Murphy's Law and all that

[Wingmanx]

There's probably been some 'worst moment' threads out there already, but I think I just experienced one of my own in a CMAK session I just had with someone.

Meeting engagement, 1000 points set in Italy, July 1943. My opponent reached the flags first so I decided to try and slug it out with his infantry and mine at range first and see if I could soften him up before I pushed forward, since I had a cover advantage to do so. Meanwhile, our armored assets have at it, and I manage to come out on top at the end. Losing a halftrack and a panzer, but retaining one Panzer while he's lost two M10 motor gun carriages, one halftrack and another gun track pinned down by machinegun fire, unable to advance.

So I begin my push, it's difficult, but my infantry's advancing. Slowly. I manage to get my remaining panzer to break through and circle around to box in and attack his infantry from the rear in the woods they're hiding in. That tank was set up to do some serious damage.

Until en route, it bogged down, then became immobilized.

In open ground.

In very dry conditions.

So it was that my poor infantry had to do it the old fashioned way, and with much heavier losses while the tank and her crew got comfortable and passed around a pack of cigarettes.

I imagine there's people out there who've had much worse happen in unlikely scenarios?

[David I]

Playing "Bidberg" meeting engagement, 1944 Fall, rain. I lead with a Greyhound and two Stuarts.

The second Stuart bogged down, and then immobilized on a ROAD! Right at a key intersection. This on turn two. Whatabitch!

David

[SgtMuhammed]

QB Pbem vs Nidan. Two KVs and two 34's in deep snow. 1 KV boggs turn one in hide position, usless. 2nd boggs behind a house with no LOS to objective, again usless. One T34 boggs in road, again no LOS. Other T34 boggs on objective and is quickly killed by Nidan's tanks. Infantry now unsupported while his armor and troops close in.

And I though Soviet stuff was supposed to be good in snow.

[juan_gigante]

2500 pt QB Meeting Engagment, CM:BO. I'm German. I pick a crack King Tiger and two veteran Tigers, so as to be able to win pretty much any frontal armor fight. KT bogs and immobilizes on turn 2 in open ground in such a place that it only had an LOS of around 25 meters in all directions. Turn 10, one of the Tigers bogs and immobilizes in open ground with, with keyholed LOS to no where. Fortunately, my last Tiger cleaned up on the horde of crappy Shermans that the AI decided to frontally rush it with, one or two at a time.

[Wingmanx]

Sgtgoody, all I can say is ow. That is exactly why if I have any armor I always get nervous on a map with 'deep snow'. I've had way too many tanks lost that way without even firing a shot.

Though I did manage to do one quickbattle against a guy where I was assaulting. My armored forces included two groups of Stuarts on the offensive in deep snow (I also had two Shermans but didn't want them going off the roads). In the end only one Stuart bogged down and got stuck on me. Must be the light weight.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Wingmanx:

Until en route, it bogged down, then became immobilized.

In open ground.

In very dry conditions.

Must've hit a stump and broken a track. SH.

Michael

[John_d]

Not a bogging issue, but an artillery one. Amphibious assault on German positions. Had quite a long time before my troops were due to arrive at the beach head, so I decided to delay my artillery barrage so that it would come down a minute or two before my troops hit the beach, giving the enemy as little time to recover as possible. As that barrage lifted, my troops would start to unload onto the beach and second barrage would hit further inland to cut off the roads further back and prevent my opponent from re-enforcing his positions. Also, in addition to the main force, I sent two more smaller forces to capture other objectives (one was a building overlooking a road that I thought the enemy would use to move troops along and the other was a platoon of pioneers who I hoped would be able to make it round the back of the enemy fortifications on the beach and destroy them). A perfect plan, or so I thought.

First off, my pioneers run into problems. I'd sent them around the side of the main beach to land near some cliffs that were nicely sheltered. Turns out there's not enough space to land all the of the platoon. Half of them land and the other half bob about in the water. Enemy MGs figure out where they are pretty quickly. Everyone dies.

The other secondary force lands quite some distance from the main landing site, meeting no resistance. Except an enormous minefield! Boats are now useless as they are now grounded and my troops seem less than enthusiastic about walking through mines and barbed wire to get to the objective.

Oh well, I think to myself, its only a couple of platoons- the main attack force should be able to cope on their own, although its gonna take a little longer. T'was not to be. The first artillery barrage lands off target, right on the heads of my troops in their landing craft. They are still about 100m out to sea at this point. Lots of death. When the bedraggled survivors finally make it to land, the second barrage lands, off target, where the first barrage should have landed- which is now exactly where my troops are. I cancel the barrage and order them to charge up the beach, straight into a huge network of trenches, mines, barbed wire and bunkers. They don't get very far. As a final indignity, my opponent's artillery suddenly opens up on my men trapped on the beach, landing exactly on target. I surrender and go get drunk on my own.

[Zalgiris 1410]

John_d that's a good read, I'm sorry it had to happen to you mate!

[Soddball]

Originally posted by David I:

Playing "Bidberg" meeting engagement, 1944 Fall, rain. I lead with a Greyhound and two Stuarts.

The second Stuart bogged down, and then immobilized on a ROAD! Right at a key intersection. This on turn two. Whatabitch!

David

Someone played one of my scenarios! How cool is that?

[Wingmanx]

Just remembered another multiplayer match in BB with myself playing the russians. This didn't turn out against me in the end but I imagine my opponent was gnashing his teeth. Even if I lost it in the end.

Meeting engagement again (I admit, I like ME battles), same kinda story as above. Our armored assets have at it as our infantry maneuver into place, except my tanks come out on the bad end very early on. My 1943 late model T-34's start getting taken apart by his tiger and a pair of Stugs. Eventually I manage to tag one of the Stugs but the tiger is of course the ever present problem. So I get the bright idea of using the hills and trying to circle around behind it in some dead ground and dispatch my two remaining T-34's to try and deal with it. En route, the tiger draws a bead on one of them and fires, scoring a gun hit and destroying the barrel. I didn't even know a T-34 could survive a hit from a Tiger until that point. Nevertheless by this things were startin to look pretty hopeless.

I figured I was committed at this point. All or nothing, cause if I let that tiger run free I got serious problems. After a brief pause behind cover I send the gun damaged T-34 racing out first as a distraction, and sure enough he takes it, blowing it to smithereens. My other T-34 crested the hill some distance over a few seconds later and snarled past at full speed -right- behind the Tiger, while it was busy putting the finishing touches to it's squad mate. The russian ground to a stop at point-blank range behind the german heavy and the turret swung over. I've seen the T-34 crews often panic and run at the sight of a tiger or even any tank that could potentially kill them in one hit, but there was no running here. Guess they knew it was 'do or die' time.

So the Russian tank commander did what I would do under the same circumstances. At that range, with that target, he used his one and only tungsten round. I had actually forgotten he was carrying any, and I was lucky, cause turns out the other one that got blown up hadn't been carrying any rounds himself. Good thing it was him who took the gun hit and not my other tank. So at a range of 50 meters, the tiger took a tungsten round right in the ass. I've seen alot of tanks explode from devastating hits but I didn't know it was possible for the big cats to do it too, from all the times I've beat them before they were always 'abandoned'. When that Tiger blew up like a roman candle there was something epic about it. Could almost hear the russian tank crew cheering as they achieved something heroic.

A few seconds before the Stug finished turning around and put a shell into them.

But I don't mind losing if I managed to achieve something cool in the meantime.

[SgtMuhammed]

My favorite arty boo boo. Playtesting one of my own scenarios. The Germans had taken one of my forward positions and were swarming around it. I drop a module of 105 on them and send a Sherman to clean up. The last volley falls while my Sherm is still a good 500 meters off, except for the very last round which is late and short.

Great shot if you think about it. Right in the TC hatch, nothing but net. I think it is still my only dead on Hollywood explosion kill with arty. Everything else was the old immobilize, abandon type.

[tankibanki]

Something a little different, doesnt exactly fit into the category Murphy's Law, but wierd all the same:

One of my proud Tiger commanders charges ahead coming a little close to the remains of a US rifle squad. Not a problem, he kills them all with his private machine gun.

As he doesn't believe in life after death, he thinks that is the end of the story.

Unfortunately not ...

About 1 second after The US squad has turned into corpses he notices a grenade flying out of the dead squad. You can guess what happens to my Tiger.

I hope this commander is enjoying HIS life after death.

[Zalgiris 1410]

That last one reminds me of one experience, I had a PzIVF taken out by a 3 man Russian Infantry Platoon HQ team with a single handgrenade while that Panzer and 2 PzIIIH's were area firing at the creater the team were in roughly speaking but definately accurate enough!

I mean it was a bloody handgrenade while three Panzers were firing at the HQ team even with MG's & or main guns, how do ya figure WTF?

[Xavier_1986]

October 1942 - Stalingrad. Three pronged attack towards the Volga. My center force on turn 1 is completely decimated by a horrific artillery barrage. Reinforcements are called in but Russians come out of the sewers behind the lines and cause a huge delay in my rear. Consequentially the center force never got close to its objective.

The only good part about it was that the remnants regrouped and held some ground in the rubble. From there they were able to knock out a few T-34's on their way to support the Russian defense in other parts of the map.

[MikeyD]

My worst 'Murphy's Law' moment happened during an attack. I was having great success, I had made it to the enemy's trench line with hardly a loss. Then I noticed back at my own jump-off point a single soldier with binoculars. I click on him. Uh oh. A heavy artillery spotter that I had targetted the enemy trenches with fifteen turns ago then forgotten... and he's aiming right where my troops are now! And the seconds are counting down 3... 2... 1... FIRING! Oh No! :eek: :mad:

[Joachim]

Infantry attack. No HTs. Pushing guns forward to support the inf. While a vet inf plt is overtaking an ATG, I hear a StuKa coming in. 50mm ATG, a full plt and 2 man from a MG34 team 100m away are gone.

Gruß

Joachim

[John_d]

I once lost a whole infantry company of re-enforcements to a dive-bomber. Thankfully they weren't really needed, but it was still a pain in the arse

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Had an eventful bogging against the AI no less.

I had a platoon of T34s dashing along a road (dry conditions. They only needed to cross a 20m section under enemy fire and I figured they would all cross that before the enemy could bring guns to bear. No problem.

Front vehicle bogs, the rest bumps into it and a Panther massacres them one by one as they fart about treying to get past the bogged vehicle.

[John_d]

Elmar- that sucks mate!

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Elmar Bijlsma:

Had an eventful bogging against the AI no less.

I had a platoon of T34s dashing along a road (dry conditions. They only needed to cross a 20m section under enemy fire and I figured they would all cross that before the enemy could bring guns to bear. No problem.

Front vehicle bogs, the rest bumps into it and a Panther massacres them one by one as they fart about treying to get past the bogged vehicle.

In a similar vein but worse, I had 5 T70's run into a single StuG. I just get LOS over the crest of a hill at the end of the turn, so I do the usual scatter and try to get angle manouver, set everyting off...and the first T70 sees the StuG and gets cower, reverses into the one behind, which turns into the one going left, which stops and gets hit by the one going right, which stops and gets hit by the one behind, they all start dancing on the spot and the StuG crests the hill @ 50m and kills 4 in less than a minute joined by the 5th the next.

It was like the 5 Stooges with turrets.

[Bigduke6]

I'm the Soviets. There's this big hill with a single crack Tiger on one side. On my side about 500-700 meters away I have some T-34/85s kind of dueling with the Tiger, keeping it buttoned, but mostly staying out of its way. My T-34/85s are spread out and have a good ridge line of their own to play with, so I am having some success forcing the Tiger to swing its turret this way and that, by shifting the T-38/85 firing locations.

More importantly, on the other side of the big hill crest through brilliant use of terrain I have infiltrated a full company of T-34/76, mostly veterans. It's 1944 and I have plenty of tungsten, and so after about 15 turns of careful gully-running I've worked this line of T-34s to about 300 meters from the Tiger, in the lee of the big hill. The kitty knows about the 76s but can't come forward and do anything about them because if it does, the 85s will pop it in the flank.

Ok, time to rush the Tiger. I wait for the panzer to back off the ridge and shift its location a little to keep my T-34/85s from getting a good angle, get pointing well away from the 76s, and draw my "fast" moves all around the Tiger's position. I shoot the starting gun. And they were off!

However, my opponent chose this moment to pull the Tiger off the crest completely, as he was running a bit low on AP. Thus the Tiger was, instead of sitting more or less still, backing rearwards as my T-34s crested the hill. Engagement ranges were 250 meters or less.

Such a little thing, really. Bang bang bang bang bang bang, and in less than a minute 6 T-34s are dead, about half burning. The next turn the Tiger polishes off 3 more T-34s, before a single survivor can scurry back under cover. Scratch one T-34 company.

[Xavier_1986]

The last post reminded me of a good one, but it happened to the opponent I was playing against and not me. You all will get a kick out of this one.

We were in the middle of a very pitched engagement and the gun on one of my Tiger tanks was damaged. The Russians didn't know that though so I positioned it on a strategically important hill, which commanded the entire battlefield, just to discourage any Russian attempts to dislodge the forward observers I'd stationed there.

So after long time my opponent finally notices that the Tiger hasn't fired and he correctly guesses that its gun is damaged, so he quick formulates a plan to attack. The Russians lay down a smoke screen so my machine guns can't fire at his massing infantry.

All the while I'd been reinforced by a fresh Tiger platoon, and sent one of them up on the hill. The damaged Tiger reversed, and the fully equipped Tiger took its place. When the smoke cleared the Russian infantry, T-70's, and T-34's confidently began their advance... and were massacred.

That's one of my more memorable moments in Combat Mission.

[von Lucke]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

Great shot if you think about it. Right in the TC hatch, nothing but net. I think it is still my only dead on Hollywood explosion kill with arty. Everything else was the old immobilize, abandon type.

Heh. I had something similar happen, only in reverse: It was the initial spotting round, the one, single round that comes in 30 seconds before the main barrage. Hit dead center of my one-and-only tank (a Tiger), and blew it all to heck. Never knew what hit 'em.

[Michael Emrys]

I guess my biggest disaster occurred soon after I got CMBB. One of my first games was intended to be a recreation of an early Barbarossa typical action. There was a Soviet rearguard holding a small village against the spearhead of a Panzer division. The Sovs were a pretty bedraggled rifle company, tired, previous casualties, low on ammo. They had I think one AT gun, a couple extra MMGs, and a mine or two.

Facing them was an understrength company of tanks (Mk. IIIs with a couple Mk. IVs) and a company of Panzergrenadiers. They had a module of artillery support and a couple extra MMGs too in addition to their halftracks. My ace in the hole was a flight of Stukas. I figured they would bomb the crap out of the village before my attack went in.

Game starts. I wait for the bombers. I wait some more for the bombers. The bombers don't show. I guess they either got intercepted or were more needed somewhere else. I'm disappointed because I am really looking forward to seeing the Stukas do their thing in true Blitzkrieg fashion.

Oh well, I have enough other stuff on hand to carry the village, so I start the attack. I send one platoon of Panzers up the left half of the map with the MMG teams riding on their back. Their objective is to dismount into a patch of woods on the left front of the village to provide a base of fire while the rest of the tanks with the halftracks following go up the middle. Just as the platoon on the left makes it to the woods, I hear this buzzing as a plane or two go over. Next turn, just as the MG guys are disembarking, I hear the buzzing return and the scream of a Stuka in a dive. Well better late than never, I think. Actually, it's pretty good timing as the Commies will have less time to recover before my main attack falls on them.

Then...KABLOOEY! WTF! A 1,000lb bomb goes off in the middle of my tanks! What's the matter with you crazy Luftwaffe a******s? You're supposed to be bombing a village. Does this look like a village? I now have a dead tank, two stunned tanks with crew casualties and two completely dead MMG teams. And one totally disgusted player. So disgusted that I just quit the scenario.

And that, kiddies, is how I came to hate air support in CM.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Michael

[RockinHarry]

In a yet running CMAK PBEM, I have a Pz-IVJ shooting HE at an enemy machine gun settled in the 2nd story of a large building. Right between the Pz-IV and the enemy HMG there´s yet another unoccupied single story building and the Panzer had to aim slightly over the roof to hit the 2 story building right behind. The Pz-IV reperatedly failed to aim high enough (to hit the 2 story building) and several shots already hit the single story building, but I did not notice it already accumulated considerable damage from the Pz-IV the turn before. Just the same second a friendly infantry squad enters the now damaged building, the Pz-IV shoots and hits the single story building yet again and make it instantly collapse on top of this infantry squad! That actually was the infantry squad that had to attack the enemy HMG under cover fire of the Pz-IV the next turn! Result: 1 survivor of the squad left in the rubble and the resulting dust cloud blocking LOS to the enemy HMG for some precious minutes. Think I never helped my opponent any better before. :mad: