CM war stories

[V]

The game: CMBO

The rival: My big brother (as the Americans)

The scenario: Quick Battle (meeting engagement)

Setting: TCP/IP

The date: Years ago.

The time: Late at night (mid day game setting)

The was my greatest and most important victory, not just in terms of points or kills, but because the killed was none other than my big brother.

We loaded up a quick battle but I do not remember the point total. I know I was able to buy 2 companies of German infantry and a couple of independent platoons along with two Tigers some 81mm mortar spotters and one 300mm rocket spotter.

The map we fought over had a village in the center. To my left of the village was a small hill and some patches of woods. To the right, the terrain runs down from the village and it is fairly open with some patches of trees here and there.

The main flag was in the middle of the village with two smaller flags to the east and the west. I knew this would be a brutal house to house fight for that village, there was just no other area for infantry to really move on either flank without being spotted, from either side, and not enough cover to fight in. All the decent cover led tot he village from both of our rear areas.

My plan was made quickly, I would break one platoon (which was ind.) into all split squads and string it out on my left flank. It's mission would be to hold its position but to be ready to advance if needed. I really had no plan for this platoon, just to be there to keep him from doing anything sneaky on my nearest flank and to possibly aid in the village fight later.

I ordered two platoons to rush into the village, on turn one, under the cover of smoke and to occupy a string of buildings crossing the middle of the village right by the main vic flag. I expected this force to be chewed up before the battle was over, and i was right, hardly any of them would survive the fighting with more than 2 men to a squad.

To my right I stationed another ind platoon and the 3rd platoon from the company charged with taking the village. These two platoons would work with what cover they could to get firing positions into the rear of the village.

In a large clump of trees on my center map edge I hid an entire company of Panzer Grenediers and all but one of my spotters.

The Tigers were posted on a hill just to the right of my reserve company.

Everything started as I expected. The two assault platoons stormed from their jump off positions and headed towards the vollage (this was a ME). The platoons to my right began their infiltration. The left holds.

A few turns into the battle my assault force has reached the cover of buildings and continues ahead, reaching its objective just as the Americans show up. A fierce firefight breaks out, thankfully I made it to these strong of buildings in the nick of time.

As the fight begins, his tanks show up, many Shermans most with his infantry fghting in the village, doing much damage to my assault force. I engage with the Tigers. I take out a Sherm but lose a Tiger. The next turn my only other Tiger is gun hit. I back hgim behind the hill hoping my bro doesn't know the big cat's gun is gone. As all this continues, my force on the right sneaks towards the desired positions and actually lays a beautiful ambush on a sherman. Another Sherman is lost when it wanders too close to the German lines and is also taken out by infantry.

By this point, my brother has obviously pushed his entire infantry force into the village and has broken my assault force into full retreat. He follows up his edge by taking more of the town, but the Germans on his flank start to worry him and he ceases to advance, moving his last remaining Sherman to deal with the threat to his rear.

Now is the time to spring my trap. Using all the mortar spotters I have, I drop smoke between the village and my hidden company, I also drop smoke along my entire left front so that the half squad platoon can advance as well.

My brother calls what happened next "The Chinese hordes."

My Panzer Grenediers charge out of the woods and through the smoke, rushing to the cover of the village. Cover and fire positions are secured as heavy weapons (shrek, flame and MG units) follow up.

The Americans are stunned and have to halt in mid step (as he was moving units to deal with my forces on my right) and re position his units to deal with the grave threat. His last sherman tank is killed by a miracle shrek shot. My fresh company moves into the village and systematically destroys everything in its path.

The Americans had spilled much blood flushing those two platoons out of the village that they had absolutly nothing left to stop this tide of death.

His artillery had already been spent on clearing the village the first time.

My half squad platoon reaches good position on the high ground to my left of the village and from here fires into his rear. I notice that he is using the church on the far western edge of the village as a HQ and that many American units are already there. The Americans retreating from the village are all charging headlong towards the church as fire is poured into them from both flanks and the rear is bring nipped at by the ruthless Panzer Grenediers.

The battle was a brilliant success, considering it really only cost me two platoons and one Ko'd Tiger. Eventually my bro and his terrified troops were cornered in that huge church.

There was nothing but open ground towards his rear map edge. If they left the safety of that building, they would have been mowed down.

This was exactly why I bought and saved the 300mm rockets. I was hoping to have this amazing position and I was shocked the game did not auto surrender before I had the chance to use it.

The spotter set up for the coup de grace.

The church was already damaged from all the small arms fire it had been taking for the past few minutes, but nothing could compare to the massive blast as the first rockets began to rain down. The ground shook, the first rocket landed in front of the church, blowing out what stain glass remained and blasting the doors in. The second rocket hit just behind the church, everyone in the building began to panic. The third rocket was a direct hit, the steeple crashed to the earth below, the roof dropped in. The carnage was unbelieveable. Those who managed to escape were quickly mowed down by MG teams stationed on the flank. Those who could, surrendered.

It was a sad day for the Americans and my brother swore that something was wrong with CM that would allow me to purchase so much infantry.

But I did and still do relish in that greatest of victories. We have played since, I have won a couple and so has he. But this one will always stand out as my crowning achievement.

[ May 17, 2005, 07:24 AM: Message edited by: V ]

[V]

Originally posted by Dandelion:

One squad from another platoon had been held back in reserve, veterans with high firepower. I launched it as a flanking attack, hitting the enemy line from the right rear, rather imemdiately after the collapse of my defense. I didn't really believe it was a prudent measure but I was out of options. The squad assaulted across (and rear of) the enemy frontage and enemy squad after enemy squad turned and routed, or surrendered. I was rather stunned.

My opponent later told me that most commanders had been lost by then, few men had any ammunition left and the remaining squads were severely depleted. It had been the same company assaulting all three times.

With a victory of sorts, the feeling was more one of exhaustion and relief than of triumph.

I know it probably sounds very vanilla, but it remains my most interesting and intense infantry combat experience in CM. Though forces were small, each turn took me a good hour, as every single decision was decisive.

Cheerio

Dandelion

Sounds like a Civil War engagement...

[slysniper]

The last few stories have been great, I hope this tread continues for awhile, I enjoyed the one about

V winning his bigger brother. Victories are sweater when the win comes from someone that normally outplays you.

Really I am just posting to place this on top so that maybe a few more will add their stories.

[Bert Hamoen]

Not really a story about a victory (the game is still running), but did anybody see this before:

http://img203.echo.cx/my.php?loc=img203ℑ=sharpshooter2cx.jpg

Those Flaktrucks look armoured, but obviously are not.

[Panzer76]

You want war stories, I will give you war stories! You can't handle war stories...err.. well, anyway..

Playing a TCP QB match, 1500 pts vs, I can't remember. Anyhow, I was the ruskies, and on turn 1 a Stuka delivered it's payload IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL MY FORCES. It eliminated 2/3rds of my inf and armour.

Well, I thought it was lost, but I couln't very well surrender on turn one, now could I? So I fought on. I got to the objectives before my opponent due to him being overly careful.

Having hunkered down, I proceeded to kille some of his armour with my T34. After approx 10 turns, he decleared it impossible to take the objectives and surrendered! He thought all the contacts he saw (sqd's with 1-4 men) were full strenght sqds, and he would be masacared if he tried to push on. So, what started as a disaster, ended up in Total Vic!

[slysniper]

panzer76

I like the fact that you held in there and was willing to fight on even knowing that the odds were against you. I am sure you let whomever you were playing know many times how they let that easy win slip away.

But I hope you learned a lession with unit placement from it. That is terrible losses for one plane coming on the map. You must of had a slew of units almost on top of each other to take that kind of losses or am I reading something into this that is not what really happened.

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by slysniper:

But I hope you learned a lession with unit placement from it. That is terrible losses for one plane coming on the map. You must of had a slew of units almost on top of each other to take that kind of losses or am I reading something into this that is not what really happened.

Not much of a leasson to learn form it, was just really unlucky. They were bunched toghter because it was turn 1, and they were out of enemy LOS, heading for the objectives. Just one of those unforseeble things that can happen.

[Generaloberst Guderian]

Awhile back I was playing "Death Ride of the 424th". I knew the enemy had a JS-2 on the far side of a building lining the street that I was advancing on, but had no idea how to kill it without losing a valuable King Tiger. The real question was which direction his turret was facing. What I ended up doing was coming from the rear and the front and the same time, but used to pause command so that the tank advancing to the rear would arrive first. Sure enough the JS-2 turret had to make a complete revolution, but in a stroke of bad luck, the KT missed from 40m! Just as I thought I was doomed, the other KT came into view, and put a round into the back of the JS-2's turret, blowing it up, right before it fired into the exposed side of the other King Tiger.

[slysniper]

I just have to tell one that just happened, I also would like to hear from you all if this is something that has happened in your games also.

In a battle that is for control of a bridge, the only flags for the map are on both ends of the bridge, 300 points each. Well as the Germans I was defending, trying to bleed the Russians dry so that they would not have enough left to take the bridge on both ends.

The match is into extra turns, but the russians were struggling to push into the bldgs on the leading edge of the bridge, they had one T34 still and had no known threat from me since they had destroyed my two 88's which was the backbone of my defence.I had only one unit on the map with any antitank weapons left and they were hiding, waiting to get a shot off at the tank if it made a dash across the bridge, they had two panzerfaust.

Sure enough, he makes the dash and I watch as my unit sits there and watches his tank cross a 100 meter bridge and not even try to take a shot. At this point I thought I had lost this hard fought match, his tank had control of the flag on the far side of the bridge, the few units in the trenches there were being gunned down by his tank, on the near side of the bridge, he owned one side of the road and I the other to the road leading to the bridge and I would be lucky to hold on to that and keep the flag neutral and the score was showing in his favor. The faust team was out of range and no way to get them closer.

Then my moment of glory, A half squad that was 30 meters from the tank hiding in the second story of a light bldg, tosses a hand grenade and

destoys this t34 tank, the tank was buttoned up before this happened, it was shown as a normal grenade from a normal squad, this was no bundle. Now how did this possible destroy a tank and a couple of the crew, I love the results, but that is just crazy luck.

The few surviving crew was gun down, so I again control that flag, have the tank points and should be able to keep the other flag neutral, victory to the krauts because of some kind of super grenade.

[Paul AU]

Well…

I rather remember one of my first ‘serious’ battles against the A.I., when I first got the game. After I figured I’d got the basic idea.

The cool thing was, eventually, that all my previous general wargame knowledge was enough to win the scenario. I felt rewarded that the game was in-line with what I thought I knew.

Mind you, this was the game when my only tank bailed, without even being hit. Leaving to me to face a brace of T34s with nothing but infantry.

But my raw tactical guesses about long range MG covering fire, guesses about terrain effects, and etc, worked, when I had no idea that they would. They did, and so I was impressed with the game-engine.

And the amazing 3D immediacy, of course.

Not so much a ‘war story’, as a gaming epiphany story.

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by slysniper:

Then my moment of glory, A half squad that was 30 meters from the tank hiding in the second story of a light bldg, tosses a hand grenade and

destoys this t34 tank, the tank was buttoned up before this happened, it was shown as a normal grenade from a normal squad, this was no bundle. Now how did this possible destroy a tank and a couple of the crew, I love the results, but that is just crazy luck.

Dontcha know that CM is full of abstrations?

When a unit throws a normal grenade it simulates the unit performing a close assault on the enemy tank.

[slysniper]

Panzer 76

"When a unit throws a normal grenade it simulates the unit performing a close assault on the enemy tank."

How does a unit close assault from the second floor of a building 30 meters away, they should at least be on ground level before a dash could happen. But this does give me the image of a man running up to the tank, somehow climbing up, opening a hatch and throwing in the grenade, but with all the cover fire he had across the river such a thing would never of happened, and it would have taken more time than that throw represented.

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by slysniper:

How does a unit close assault from the second floor of a building 30 meters away, they should at least be on ground level before a dash could happen.

Hey, I didn't make the game! It's what it represents, you may not agree, as Im sure many wouldn't, but there you have it. All part of the abstractions in the game.

[slysniper]

Well, Thanks Panzer76. At least it has explained what happened. All these games and I have not seen this type of action before. Hmmmm, tells you about my close assault skill then doesn't it.