Murphy's Law and all that

[Xavier_1986]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

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

Question: Was that a quick battle or a scenario? I've never had much friendly fire (but there is the occassional mishap) trouble with my air support, but I usually stick with scenarios. I hear air support is more erratic in QB's.

[MrJingles]

This didn't happen to me, but rather to my opponent. We were playing a small meeting engagement scenario just for fun and I decided to drop some rocket artillery in the centre of the map to make things more interesting. It did plenty of damage to his troops advancing in the open, but more importantly a stray shell just happened to hit at the far edge of the map and kill all three of his artillery spotters in the first turn.

[Bert Hamoen]

Don't know if you can call it Murphy's Law or just my ignorance concerning the machinations in CM operations, but very, very irritating none the less. This is what happened.

Playing PBEM "Tank Warning" (Kursk Pack) by Franko. Me as german. First battle, and I kept my Panzers at a fair distance so to maximize the more accurate fire and better guns of the Panzers IV. And indeed, I took out some 35 T34's after game 1. Because of the rain and bad sight it did cost me a lot of AT ammunition though. And I lost about 15 of my Panzers III and IV.

I couldn't see what he had achieved. Not really any ground taken. Some infantry along the railwaydyke had come fairly close to one of my trenches and that was it.

Setup time for battle 2: I had 1 Panzer III left 2 Stugs III (L48) and 8 Panzers IV (all L48). No replenishments in ammo, so the Stugs were still out of AT ammo. This wasn't the worst. I had "left" in battle 1 four of my Panzers IV and the last of the Panzer III in what now turned out to be no-mans land (or so I thought). I couldn't do anything with the tanks there. Only rotate them, but not move them. At that time I wasn't happy, but thought "well, they should be fine there. No immediate danger, because he was nowhere near them at te end of the first battle."

WRONG !!!!

When the second battle started, and I could give my first orders, T34's tuned out to be parked almost next to my Panzers. But the T34's had their guns pointed at the sides of my Panzers. He had about 10 T34's (he did get reinforcements) in what I thought was at worst no-mansland. The computer thought otherwise.

After the first actionscene all my tanks in "no-mansland" were lost (to one of his) and he did take out 3 of the remaining 4 (I think he lost 2)which were behind the AT ditch. Because of the much shorter distances and his (now overwhelming) superiority in numbers he made short work of them.

So, I had one Panzer IV (lost it the next turn)and two Stugs (no AT ammo) left.

Another thing that wasn't OK was the fact that in game two he could place tanks (two or three platoons) of T34's on the railwaydyke. If I read the briefing correctly the dyke was impregnable for tanks and acted as a funnel for the approaching T34's.

Don't think I will play an operation in the near future again....

[David I]

Bert,

The operation, "Tank Warning" is crushing my lips as well. I am playing the Krauts. The 1st two battles went alot like yours. By the 3rd battle I had two Pz IV with 7AP and 13 AP respectively, 1 Stug, 1 Pz IV and 2 Pz III with no AP Ammo. A bunch of SPWs. The rain stopped so visibility increased. I received 4 Marders and 2 SPW 251/9's as reinforcements. Lost all 6 reinforcing vehicles on turn one taking out 2 T-34's in exchange. That left me with the 2 Pz IV's, a quick count showed 40 T-34's on the map plus some T-70's. The 2 Pz IV's went down fighting and I withdrew my defenseless SPWs and ammoless armor off the map.

At the beginning of Battle 4, none of my withdrawn vehicles returned, but I did get 3 Tigers. However it's raining again. So now I am sallying forth to do battle with 3 Tigers vs 40 T-34s. Wish me luck!

DavidI

[Bert Hamoen]

So David,

I "just" have to "fight" battle 2 out with my ammo-less Stugs and 1 SPW 251/9 to have a real fighting chance in battle 3 ? This is very reassuring !

You're playing the AI ?

[David I]

Bert,

Anything else I can reasure you about?

Human.

David

[David I]

Bert,

End results of "Tank Warning". Tally includes the 12 (+-) SPW's and 3 tanks I withdrew in 3rd battle (didn't realize they would be counted as dead when I withdrew them - otherwise would have hid them).

Here's the stud of the game:

DavidI

[Bert Hamoen]

David,

Thanks for your AAR ! You were able to tip the balance with "just" the Tigers ?

In my game, I run the serious danger of being pushed off the map before the current battle (only #2) ends ! As I understand, it means an automatic defeat.

[David I]

Bert,

Well I killed alot of T-34's in Battle 1. Just managed to have some units on map at end of Battle 3. It is amazing how deadly Tigers are at this stage of the war and with relatively open terrain.

David

[tankibanki]

yea, they are deadly. I managed a victory as well, but my Tigers were out of AP 12 turns into the battle (and one of them was gun damaged). I used that one to advance, it actually caused some T34s to retreat without firing resulting in one of the flags being "?" at the end of the battle.