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A Concrete Hell Round 1 - AARs

Hi guys. @Animander25 and I are playing this campaign has a mirror and we have finished our first round games. Below is my AAR of both games...

The Shady Side Of Concrete Hell:

I assume most if not all of you guys have been following along on either Hapless or Chaps YouTube channels and are familiar with the overall plot of this. If not stop reading and go watch the videos they are much better than I will be able to do here. Both me and @Animander25 had a very hard time with the attack, neither of us was able to capture any of the objective zones. Here is how it happened from my side..

In my attack I was happy with the force I was able to put together, which was based on a Marine infantry battalion. I dont have the files from that far back but from memory. I had one full infantry company with spotters, javelin teams, and 60mm mortars stripped out of it. I also had a portion of a second company that also had spotters javelin and 60mm mortars stripped out. I know this company was cut down further than that. I think it was basically 2 trimmed up platoons. I attached 2 LAVs for fire support, 2 armored trucks for ammo resupply and fire support and a battery of 81mm mortars. As things turned out I should have taken more arty and left most if not all of the second company off but at the time I felt there would end up being a lot of house to house fighting and I wanted all the rifles I could get plus thinking about how the scoring works with the defender only scoring 1 point for every 30 percent of the attackers force he kills I was thinking the more people I could bring the more he would have to kill to reach that threshold.

My plan was for a kind of echelon attack from right to left. Basically for a light probe to hit the Able objective first, followed by a heavier blow to hit into Baker with the main attack hitting Charlie. Charlie looked like the easier of the front 3 the clear out. I chose to hit them in sequence like that for a couple reasons. On top of that list of reasons was I assumed @Animander25 would have arty or mortar support and TRPs so I wanted to trigger that before my main assault went in, I also wanted to disguise as much as possible where my main attack would hit to prevent or at least delay him shifting any reserves over there. I had my mortars on a ten minute delay and had them concentrate on the rear of Able to give the impression my main attack was going to start there and thought maybe it would kick up enough dust and smoke to keep any flanking fire off my guys going for Charlie, and maybe allow me to pull some of the guys probing Baker off and shift them to Charlie.... here is a pic of the map and a very rough sketch of the mapAAR 2.jpgAAR 1.pngScreenshot (122).png

I think it sounds like a decent plan. So what went wrong? Well @Animander25 had a lot to do with it. I made a sight mistake in my deployment that ended up really hurting me and misread something in my attack that sealed the deal for him. Starting out with my light probes on the right and center I was also using the berm at the back to do some shoot and scoot with my LAVs and armored trucks and was sitting up my MMGs for extra fire support. The only platoon I had upped the soft factors on was the main assault force for Charlie and I did not intend to move them until around the ten minute mark, during my deployment phase I had accidently left them behind the center berm where the LAVs were the trucks were on the left. After a few turns of shoot and scoot and my probes beginning to get within range of Able and Baker and my MMG teams had deployed along the berms some mortar rounds started landing along the back berm one of which smoked an MMG team and one very close to an LAV my assault platoon was bunched up just behind that and just in front of it the units the were going to probe/attack into baker. So now wanting all that to get caught in the open and no real cover anywhere until the gully right in front of the town I over reacted and rushed everybody forward thinking it would be fine I would set up some hasty support by fire positions there and then push my attack into Charlie a little sooner than planned. I figured I would take small arms fire coming forward but with all those rifles I had I should be able to shut it down pretty quick and then get on the move again. Well come to find out after the game. those first few mortar rounds were well off target spotting rounds. ( they looked pretty targeted deleting an MMG team and nearly clipping a LAV) and I was in fact rushing my entire force into where the mortar barrage target zone was.... And sure enough when I got where I wanted to get I was perfectly in the bullseye of the mortars and already pinned down by rifle fire. So I allowed the spotting rounds to push me into rifle bullets and the bullets to hold me in place for the mortar barrage. This also wore out most of my troops and the heavy casualties I took also broke a lot of their moral. I tried to recover and shift to the Charlie for an attack but my guys being exhausted and broken and seeing a lot of defenders in Charlie I quickly realized this was a lost battle. Then I thought I bet my head will stop hurting as much if I stop banging it against this brick wall and gave all of my guys hide orders and rode out the clock. In an ordinary game I would have asked for a ceasefire or surrendered but with the scoring system a ceasefire would not have been a good ideal for my opponent and a surrender a bad ideal for me just going to ground and hiding seemed like the best option. I ended up losing around 50 percent of my attackers and gained nothing for it. I think I only killed about 8or10 of guys. A very one sided fight and I congratulate @Animander25 on the game......................................... I got some redemption in my defensive game....

To defend this I had the following ideal. Any Syrian force is going to get outgunned fairly quickly by the Marines my opponent was bringing. I assumed he would not have that many vehicles, some heavy mortars or arty, but not a whole lot. and I assumed again this would boil down to house to house fighting. In that kind of fighting I figured most of the time I would get about 20to30 or at most 40 seconds of fire out before I started getting suppressed and cut down. Having for a few games of the red side of some urban fights that is just how it always seems to work out. I also know from past fights that Syrians seem to blow thru all their ammo extremely quickly and that if you dont up their soft factors they seem to surrender very quickly. So with that in mind I bought the following force. The main force was a militia battalion cut down some, mostly green and conscript but with some regulars thrown in and very importantly all had soft factors bumped up. Adding to leadership keeps them from getting pinned down so quickly and upping their moral keeps them from surrendering quiet so fast and I counted on the short range fights I intended to get in to make up for bad aim that green and conscripts were sure to have. Then I had a trimmed down Special Forces company. I chose them because they come with some night vision googles which are in short supply among the Syrians and the ATGM platoon. The ATGM platoon I took a calculated risk on I cut them down to just 2 team but made them crack shots. That is pretty light but most of the miltia teams came with RPGs and I did not think my opponent would bring them into town at least early on and I intended to stay out of their long range fire as much has possible. I also took my "secret weapon" an anti-air platoon in pick-up trucks. I love those things in urban setting those rapid fire cannons chew thru structures and splatter infantry hidden inside or on the other side of buildings better than any other weapon. They dont come with much ammo and are vulnerable to everything but it being an urban map I could pop them around corners and get some quick area fire in and them move them back behind another row of buildings. I took another calculated risk by taking no transport of any kind. Both because it would make me less mobile and because of not having ammo resupply but I thought I could cover those disadvantages with my deployment and with how I intended to fight.
I deployed with a lot of my guys in the center of the map hoping any opening arty would not fire that deep I wanted to be there in case my opponent wanted to attack up the highway and try to flank into one of the objectives in the back or hit Alpha from the flank. I had small teams in some second or third floors watching out for that. By having them in the center of the map to I could move them forward pretty fast to defend which ever of the objectives were being attacked. I either very lightly held the front row of buildings or left them completely empty but mostly held the second and third rows of building in order to "let" them in the front and run into ambushes from the neighboring buildings. I also bought 2 heavy MG bunkers I had sat up in tight little places that I figured would be very tough to get to plus the MG comes with 1000 rounds which offered me the chance to switch out any teams that were low or out off ammo over to man the bunkers and have those guys come out which a fresh load of ammo which I had to do about halfway thru the game. There are a lot of nooks and crannies in those urban blocks which were perfect places to set up little ambushes. I did not take any arty or mortars at all. I have a very low opinion of Syrian fire support in this game for both accuracy and the time it takes to call in. So I was much happier with having more rifles and my AAA techs. I have to say I was very pleased with how the battle played out with one sequence of three turns being a good example of the game. The L shaped buildings in the front of Charlie where the road makes the 45 degree turn. I had a team stashed in the back building there they caught most of a squad of Marines in the open towards the end of turn and mowed most of them down by the end of the turn. I had seen another squad coming into view the last second of the turn and was able to rush another team up to ambush them. By the end of the turn I had taken out some of the second squad out but was had both of my teams pinned and taking causualites. but I thought more Marines were moving in to reinforce there so I was able to move 2 techs into position over the next couple turns and take the buildings down and a lot of Marines both inside and on the outside of those 2 buildings. I think almost an entire Marine platoon was dead in and around that location by the end of the game. There were other places has the game went on that I was able to get angles with the techs and able to catch the marines in close range very short range firefights and then either move or quickly bring in another team to hit from a second angle on the next turn. I was very happy with the force I picked and how my plan worked out. I think I took out nearly 70 percent of the attacking force. I had deployed the bunkers towards the Able side of the map which he did not really push. Though one of them was able to lay down grazing fire across part of his line of advance. The ATGMs took out 2 LAVs including one that hit the berm just underneath the target but still KOd the vehicle. I had a couple teams watching the highway that towards the end I had moved up to get some flanking fire on his pinned troops in front of Baker. It is a very rare thing in any CM game to get a plan to work out pretty much has it was envisioned in the beginning and even more rare for it to work out versus a tough player which @Animander25 certainly is, as we have played several games against one and other and he has defiantly taken more games off me than I have him and I am looking forward to playing the next round with him.

Also thank you to Hapless for putting this together, To Chap for making a video series out of his first round game (even if he did draft me and then get me killed in it) and thanks to any of you that have stuck around and read all of this.
 
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