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After Action reports

The 20mm quad was my game changer against @Spoogles. It stayed in the game till almost the last turn despite having only one crew member left. At one stage it had practically exhausted all its ammo, but I manage to replenish it in a timely manner with the surviving crew from the other flak gun which had had been abandoned in the opening turns. Overall it caused 36 Canadian casualties and KO’d both the Bren Carrier and Stuart Recce. It was in direct C2 of the company HQ the whole game which must have helped speed up spotting and saved them from panicking despite the crew being gradually picked off by mortar and small arms fire. It even had a nibble at the exposed flank of a Sherman which caused the crew to panic briefly and reverse over a wall. The surviving crew member will be awarded both the Iron Cross and the Medaglia d'oro al valor militare for his heroics.

The German two man tank hunter teams were great for the fact they were armed with SMG’s: one such team practically stopped the Canadians left flank attack on their own. The best thing about the Italians is the Brixia mortars. They are really fast firing and carry quite a few rounds, probably about four times as many as the Brit 2” job.

As for my Semoventes, between them they hit the front of one of @Spoogles Shermans about eight times without a penetration, but I notice at the end that they’d completely ruined the smoke mortar, radio and optics for their efforts. One of them actually scored a penetration on the Fox AC without getting a kill.

Anyway, I thought that was a cracking opening battle on a great map with a very interesting and challenging force selection to play with. Managing to capture the monastery was a complete bonus as, after blunting the three prongs of the Canadian attack, I managed to sneak a couple of squads up the middle to find that it was practically undefended.

Thanks again, @Spoogles. Good luck in round two.
 
The 20mm quad was my game changer against @Spoogles. It stayed in the game till almost the last turn despite having only one crew member left. At one stage it had practically exhausted all its ammo, but I manage to replenish it in a timely manner with the surviving crew from the other flak gun which had had been abandoned in the opening turns. Overall it caused 36 Canadian casualties and KO’d both the Bren Carrier and Stuart Recce. It was in direct C2 of the company HQ the whole game which must have helped speed up spotting and saved them from panicking despite the crew being gradually picked off by mortar and small arms fire. It even had a nibble at the exposed flank of a Sherman which caused the crew to panic briefly and reverse over a wall. The surviving crew member will be awarded both the Iron Cross and the Medaglia d'oro al valor militare for his heroics.

The German two man tank hunter teams were great for the fact they were armed with SMG’s: one such team practically stopped the Canadians left flank attack on their own. The best thing about the Italians is the Brixia mortars. They are really fast firing and carry quite a few rounds, probably about four times as many as the Brit 2” job.

As for my Semoventes, between them they hit the front of one of @Spoogles Shermans about eight times without a penetration, but I notice at the end that they’d completely ruined the smoke mortar, radio and optics for their efforts. One of them actually scored a penetration on the Fox AC without getting a kill.

Anyway, I thought that was a cracking opening battle on a great map with a very interesting and challenging force selection to play with. Managing to capture the monastery was a complete bonus as, after blunting the three prongs of the Canadian attack, I managed to sneak a couple of squads up the middle to find that it was practically undefended.

Thanks again, @Spoogles. Good luck in round two.
Yeah, the 20mm basically stopped my entire attack dead in its tracks. The infantry was cut down so quickly that those who were left ended up being so shaken that pushing them forward for the rest of the game was impossible. I should have pulled back and just tried to hold what I could while inflicting casualties, because each attempt to get a toe-hold of the town, my troops were just too incoherent to sustain a single burst from a machinegun without retreating. Once I had realised that you were sneaking a platoon up to the monastery, it was too late.
 
Thanks for the AARs.

I enjoyed my battle against @Cargol. I (italian) withdrew all but the flamethrower team to the town, taking only some casualties. Cargol probed around both flanks while suppressing my AA guns with heavy bren & mortar fire. Using mainly the brixia's, AA guns and later the tankettes I managed to stop his infantry probes and cause quite heavy casualties among them and their fire support teams. I then prepared for the tanks arrival and planned to try and delay his forces into the town. This was successful, I even managed to bailout one of his Sherman crews with the tankettes. But even partial penetrations didn't really cause any real damage against the Shermans. Cargol smoked off his dismounted Sherman while I was mortaring it to prevent recapture, which did happen eventually as the brixia ran out of ammo.
Cargol competently used his AFVs in one mutually supporting effort slowly bounding them forward towards the town and there was little I could do against them. I tried flanking his tanks but couldn't get a good shot due to terrain and Cargol tried intercepting them with Piat teams so had to abort those efforts. My flamer managed to get some flames onto one of his Shermans but I probably should have moved it closer as they were cut down soon after and missed most of their flames. I don't know if flames can KO a tank? I think they can but not sure about my memory.
After his tanks arrived Cargol focused on my right flank (wisely I guess), where my speedbump forces on the edge of the town did good work but couldn't really do much in close range against his AFVs unfortunately, the large squads not helping I guess. I have had better success close assaulting tanks with German/Allied forces. The tankhunter who was supposed to attack his AFVs while they were dealing with the speedbumps was cut down as well, they did get close and threw one grenade but no satchel charges.
On the other hand my delaying tactics were too successful because the game ended just when Cargol's tanks moved into the town. My 2nd tank hunter team was just about to throw a nice satchel charge on a Sherman from a covered ambush position and my forces still in control of the town.
I tried some shenanigans using one of the command tankettes to drive into his rear and maybe contest an objective, but an HQ in the Church tower (which I forgot to target with my AA guns) shot up the Tankette from above and they panicked and drove right into the enemy. I also misjudged some terrain between houses in the town being passable for the Tankettes, causing the other command Tankette to reverse into Cargols tanks. Guess I should have kept those back for the points lol.

Well played Cargol, good game.
@SlySniper I think it was a great design for a H2H battle, fun to use Italians for a change. A screen from the fight for the shitty tankettes! :D Even small arms can penetrate those from the sides. Although against infantry or ACs they can do some work.


Combat Mission Fortress Italy Screenshot 2022.12.23 - 20.53.55.21.png

Combat Mission Fortress Italy Screenshot 2023.03.01 - 19.29.02.88.png

Combat Mission Fortress Italy Screenshot 2023.03.01 - 19.29.08.91.png
 
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Lethaface, looking at your end results, 50 points is not much from your loss to a possible win. not sure if the Tankettes would have been worth 50 points, but they sure would have helped.

Well, round two will let you try your hand at entering a town and getting your chance of having to clear defenders from house to house.
 
Lethaface, looking at your end results, 50 points is not much from your loss to a possible win. not sure if the Tankettes would have been worth 50 points, but they sure would have helped.

Well, round two will let you try your hand at entering a town and getting your chance of having to clear defenders from house to house.

Yeah too bad about the points but more importantly I had a good game :).

Let's see how much firepower the US forces can bring to bear and shoot up this town :2draw:
 
No screenshots for this one but it was an Italian Minor Victory. Made a bit of a pig's ear of this one, all the things Sly said you shouldn't do I pretty much did. I made a massive mistake in not checking the LOS in the dark, I thought it would give me a lot more cover than it did so I pushed a platoon down each of the left, middle and right to see what I could find. The middle platoon found lots of stuff and got chewed up pretty badly, I lost about 2 squads and I found not much on the right but the way in to town was pretty nasty.

I also got a bit happy with my mortars and had run low before I even saw the quad AA gun and I never did knock the thing out. I pulled everyone back from the middle and didn't advance too far on the left and decided to wait for my tanks whilst probing on the right. If anything they could hold the forces Cat had on that side over there.

When the armour did finally show up Cat decided to counter attack and push up my left so I sat with my tanks covering the approach and waited, only to watch his Semoventes get the spot time and again and get shots off without my guys even seeing anything. Cat didn't push any further than the edge of the objective so after farting around trying to put a smokescreen on my left and failing miserably I rolled my armour around that side out of LOS of the AA gun and hit his Semoventes in the rear. I pulled the right hand platoon back and put one squad in the monastery and the rest went to support the left, but it was all a bit too late.

Cat did try and get troops onto the monastery objective but my waiting squad ambushed them as time expired. Ended up getting no-one into the village (did anyone's interlopers actually survive?), held the monastery and we both occupied the crossroads objective (if that was what it was called, can't remember).

Well played @A Canadian Cat, that counterattack threw me for a bit of a loop. Best of luck with the rest of the tournie.
 
No screenshots for this one but it was an Italian Minor Victory. Made a bit of a pig's ear of this one, all the things Sly said you shouldn't do I pretty much did. I made a massive mistake in not checking the LOS in the dark, I thought it would give me a lot more cover than it did so I pushed a platoon down each of the left, middle and right to see what I could find. The middle platoon found lots of stuff and got chewed up pretty badly, I lost about 2 squads and I found not much on the right but the way in to town was pretty nasty.
Thanks for that. In the early going I made damn sure my tanette crews had all the protection I could offer. I lost a few guys doing that protection work but none of the crews.

I also got a bit happy with my mortars and had run low before I even saw the quad AA gun and I never did knock the thing out. I pulled everyone back from the middle and didn't advance too far on the left and decided to wait for my tanks whilst probing on the right. If anything they could hold the forces Cat had on that side over there.
Yes, those AA guns were super useful. The one I had in the centre ran out of ammo. Luckily the one on my left had lots of ammo so I moved the ammo team over and was able to keep both guns in the game.

When the armour did finally show up Cat decided to counter attack and push up my left so I sat with my tanks covering the approach and waited, only to watch his Semoventes get the spot time and again and get shots off without my guys even seeing anything. Cat didn't push any further than the edge of the objective so after farting around trying to put a smokescreen on my left and failing miserably I rolled my armour around that side out of LOS of the AA gun and hit his Semoventes in the rear. I pulled the right hand platoon back and put one squad in the monastery and the rest went to support the left, but it was all a bit too late.
Once I got the right hand objective those guys were pretty much spent. The team in the centre made the push to the monastery at the last minute. I was slow to realize that my mortars and AA guns had pretty much cleared the opposition there.

Cat did try and get troops onto the monastery objective but my waiting squad ambushed them as time expired. Ended up getting no-one into the village (did anyone's interlopers actually survive?), held the monastery and we both occupied the crossroads objective (if that was what it was called, can't remember).
I did, gamey bastard :D I still had more troops but there was no way I was going to get anyone through that gate without HE. Honestly my rush at the end was the gamiest thing ever.

Well played @A Canadian Cat, that counterattack threw me for a bit of a loop. Best of luck with the rest of the tournie.
Indeed.
 
Round Two Battle.

Oh boy, The Americans have plenty of fire power in this one to try and adchieve their task.

So what is the American weakness, its the amount of infantry they have and their fear of the 88's.


First , plenty of players just had a struggle driving and pushing forward knowing there was 88's out there.
The sad thing was, the 88's had a terrible time spotting and getting oppotunities to fire, there was few defensive players that managed to get many kills with them.

Except Spoogles had the Cm gods smile down on him and JTimo cursed the same god's when a 88 of spoogles spotted a halftrack through the woods in the American set up zone. Fired and hit that halftrack and with the explosion, tolk out two other tracks if I remember right.
Somehow JTimo managed to keep his composer and managed a win for the round.

If you pushed forward with the infantry and half tracks first and then manage to take heavy losses as the Americans, you then would not have the infantry needed to clear the town. If the German player pulls back correctly. The American armor has a real hard time being able to give support, thus the infantry needs to do the heavy lifting in the clearing of the town.
Armor can try, but getting into town and supporting the attack normally meant death to the tanker quickly.

As the American, another mistake that could be had was trying to approach and enter the town from the south, instead of the West.
For those that made this mistake, they found the German defenders had way more locations to fire from into the limited locations you could get troops into as to cover. This lead to massive slaugter of American troops quickly as they found themselves out gunned in most fire fights from this direction.

Approacing from the West gives the German way less locations where they could create kill pockets and get as much fire power onto approahing locations.

Canadian Cat was the player that comes to mind as to learning both things the Hard way. He attacked from the South with infantry and Halftracks first.
Found out how the German Mg's could shread his units as they approached and then when he did finally manage to rush his infantry forward into the edge of town. watched in horror as his troops bodies stacked up quickly in the buildings he tried to take.


For the Germans, this is a hard battle, I am afraid much is dependent on what the attacker does. but there is still some key decisions
early on, some of them MG's need to be located in forward positions to open and tear up the American halftracks if they lead out with them. Of course , the second you open up, its time to run and pull back, because you are going to get massive fire power in return on any such location.

If the Americans lead with Armor, then the goal was to hide and let them come in very close before engaging.
During testing, I found the 88's normally could spot enemy units well once they were near the buildings on the approach route.
Springing defensive attacks once the units were close to my units normally worked well as to timing.

No matter what, once a 88 opens up, its going to become ineffective quickly as you find them smothered in enemy fire very shortly afterwards.

I did see one set up for the germans I really liked, it was Cargol, he relocated all three 88's to the same general area, On the east side of the map. In locatiions where he could take the Americans on from the flank and also somewhat help support each other.
Really dont remember if this worked well for him, but he did get the highest defensive score. So he did something right.
Anyway, I really liked how he placed his guns
 
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Canadian Cat was the player that comes to mind as to learning both things the Hard way. He attacked from the South with infantry and Halftracks first.
Found out how the German Mg's could shread his units as they approached and then when he did finally manage to rush his infantry forward into the edge of town. watched in horror as his troops bodies stacked up quickly in the buildings he tried to take.
Yep, brutal. My recon got shredded approaching from the West so I decided to go hard to the South. I lead with HT because the 88s would shred my armour. My idea was that any MGs or AT guns that opened up I could quickly silence.

I was wrong. Dead wrong.
 
Not at home atm so can't check what was the north/west/south side. But quick AAR from my side:

I originally planned to go for a deep left hook around the town, deploying a smoke screen to protect against suspected 88's on the right flank (which @Stafford turned out to have indeed). However my smoke mission failed to materialize (never use mounted mortars mounted) and when my halftracks arrived I decided to use them and the tanks / SPGs as a massive firesupport base and go for a dismounted frontal push through the open field. While the scouts probed the left / top side of the map for enemy positions.

All in all that worked rather well, when I arrived at the town I was able to circle around it and break in from both the front, left flank and later behind the town. Some heavy house 2 house fighting ensued, but I had only lost 1 Sherman and a HT to the 88's so I had plenty of fire support for a combined arms assault. While my armoured infantry company took heavy losses fighting for the town, the rest of my force was relatively unscathed and I was able to clear the town of enemy resistance. My tanks were crossing the bridge as the time ran out.

I had never before used the US Halftracks as aggressive as I did in this match. But I had enough of them to basically suppress any location the defense could use to fire at my advancing troops. And enough ammo keep up the suppressive fire for the whole duration of the battle.
The .50s can be lethal against troops in buildings and even behind the buildings. Some of the buildings / defenses were difficult to suppress, but I used the 105mm for building demolition and open up gaps for suppressive fires.

A great scenario to experience how to fight with the US armoured infantry. I usually select the US rifle infantry formations if I have a choice, but with the HTs the armoured infantry has a lot of firepower!
 
1682107901814.jpeg

I have decided to establish a Pak front of some sort, placing all three 88S in close proximity and in Command (Battery and Plt HQ) .
In these positions, as @SlySniper noted, I was able to fire at the flanks of any advancing force moving from West to East which was the main route of approach from whatever approach my opponent decided to attack. Moreover, the tree lines masked the 88s from enemy observation, especially from the points where it was suspected that my opponent will establish his base of fire to support his advance toward the town.
I have placed an MG to support all three guns inside the two-story building and I have also placed a small blocking party (of one squad split in two) in the wooded area north of the river as this direction was offering a covered approach that my opponent could use.
My aim was dual both to cause as many casualties among his armored assets as I could and to have him, once my 88s were spotted, losing time and HE ammunition in trying to silence them.
In total, my 88s destroyed two Shermans and three HTs. The biggest gain from their use was the fact that they throw my opponent off balance and it seemed that until they were destroyed the town objective was a secondary one.
My blocking squad and the MG caused 35 casualties (the equivalent of almost 1 1/2 Plt of armored Infantry fielded in the game).
My Schreck teams did well also destroying the rest of the three Shermans.
I had the feeling that my opponent was thrown off-balance from the beginning and he managed to apply methodically his firepower really late in the game.
As far as ground objectives are concerned, I lost only the ''American Left flank position''.
As I already told to Slysniper, every dog has its day and I suppose that was my day.
 
My opponent didn't have much luck with his 88s either, total tally was 2 HTs. Lost 4 jeeps to MG42 fire. But lost no other AFVs, so was able to bring to bear the mass amount of firepower of my tanks and SPs. I did get a little lucky early on when a 88 hit a tree twice firing at a Sherman. But was quickly silenced the next turn by massed fire. Although it was cleverly positioned inside a building. I forgot this was possible or very rare to do.

flak house.jpg

Here's the other flak positions. IMO not bad choices by my opponent @Mr.Clapcheeks

flak spots.jpg

Made good steady progress right from the start. Was happy to see infantry trying to slow me down early on, as they were easily blasted. No doubt the defender needed all knife fights with the Allied infantry. There were a few spots in town where they could hide from Allied support. But like others mentioned, you could just blow up buildings to get LOS to the enemy cock roaches hiding. I did have 3 Shermans and a M8 over at the Allied left flank. So could work them over from both sides. Simply put, there was no escape! Especially after dispatching the 3 flak guns, tankers could breathe easy and stretch out!

Here's the end game layout. Was on my way to finish off the last flak crew.

layout.jpg

AAR:

aar.jpg
 
By the way, did anybody get much use out of the 57mm AT guns? Mine didnt fire a single shot. Though they did fully convince me the Germans would get a tank or two as late reinforcements. Happily I was wrong. But positioned two aiming at the bridge from both sides. Third was directed down main road into town.
I used all of their HE and some AP because why not :)
 
I used all of their HE and some AP because why not :)
When I realised that the Germans weren’t getting any armour reinforcements, I used up all of their HE then abandoned the guns and threw them into the assault as an ersatz platoon. I don’t think they appreciated the opportunity for glory and most ended up as casualties
 
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