Stupidist Thing You've Ever Done??

[MG-42]

Hi,

I'm interested to know what is the stupidist thing you've done during a Combat Mission session?

Oh I'm sure the majority of you are incredibly competent strategists and don't make mistakes but I bet you weren't always this good...come on tell the truth!! Alternately there must have been times when you've had a sudden rush of blood to the head and made a move (or series of moves)that was/were incredibly stupid.

To get the ball rolling......I confidently ordered a group of tanks to engage a lowly group of T24's (?). What I didn't do first of all was check to see what tanks I had selected for the honor!! (I know! I know! a simple tap on the Enter key, a quick look at the staus box or even taking a second to visually inspect the damn tanks would have told me but I blindly ignored all this). Anyway within 20 secs **all** of my fearless tanks were toasting away without inflicting any damage on the Ruskies :eek: ..you know why?? I'd sent a group of Flame Tanks..sigh!!! Oh Well a very valauble lesson learned there and an embarrassingly public display of my noobieness <coughs!>

MG-42

[ December 16, 2002, 05:35 AM: Message edited by: MG-42 ]

[Nidan1]

Due to the fact that this is so fresh in my mind, it out classes all the other stupid things I have done in recent memory.

Playing as the Germans in an ASL conversion of "Hubes Pocket", I was tasked with opening and defending an escape route along a wooded road for a couple of convoys. Sounds simple huh?. I thought so too, as in the opening turns of a 50+ turn scenario, I began pounding Russki infantry attempting to cross wheatfields on my flank. Spotting and then losing sight of Russian armor I began moving eastward to cover the entrance areas of my convoys. At some point in time I became fixated on the Russian infantry in flanking positions, and neglected to continue moving my fast units to the entrance edge of the map.

About 20 or so turns in, to my surprise my truck convoys appear, and lo and behold are immediately taken under tank fire by T-34s my opponent had placed umolested to their flanks. By this time it was too late for me to rush to the aid of the trucks and they were neatly picked off like dead fish in a barrel. Result I surrendered, moral of the story.......stick to your mission, and dont have a few cocktails while playing.

[ December 16, 2002, 07:14 AM: Message edited by: Nidan1 ]

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by MG-42:

Hi,

I'm interested to know what is the stupidist thing you've done during a Combat Mission session?

[snips]

I think that for CM, my least proud achievement was completely ignoring a reinforcement of 4 Pz-IVs that I received part-way through a hard-fought scenario that ended in a draw. Maintaining a reserve is all very fine, but overlooking the fact that I had what was, by mid-game, the most powerful armoured force on the map was unhelpful, to put it mildly.

This is nothing compared to my stupidest game-playing moment ever, which was with Microprose's "Gunship" on my Atari ST. I was becoming quite competent at clearing the board of baddies, and had my Apache moving at 100 knots and 30 feet to position itself behind a hill for a pop-up attack against a SAM I had just discovered.

For no reason I can imagine, my left hand suddenly suffered a spasm of Strangelovian autonomy, and reached out to the keyboard to turn off both engines. At 100 knots and 30 feet I had no time to de-clutch the rotor and auto-rotate, and I doubt if it would have helped anyway, but I think I stayed stunned and motionless in my seat for a good ten seconds, aghast at the enormity of this inexplicable brainfart.

All the best,

John.

[RSColonel_131st]

I've bought this game just this friday, so there might come more in the future...for now, setting up an AT Gun without infantry cover, which totally managed to keep the tanks away, but was overrun within two turns by enemy infantry troops. I only had two of them...losing that gun made me lose the QB.

[Master Dullard aka flyingcursor]

I guess mine so far (with CMBB at least) was

sitting still for a few turns so my spotters could get into better positions, all bunched together in the only decent group of trees. Unfortunatly the AI must have had it's spotters in good positions already because before any of my arty could be fired, my entire right flank including all my spotters were deluged with incoming. Messy business.

[Björn Eriksson]

In the deployment phase of a CMBO PBEM game I put my artillery spotter on a open hilltop in the middle of my deployment zone. I did this because I always forget that I have any FOs and I thought that if I put it there I could hardly miss it (I always deploy my FOs after all other troops.).

Naturally, I didn't remember that they were sitting there until my opponent asked me who the guy he just killed on top of that hill was

Oh, how I wished I had that artillery when my troops and his were shooting at each other from woods with 100m of open ground in between. He pounded me with his artillery and assaulted, routing or killing most of my troops and taking the only flag on the map. If only I could call in artillery, the counter attack would have been succesfull. :mad:

[ December 16, 2002, 09:08 AM: Message edited by: KnivBjorn ]

[Mud]

Hm. Either

(1) Calling down rocket fire before realizing just how wide the spread can be... or, more seriously,

(2) Failing to make due haste in "B- Station", and getting blasted by enemy air power.

[Terrapin]

While playing a Scenario, I was given a huge platoon of absolutely gigantic Soviet Tank Destroyers. Now, I had no real idea how to use these things against anything but other tanks.

So, I have five of these things lined up on a road, with a little ridge. I move one forward to the top of a little hill, and it gets popped by an ATG. Knocked out. But I know where that gun is.

So, in my infinite tactical wisdom, I brought up the TD behind the first to take out the ATG. "KERCHUNK!" Another TD gone. Then I brought up the third one figuring my lucks' GOT to improve. You guessed it. "KERCHUNK!" Then another one. I love all five without even getting a shot off.

At the time I didn't realize this wasn't a good matchup and that infantry would be better at getting this ATG.

Do you remember that scene in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", where they get to the booby-trapped cavern entrance where the Holy Grail is located, and the Nazi archaeologist keeps sending person after person into it, where each gets killed. I was that guy. "Bring up another "volunteer"!!"

[ December 16, 2002, 10:42 AM: Message edited by: Terrapin ]

[Das Reich]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

For no reason I can imagine, my left hand suddenly suffered a spasm of Strangelovian autonomy,

LMAO.... well said...

[Boo Radley]

I don't know if this qualifies as the dumbest thing I've done, but it was pretty stupid.

It was several months ago playing CMBO and I was doing a QB against the AI.

Around move ten or so, I began to hear mortar fire. I looked at all my troops and no one was getting hit and I knew it wasn't my artillery, so it remained a mystery for a few moves.

A little while later, I backed up the camera angle to take in the whole map and down in one corner of my set-up zone, I see three squads and their CO cowering on the ground, completely surrounded by shell holes. My reserves that I had totally forgotten about.

Poor little pixeltruppen. But they stood their ground, dammit!!! ...sniff...

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Terrapin:

While playing a Scenario, I was given a huge platoon of absolutely gigantic Soviet Tank Destroyers. Now, I had no real idea how to use these things against anything but other tanks.

So, I have five of these things lined up on a road, with a little ridge. I move one forward to the top of a little hill, and it gets popped by an ATG. Knocked out. But I know where that gun is.

So, in my infinite tactical wisdom, I brought up the TD behind the first to take out the ATG. "KERCHUNK!" Another TD gone. Then I brought up the third one figuring my lucks' GOT to improve. You guessed it. "KERCHUNK!" Then another one. I love all five without even getting a shot off.

At the time I didn't realize this wasn't a good matchup and that infantry would be better at getting this ATG.

Do you remember that scene in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", where they get to the booby-trapped cavern entrance where the Holy Grail is located, and the Nazi archaeologist keeps sending person after person into it, where each gets killed. I was that guy. "Bring up another "volunteer"!!"

It had to be "Cracking the Egg", right?

[ December 16, 2002, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Nidan1 ]

[Hans]

In a desperate fight against my evil brother I had received an excellent choice of armour, infantry and artillery in our QB. I then cleverly placed them in a marvlous defensive perimeter and placed a large portion of the armour in an out of way location so it could counter-attack into his flank..........

The only problem was the location I picked was "fenced" off by woods and steep slopes and my Panthers and Tigers couldn't move....dang

[Redwolf]

Driving two Achilles into my own minefields.

Starting the auto-sneak-exhaustion thread

[CRSutton]

My buddy and I were playing a night game with zero viz. (try it, its a hoot) and he ran a jeep right through my lines. The jeep came to a halt, far to the rear, five feet from my wespe. Using my brilliant tactical acumin, I ordered my wespe to target the jeep and the resulting shot blew them both up!

[manchildstein (ii)]

there's always... 'i split my force and it was destroyed piecemeal'... then there is, 'i packed the (same) force too closely together and it was waxed big time by the artillery...

these are both common themes for me...

[manchildstein (ii)]

Originally posted by Nidan1:

that was my guess too... i just tried that one last night... very nasty if (as i usually am) the attacking soviet player is impatient... oh... and there's an example of 'i split my force and it was destroyed piecmeal'...

[Terrapin]

Originally posted by Nidan1:

Yup. Very good.

[MG-42]

Originally posted by Hans:

The only problem was the location I picked was "fenced" off by woods and steep slopes and my Panthers and Tigers couldn't move....dang

Now That's FUNNY!

MG-42

[mike the wino2]

1) Agreeing to play Berli .

2) On a map he designed.

3) Later that same game, purchasing 3 Stugs....and finding myself in a factory complex.

DOH!!

[ December 16, 2002, 02:43 PM: Message edited by: mike the wino ]

[Hensworth]

Originally posted by Nidan1:

stick to your mission, and dont have a few cocktails while playing

You might as well. You don't fight that much better when you're sober. Or haven't you ever faced me sober ?

Edited because I was so busy beating up on poor Nidan that I forgot to answer the question.

The stupidest thing I ever did was limber up 2 105 mm howies to trucks in the middle of a vast patch of brush. That was in tournament, too.

[ December 16, 2002, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: Sgt_Kelly ]

[ParaBellum]

Using the 'delayed planned arty barrage' feature in a PBEM for the first time, forgetting about it and assaulting a hill with a company of infantry when the 152mm barrage started 10 minutes later...

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Sgt_Kelly:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Nidan1:

stick to your mission, and dont have a few cocktails while playing

You might as well. You don't fight that much better when you're sober. Or haven't you ever faced me sober ?

Edited because I was so busy beating up on poor Nidan that I forgot to answer the question.

The stupidest thing I ever did was limber up 2 105 mm howies to trucks in the middle of a vast patch of brush. That was in tournament, too. </font>

[GRUMLIN]

well in a game i have just about finished, i forgot to look at ground conditions and out of the 2 stugs and one panther, the two stugs got bogged MILES away from anywhere. Flush those points down the drain. Alls well that ends well though cos the panther has killed 2 soviet TDS (the biggie SU200s) and three T34s by itself......move and fire, move and fire

oh, i just remembered that in the same game I sent 160 80mm rounds into the great blue yonder cos i didnt have LOS and then forgot about them. still dont know where they went.

p.s. any of my oppos who get beaten by me should now be REALLY embarrassed.

Grumlin

[Terrapin]

In a QB that was randomized, I got a medium map, assault, with combined arms, in deep snow, in a blizzard.

There was a tree line just ahead of where I thought the enemy was located. That tree line was about 150 meters away from where nearly all of my infantry was. I wanted to get their fast to avoid being in the open field, so I ordered them to RUN those 150 meters, then forgot about the order.

I bring up some halftracks to the treeline which comes under fire. I'm thinking "Now, where's my infantry". Of course, they're 90 meters away from the tree line, every one of them exhausted beyond measure.

I quit the QB.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by redwolf:

Starting the auto-sneak-exhaustion thread

OK OK

ROTFL

Thats FUNNY!

-tom w