Tactics Academy DAR#2 AC Spectre Vs 2054172

[Jonny]

Ok, AC and Numberz have been flying on this one, I shall be concentrating on this DAR until I have it up to speed.

Numbers Has Purchased roughly the same forces as for his game as Ratzki, except he's not bought any StuGs and has used the extra points to buy some more experience units.

Here is his setup

On His far right he has a MG34 LMG and A Shreck as flank cover. Next to them are the pioneer platoon. On the middle right he has one of his infantry companies.

Middle left he has his Armor (tiger and brummbar) and the other inf co. Further left he has his Mortars mounted in HT's and on the far left we have another LMG/Shrek for flank protection.

Comments from the man

I run men in open spaces and walk them in woods in general ...tires them out less.
Bring the mortars to the hill on the left to hopefully get an over watch onthe village
I uaslly put armour and such in scattered trees and hide them from air attacks.

My comments:

Generally set up looks pretty solid, however his flanks are rather weak, especially his left, if AC can break down this flank he could be in trouble.

 

[Jonny]

Ok here is AC's force picks with a bit of blurb from him.

My purchases:



1 Rifle Company Tried to get veterans but the computer gave me regulars. I thought about buying another company but decided to spend for more armor



1 105 mm Arty Spotter and 1 81mm mortar spotter. I know the indirect fire in CM isn't great but If I can get these guys into a good position they could do some damage against infantry and light armor.



2 M15 halftracks I want to use these to move spotters and perhaps my .50 cal around. They can also be used for recon.



3 M10 Gun Motor Carriages. I love the guns on these things but the open top can be an Achilles heel for them, that's why I only bought 3.



8 M4A1 Shermans The best tanks available to me, so I stocked up on them. Hope the strength of numbers helps me if I run into some German Armor of the feline persuasion.



2 MG Jeeps For recon and harrassing infantry.

Here we see how he has set them out.

And here is AC explaining himself

The map offers me both cover as well as room to manuever my armor. On the north end of the map I placed 1 M10 and 3 Shermans and a weapons PLt containing a .50 cal and a bazooka. I want to move thes units to the road to provide overwatch to the flags. There is a wall where I will place my .50 cal and the bazooka. There is also good cover that my tanks can occupy while still being able to sight down the road.



I place my 3 infantry Plts in the center of my set up with plans to move them quickly to the woods near the victory flag on my side of the road In the center I also place 1 M10, 2 Shermans, a halftrack and a jeep. The jeep will be moved ahead to see if I can draw fire and locate some enemy units. The halftrack and the armor will use the cover available to stay out of site whil looking for targets of opportunity.



On the south end of my setup I placed a halftrack, a jeep, 1 M10, and 3 Shermans. Jeep ahead for recon, halftrack and armor to move to the south side of the objective to provide over watch on the side. I placed a 60mm mortar with each of my inf. Plts and the center inf Plt got an M19 MG as well.



Guilty admission here. I bought HT's with the idea of using them to transport spotters. Unfortunately the HTs I bought are gun HTs that can't carry passengers. I like the extra firepower but I really wanted some help moving spotters around. I place my 81mm spoter with the weps plt on the north end of the map and the 105mm spotter is riding aboard one of the Shermans on the north side. Another admission, I bought all my armor individually instead of by Plt. Not only did this cost me more but it also deprived me of the ability to move and command my armor as a single unit. Another newbie mistake.



I want to initially take the flag on my side quickly and then base further movement on my opponents action. My history as a player is that I've either been to aggressive and move forward too fast or I have been too cautios and gotten bogged down. I will not be looking at this thread while the game is ongoing as I don't want to have an unfair advantage. but I would ask anyone here to kick me in the butt if they see me doing something stupid as long as this can be done without revealing any of my opponents plan.

As he points out he's made a couple of goofs, if you want to use vehicles for transports make sure you check the transport class first.

Overall his setup looks quite solid, he is quite strong on his right which means he should be heading straight for numberz weak left flank.

 

[Jonny]

First turn from Numberz side.

Nothing really to report, his units are on the move. As he mentioned all units that are in open ground are set on fast, while ones in trees are set on move. I think the units he started in the trees he should have started them in some open ground as the setup zone is in dead zone anyway and would have allowed him to move his units quicker here. You can see by the arrows which units are on fast and which ones are on move.

 

[Jonny]

First turn from AC's side.

Comments from AC

Orders phase. Gave movement orders to all infantry, Ht's and jeeps. Will wait to hold armor, hoping to see an enemy response

AC hasn't moved his armor at all, just sending the HT's and Jeeps forward, interesting choice here i would at least have moved them forward into some dead ground so they will be quicker to get to where they are needed. Otherwise running his infantry forwards much as would be expected. He hasn't mounted any of his MGs tho and sends these forward on "fast", unfortunately for him the .50 cal got about 5m and was tired out, the brownings quickly followed.

 

[Jonny]

Turn 2 From ACs view. Still no contact made. He just keeps moving his infantry forward.

Infantry, Ht's and Jeeps are on the move. Holding armor back for at least the next turn to see if I can spot any movement. I did halt my .50 cal and embarked him on a Sherman so I can move him more expeditiously.

 

[Jonny]

Turn 2 from Numberz perspective. Again nothing much happening units just keep moving.

Just continued my moving...directing motar teams where to go after we are done moving. Put on Covered arcs on the flamethrowers now so they will work when needed. Hid all vehicles in scattered trees where necessary.

 

[Jonny]

Turn 3 from AC's screen.

AC has spotted 1 inf unit and has heard 2 others and a tank. Still not too much to report except Number'z stuka turned up, it was targeting poor Sgt Hunter here out for a drive. Fortunately for him his mates were on the ball and the sky lights up with .50 cal tracer and 37mm HE shells, Sgt Shearly here bagged the kill. Also note the Jeep MGs opened up on the planes, never seen that before.

Some thoughts from AC

Plotted moves for all the armor except the 4 northern tanks, still waiting for the .50 cal to embark before I move them

Southern and middle groups of armor have begun to move forward. Infantry is safely hidden in the woods just shy of the flag on my side of the road. Northern group of armor, now has .50 cal aboard and has movement orders for the next turn. At the beginning of the tur, my HT's opened up toward the sky as numbers sent an aircraft over to try and shoot me up from the air. The fire only lasted about 10 seconds, so I'm wondering if I shot the plane down???



Numbers has a tank of some sort parked near the victory flag on his side of the road and has claimed the flag (for now). I have also spotted some of his infantry. Moving forward cautiously, I just hope it's not too cautiously.

Lesson From this Post:

.50 Cals are deadly against planes.

 

[Jonny]

The same turn from Number'z perspective

 

[Jonny]

Turn 4 from AC's view

Still not much to report, still mainly maneuvering but some contact is being made. AC is having serious transport problems, first discovering how slow his .50 cal really is then he tries to move his armor forward on fast and the Sherman carrying his 105mm spotter bogs on the "very dry" ground! AC has spotted a "tiger" (ringed) but i have a feeling it might be the Brummbar (i write these as i look through the files so i havn't checked yet)

BTW, i will post screenshots from different angles later when the action starts, this is just to give you an overall view of both sides progression.

 

[Bootie]

That plane could have caused a mess of that tight bunch of tanks if it had of got through!!

 

[Jonny]

More general advancing from numberz, he seems to be reaching his objective and is slowing down a bit. I see it was his Tiger that AC spotted, very risky IMO if you only have one tank to put it forward like this, even if it is a tiger.

A few things of note.

Numbers moves this squad across the open ground gap on move to contact.

But AC's jeep MG spots them and opens up with it's .50 cal

The squad stops and returns fire, but on that open ground they're awfully exposed.

And sure enough they think the better of it and crawl off.

Numberz got lucky and didn't take any casualties this time, but that .50 cal could have done a lot of damage. Unless you suspect there to be enemy units at your destination MTC is not a good order for crossing open ground, better to keep them moving and have them reach cover.

Numberz also starts firing his HT mortar at the jeep, a waste of ammo IMO, small arms fire can easily take care of this. If he tries doing the same thing with Ratzki he may sorely miss those 82mm shells when he comes at him with his Briitish Inf Battalion

 

[Jonny]

That plane could have caused a mess of that tight bunch of tanks if it had of got through!!

Yeah especially with that open topped M-10 there too, a 1000lb in the middle of them should at least gun destroy/immobilise all of those AFVs

 

[Jonny]

Turn 5 From Numberz pov

He's establishing his perimiter around the flag he already has, moving both pieces of armor either side of the building the flag is in. Contact is starting to be made in he middle.

AC proves more the value of these jeep MGs, they start harrasing Numberz inf, pouring in .50 cal fire from both sides. They decide the better of a prolonged engagement and reverse though. AC has moved his MGMCs forward, they too harass numberz inf but one of them mysteriously blows up (no pens showed, the tiger got 1 shot off at him which missed, will investiage further when i look at ACs file) and another is in big trouble, it's being targetted by the tiger at 50m, it's started to reverse bt when it does it will reverse into the Brummbars LOS.

Overview of the flags.

 

[Jonny]

Turn 5 from AC's view.

His tank on the right has unbogged and is moving forward, he's moving his 105mm spotter and his .50 cals up to his right hand side, opposite where numberz has his mortars, that 105mm spotter could make short work of them.

Now for the mysteriously exploding HT. We see the tiger fires on it, just before it fires the HT loses its target line from the tiger but when i watched it on numberz file it stayed solid until after it'd fired.

Then just before the shot bursts on the ground about 5-10m in front of the HT it bursts into flames, the Tiger was firing his MGs at it too so mebbe that did it. All the crew survived

 

[Jonny]

Turn 6 for AC

AC's CO HQ and armor on his right have engaged one of Number'z inf units, i think it's the Section/Plt HQ for the mortars he has behind there. He is moving his armor up to his left flank and has lost a MGMC to what i think is a panzershreck.

 

[Jonny]

Another of AC's vehicles seems to blow up for no reason :s

 

[Jonny]

Turn 6 from Numberz

His infantry advance is starting to get checked somewhat, slowing down quite a bit. The unit that AC's armor broke was a Shreck not HQ. I note that Numbers gave his mortars a HQ but at the moment they have fallen out of command and he doesn't appear to be moving either unit to get them into command, i hope he's not planning on using them without a HQ.

As you can probably see, his flanks are looking rather weak, all his armor is in the middle and he only has infantry to defend his flanks on which AC has a plt strength of armor moving towards them.

Here is his green shreck taking out that M15

 

[Bert Blitzkrieg]

Looking at the large map, I'm not quite sure what benefit a schreckteam has on the fringes of it. I'm referring to the left and rightflanks of numbers. There are only two flags on this map and they are both in the middle. I think a schreck would do more good in the centre of the map: more in the vicinity of the flags. Gives them more of a chance to ambush a AFV. At the fringes of the map it is more a case of luck a vehicle passes close enough by, IMVHO.

 

[McIvan]

AC's halftracks were way too far forward in my opinion. They are very fragile...only 8mm armour....and can easily be knocked out by sustained MG fire. If you want to use them, you need to be keyholing them so you can supress your target and thereby the return fire. They are good value if you can get them keyhole LOS to enemy armour...the quick firing 37mm can do a lot of damage.

 

[Jonny]

Yeah i think AC is showing his inexperience there, he said he bought them to move his FOs about but they can't carry troops so i think he just used them as scouts, with the amount of armor he has its still a legitimate use of them although he could well have caused more damage with them.