MG's in woods and foxhole

[tenfive2]

This is a tough one. Several times I've had only infantry and my opponent has had a machine gun or two in distant woods in foxholes. Because of the open ground, you can't get to the MG. I've had to waste arty to try and move them. It can hold up or destroy an entire flank of infantry. I tried to suppress them and attack from the side. They popped back up and took out my flanking squads. Anybody got tactics?

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: tenfive2 ]

[Subvet]

Smoke them and close with infantry.

Or use a large calibre weapon. Mortars or AFVs are good for this. If they are in a heavy building mortars are out, so you need the AFV.

[tenfive2]

See, that's the trouble. It's an infantry only force. There is no smoke or big guns available. No AFV's. It works the same when the MG is in a bunker.

[MrSpkr]

Are there any other units supporting the MGs? If not, take a platoon, split each squad and charge the MGs at full speed. Be sure you keep the split squads far enough apart that they don't reform into regular squads at the start of the next turn.

Use your MG's to suppress the bad guys.

Bring up the rest of your forces en masse about 15 seconds behind this lead force (again, at full speed).

Now, the MG's will have a problem. They can focus on two or three of the split squads, probably cause a few casualties, and maybe break or rout them; however, the rest of your guys should be all over the MG by that time, and should be able to take it out in close combat.

Come to think of it, if you have the MG support to suppress the treeline for about 15m on either side of the MG's, do it -- that way, even if the enemy does have infantry supporting his MG (and he probably does - you just haven't seen it yet), you can still limit his fire on your charging forces and get most of a company in to whack the forces he has deployed there (usually, a platoon supports an MG).

This assumes, of course, that for some reason you have zero smoke rounds (didn't you buy some 81 mm mortars - -usually in infantry only fights you can get one FO of these) and there is no covered path around the defender.

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: MrSpkr ]

[Stacheldraht]

On-map infantry mortars for smoke and supression, then the split-rush technique described above should do the trick.

[Subvet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tenfive2:

See, that's the trouble. It's an infantry only force. There is no smoke or big guns available. No AFV's. It works the same when the MG is in a bunker.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whooops, I didn't catch the part about it being infantry only, sorry. But you should still have smoke available. Either use smoke from on-board mortars or off-board 81mm mortars. And use the techniques described above by the others here.

[Redwolf]

Leapfrogging, either with the squads in a platoon or with several platoons.

Try to approach the different units so that the resulting angle for the MG is biggest.

In CMBO, MGs suffer from too conservative maximum ammo use within a turn and from not switiching targets too much. For one turn (not several subsequent turns) it should be possible to fire much more often and at many more different targets than it is in CMBO 1.12. Because this isn't modeled, rushing one MG with three squads from different angles will usually succeed.

However, in CMBO, infantry units are much more robust against fire from front. Fire from the sides will break the attack in no time, no two MGs supporting each other require to find a path that avoids one.

And move, not run your units. They will switch to high speed themself when appropriate, but they are too vulnerable in ordered run.

[Soddball]

If you're playing as American or British, your companies get 60mm or 2" mortars. You can use standard rounds to suppress the MG and then charge it. One or two mortars should do the job.

[Subvet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Soddball:

If you're playing as American or British, your companies get 60mm or 2" mortars. You can use standard rounds to suppress the MG and then charge it. One or two mortars should do the job.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I did just that in the last round of the current T-House tourney. I even used a single half squad to do the charging (they were a left over scout from the beginning of the game). It actually worked, to my surprise.

[Soddball]

[ 06-28-2001: Message edited by: Soddball because I was ratarsed when I wrote it. ]

[ 06-29-2001: Message edited by: Soddball ]

[tenfive2]

Thanks for the advice, I never thought about splitting squads for the attack. Usually I hunker down with my platoon and slug it out forever untill I have to do something.