If you are on the assault, buy one of these bad boys, and if you are lucky enough to be able to sight it near likely enemy positions, you can start lobbing big shells into their midst.

Now the enemy has a tough call. They can counter the IG, but with what? If they shoot tanks / guns / mg's everything on the attacking side opens up in counter and now you have net lost, because the attack has way more weapons at the point of the attack than the defender (since 1) the defender has to spread out 2) the attacker outnumbers the defender anyways).

So on attack, assuming you get lucky with decent LOS, the 150mm IG can simply terrorize the opposition, and any counter strikes play into the hands of the attacker. This is a powerful effect and one you can't model with the 75mm gun.

Of course I don't think that the 75mm IG is properly priced, either. That gun is good vs infantry, OK vs tanks, pretty mobile, and cheap. As defender or on the attack these guns are a good buy, as well as the 150mm IG.

I generally get better value out of direct firing weapons than indirect firing weapons, all else being equal. The direct fire weapons can cause the enemy to abandon a position much faster than the mortars, which mainly cause suppression.

It also goes back to the "kill vs wound" thread. The 150mm IG kills, the 75mm IG "wounds". The wound is only good if you follow up on an assault, while dead is dead.

Just my opinion.

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Originally posted by Carl Puppchen:

Another advantage of the 150mm gun is its ability to "rubble" enemy positions. If you are on the assault, buy one of these bad boys, and if you are lucky enough to be able to sight it near likely enemy positions, you can start lobbing big shells into their midst.

Now the enemy has a tough call. They can counter the IG, but with what? If they shoot tanks / guns / mg's everything on the attacking side opens up in counter and now you have net lost, because the attack has way more weapons at the point of the attack than the defender (since 1) the defender has to spread out 2) the attacker outnumbers the defender anyways).

This is assuming that the defender will open up with a weapon system (or multiple systems) that will reveal itself when firing. But what if the defender used a hidden onboard mortar spotted by a HQ? Or arty spotter? Or even a sharpshooter?
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It is true that the defender can open up with a weapon system that the attacker can't spot, and like others have mentioned, medium mortars are excellent in this role. But if they don't have a medium mortar with an onboard spotter with LOS to that point, their options are poor. If they open up with OBA like 81mm mortars that is a great trade for the attacker, because the defender is using a big asset on the 150mm gun. And other items like MG's and tanks are really playing into the hands of the attacker, because now you can open up with impunity.

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