CMBN Round #1 AAR's

[SlySniper]

Almost all the fun ones are hard and almost none of the fun ones are easy........

I understand wanting some emotional attachment to the games but lemme ask do u also aim for emotional damage?? (asking for a friend)

Oh, no, you have exposed my evil plan.

 

[JTimo]

Well, talking about challenging situations that I might give you. I worked on the round 3 battle a few nights ago,. I can already hear the comments I am going to get from some poor players that just cannot believe what they are going to be asked to do.

My idea of fun is to make you feel dread, or pride when you manage to get things to work out for you. I want some emotional attachment to the battle.

Sic!

 

[Gunner]

...... Somehow I forgot to turn on 'locations' (alt-L) and thought the Polish exit was in the NE corner, so i had setup some overwatch on a road which I thought they had to cross. But it turned out they didn't need to cross the road .

Same here!
I had an HT watching the corner and nothing is happening. I know there are some Poles on this side of the bridge and kept anticipating a sudden attack.
Out of the corner of my eye, or an onboard units eye, I saw a Polish unit moving to the north edge and realized I'm guarding the wrong spot. That's when I turned on the labels and...doh!....
But the worst part is I didn't notice the label that showed there were TWO exit zones, one on the east edge also, until the final couple of minutes.

 

[Raging Al]

Seems like I always disagree with the majority opinion but from my point of view the Poles had a very clear edge based on the amount of arty support with plenty of TRPs and all the SMGs for the short range firefights that would make up the majority of the game. On turn1 I gave area fire orders to most of my units for 30to45 seconds on all the buildings across the street from them since the briefing warned they could be there. Before the turn was over I had heavy accurate arty fire landing on all of my starting positions. That paired with all the sub-machine guns the Poles had kept me completely pinned for the entire game. My half tracks did have some very powerful guns on them. But they are incapable of making tight turns and painfully slow at making wider turns which was something I did not fully appreciate until most of them were dead. Having got them killed trying to move them into better firing positions or just get them away from the arty. Between the arty fire and the huge edge in small arms fire my units were pinned during every order phase. It might sound like an exaggeration or sour grapes but I promise it is neither one. Almost every order phase almost ever single one of my units had a suppression gauge in the red. So almost all my guys were cowering and most all the Poles I had eyes on were either firing or ready to fire. My guys did fight back. Late in the game ammo was a huge problem for most of my surviving units. But medicing up ammo takes time especially when getting pinned intermittedly during the turn. Trying to move them to open up more angles of fire is the only way I could think of to help overcome the rate of fire advantage the Poles had but moving them out of their starting locations was almost certain death. Yet the only other thing they could do was stay where they were and continue to lose the ongoing firefight with the units across the road from them. AL periodically pulled some units off the firing line to evac them. I was between a rock and a hard place all game. AL stopped artying me just long enough to create a humongous smoke screen on the other side of the bridge which he kept suplemented with smoke mortars and smoke grenades from his squads... He did not set up the same ambush that meateater did but he did have a blocking force set up that bottled up my reinforcements..........

To my eye he turned in a near flawless plan that was very well executed. The combo of arty and better small arms perfectly complimented each other pinning me in place while consistently whittling my numbers down and the lower my numbers got the more the small arms edge showed...... Leaving my halftracks in place early on might have helped some... but maybe not... The later stages of the games I did feel some pressure to move to try to cut off the some of the stragglers I knew were still moving. This caused me some more losses then probably were necessary but also probably netted a few more kills, probably a net negative for me though. The game was entering desperate times and it was the last of the desperation moves I had.

I have been beaten up in a lot of CM games. This was one of the more thorough beating I have taken though. I was very surprised at the final score. The game said it was a draw (no it definitely was not) I was surprised at the total amount of damage I had done to AL's force at the end of the game though. I assume there were a lot of turns where my guys knocked off 2or3 of his that usually went unseen by my guys aside from my W-bird which I knew had got a couple good licks in. It was a very tough game. Looking forward to round 2!!

@Shady Side - This battle was far from easy for me, it certainly wasn’t a cake-walk from my point of view. In the opening turn alone you accounted for 29 of my Poles that dared to go toe-to-toe with your PanzerGrenadiers; that’s exactly 10% of my force in one turn. After that initial scare I had to really rethink how I approached the house to house stuff.

It was a really hard battle and seriously touch and go as to which way it went. Great game, fella. I’d happily play you H2H again any time.

 

[Shady Side]

This battle was far from easy for me, it certainly wasn’t a cake-walk from my point of view. In the opening turn alone you accounted for 29 of my Poles that dared to go toe-to-toe with your PanzerGrenadiers; that’s exactly 10% of my force in one turn. After that initial scare I had to really rethink how I approached the house to house stuff.

That seemed like the only "good turn" i had..... I figure my W-bird had a couple good turns but I was mainly targeting buildings I knew were occupied and by then I was getting a lil bit desperate trying to make something happen

Great game, fella. I’d happily play you H2H again any time.

You played a damned good game yourself and I am sure our paths will cross again!!

 

[Probus]

But the worst part is I didn't notice the label that showed there were TWO exit zones, one on the east edge also, until the final couple of minutes.

Yeah. I was the Germans and did the exact same thing. I would characterize our fairly close game as... CHAOS, at least on the German side. I was able to use my AAA halftracks to great effect until my opponent, @OnePingOnly, got his smoke dialed in. Then he was able to pour over the bridge. I shifted all my forces on the Polish side of the river to their far left flank so as to get a better view of the bridge. Only seemed to have a marginal effect.
I might have just pulled off a win (well probably more like a tie) if my last AAA halftrack didn't decide to rush the enemy and immediately get taken down by a PIAT. Those PIAT gunners were murder.
Well, even though I lost I had one heck of a good time!!

 

[KGPanther]

On the start I positioned my German troops on the assumption enemies were on the other side of the road with the goal to concentrate my forces and try to gain fire superiority immediately. Given that according to the briefing we were outnumbered this had some risk, but better than probing forward under artillery fire while allowing the enemy to withdraw in the meantime.

The initial firefight went very well, seemed like my two companies faced off against 2-3 platoons of enemy troops in forward positions. With these being cleared with low casualties on my side I felt this changed the numerical superiority to my side.
Also because I observed a couple of vehicles waiting to cross the bridge under the smoke screen that had been laid down. The smoke screen limited my options for the units on the other side of the bridge, I was fortunate to have already gave an area target order across the bridge with the single MG42 on the other side so that it could keep firing through the smoke. One of the other MG42s was also setup to lay down suppression/denial fire on the bridge.

I moved both halftracks on the other side to a position on the river bank so that they could support my infantry while having LOS on the entry to the bridge (which wasn't smoke off).
After supporting the initial firefight the wirbelwind also moved towards a place where it could rake the bridge with fires and perhaps catch some vehicles trying to cross.

At that moment fortune seemed to favor my troops as we spotted a big mass of bodies moving on the bridge, with the Wirbelwind and halftrack in position to delete them of the face of the earth .

View attachment 30781

However, one thing I learned in this battle is that Bridges offer great protection against Wirbelwind quad 20mm HE .



View attachment 30782

Anyway, the crossing was still quite bloody as the MGs on my vehicles and the crew served MG-42s did good work.

After this I cleaned up this side on the bridge, while KGPanther was able to exit most of the units that made it into the smoke out of the map. Somehow I forgot to turn on 'locations' (alt-L) and thought the Polish exit was in the NE corner, so i had setup some overwatch on a road which I thought they had to cross. But it turned out they didn't need to cross the road .
Although I'm not sure how much I would have been able to do against the Polish forces anyway, I guess they had mostly reached the exit objectives already when my reinforcements arrived.

The Polish artillery did cause quite a number of casualties on my side, although I was lucky that most of my troops weren't moving at the moment it arrived. I hadn't expected it so early after the smoke barrage and there were no spotting rounds (TRPs obviously, in hindsight). However the barrage lasted a minute or two so I could just wait it out and press the attack again.

A first minute long lasting barrage to interdict/deny approaches for the Germans in combination with smoke on the bridge entry/exit would have been the best option I guess.

Anyway, good game!

No respect for my fallen comrades I see..... shameful! LOL