Three Towns (Stafford vs Drifter Man DAR)

[KGBoy]

Hard to say. It probably increased the points difference but it did not change the ratio much.

I guess I still don’t get the rating system. What is the ratio if not the point difference between the opponents. Neither gained ground points nor targets points.

 

[Stafford]

Ok, time for my synopsis. Be aware that unlike DMs excellent posting and attention to detail, this may come across as more of a thought-to-page exercise, ie disjointed as I remember things. So here we go.


Starting out my objective was always to take the centre objective and Hill 36, generally establishing a defensive line across the map at this point. Hill 36 while being forested does allow control of the valley to the south of Wynton (yes, that is named after the original author, and yes Louvoy is a french name, literally pulled up google maps and picked one! The rest I just made up.) through keyhole firing, although not as well as I would have liked.
I recall seeing a question from someone about how to I find these keyholes? By looking. Get down to ground level and use the Mk.I eyeball to see what you can see from the gaps between the trees, however, this comes with the often annoying caveat that what you see, is often not what the game sees. Something something tree sprites...

I decided to go with Cromwells because I felt a need, a need for speed! Also they're different and I felt like playing with something other than Shermans for a change. Fireflies were a given because Panthers, but now that I think about it, if we had made a gentlemens agreement for no big cats/no fireflies, I would have been fine with that. C'est la vie...
Speaking of Panthers, they were also one of the reasons I went with Typhoons (there were only four, not five) rather than heavy artillery, also their disruptive effect early in the game was planned. Aircraft are a bit of a roll of the dice, since they can attack your own forces by accident, but since we were separated by better than 3kms I figured I'd be pretty safe. They can also be completely useless, or devastating, or somewhere in between - overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.
I did make a mistake in their initial use by one of their action zones overlapping with DMs starting area. Not by much, but as luck would have it, that's exactly where the attack fell.

The initial movements went about as well as hoped, and I took Louvoy without a fight - the Humbers were not as good as I had hoped, their agility leaving much to be desired (hey, a british armoured car that sucks, who would have thought! (David Fletcher approves)). I took them on some rather risky runs as I had envisioned that they would be able to turn rather more quickly than a beached whale, quick movements and moving between cover being their main defence - as shown, this did not turn out so well. Their spotting also left much to be desired.
DM is right in that I bought all my transport vehicles separately, for the simple fact that I wasn't actually aware that I could get them in a formation - or at least not in a formation that had the same units as I wanted... if that makes sense. I wanted full 10 man infantry squads, not the 7 man(?) trimmed down infantry squads you usually get in a motorised formation.
DM is also correct, 10k points is too much for this map - at least playing it the way we did, I envisioned playing this map with the idea that neither player could be in strength everywhere allowing for flanking movements and such, unfortunately that turned out not to be the case, I had way more troops than I needed.

Moving now to DMs leaving three Stugs in the field hanging out like a shag on a rock, I had to check as best I could that this wasn't a trap. Nobody leaves armour static in completely open country for no reason! Especially when it could just as easily cover the same area from the relative safety of the forest behind them. I felt certain that these were bait, and that the Panthers were waiting in the forest to the rear, waiting for me to engage.
After checking as best I could that there wasn't actually armour to the rear, I tried to get the Stugs to button up with my snipers, but this wasn't particularly effective. So another Typhoon was called in, and reaped rich rewards, once the air attack was underway it was a case of engaging overwhelming force, this worked rather well - including an absolute crack shot by one of my fireflies nailing a Stug fleeing for safety. I was disappointed not to also nail the third Stug which managed to reverse to safety, and also the halftracks in the area. Again, that's CM spotting for you.

With this done and more of DMs armour appearing in the centre of the map, I decided that if I was going to go on the offensive from here, I would need to thin down his armour further - so the two fireflies were sent around to try to achieve this. I believe the reason my fireflies were unable to spot the enemy armour was - again - CM spotting, they were firing over a treeline, and it's not exactly clear where the sprites for the tree foliage starts and finishes. I also didn't expect the Stugs to be on target so quickly. Either way the attack was a dismal failure, now being down to only 1 and a half fireflies, I was content to sit back and wait for what DM would do next. I also took the orchard as that area could have provided a possible flanking route into Louvoy.

The holding of hill 36. I feel the heavy artillery that DM hit my positions with was not particularly well used, sure it caused casualties here and there, and occasionaly wiped out whole fire teams - but, these were nothing that I could not replace (WWI generals approve!), I think that DM overlooked one of the most potent parts of heavy artillery, the shock value. If instead of using it piecemeal he had set a line of fire along the crest of hill 36 and hammered down on it hard, it would have annihilated anything I had there, anything not destroyed would have been broken and routed - coincide this with the halftrack assault across the paddock and this would have met with much greater success, without a doubt.
As it was, sure the troops are suppressed when a 150 lands nearby, even if no casualties are taken, but they recover and stay put. Also it gave me a lot of useful shellholes to camp my pixeltruppen in.

The two half track assaults surprised me, the first one because it was conducted without smoke, the second I felt was something of a hail mary - and also demonstrates the reason I didn't mount an assault myself.
After dealing with the first three Stugs, and if my fireflies had had better luck, I was contemplating mounting a rush across the fields and making an end run to the south side of the map and coming up behind Wynton.
There were two major reasons aside from the firefly debacle that I decided against this. Firstly was that while the Cromwells are well suited to moving quickly, I had to also move troops as well - unlike DM I only had half a dozen halftracks and a dozen or so universal carriers, this might be enough to get two platoons across in one go - assuming all survive, and as DM also found out, light armoured vehicles do not like it when they spot a tank, and orders be damned, they'll attempt to reverse to safety. (Sometimes the AI is its own worst enemy).
I could have gotten out there, motoring across the field, have a Stug peek over the hill and my collective transport corps shit bricks and make themselves into the finest shooting gallery you ever saw.
Offensive smoke in theory could be used, but it's a bit of a double edged sword - it's also only as good as the time it takes for your enemy to drive forward through the smoke.

Finally I also made a mistake in my armour purchases, my fireflies, cromwells, AA crusaders, and Stuarts came to around 3300 points - DM pieced it together and I realised why this had happened. In this game we had agreed on limiting armour with weapons above .50 cal, however in our previous game we had limited armour to 50mm, so I screwed up and still had the latter rule in mind when I did my selection.
For this reason I will not be submitting the game to the ladder, DM assured me that it was ok to do so, because he is an officer and a gentlemen, but I still wouldn't feel right about it - so it will remain a friendly.

I'm quite certain that I've forgotten many things about the game, but if you have any questions please go ahead and ask!

 

[Bulletpoint]

Good summary, @Stafford. What do you think about the points pricing of airstrikes, and how would you have gone about this battle if you had played the Germans?

 

[Stafford]

From a historical standpoint I can agree with allied airpower being cheaper than German, possibly even a little too cheap in some cases. That said, I have seen AA vehicles shoot down aircraft before, and they're usually a staple of my purchases when playing the German side in any decent sized game.

As for playing this map as the Germans, I do have another game lined up with @EngageWithZorp (if he's still around), so I might kick that in the guts in a little while and you can find out then!

 

[KGBoy]

There's a ladder? Found the sucker!

 

[KGBoy]

Great reading Stafford.
All I had were impressions and DM's surmises which were generally spot on. The need for speed as an example. I am still trying to purchase what you got (armour wise) from DM's 3013 point calculation.

Your artillery observation along Hill36 ridgeline is an interesting call.

Nobody likes smoke! I was thinking of revising that to smoking your own passage through a 'delicate' area? Fleeting glimpses are hard to hit. Opinions anybody?

Curious about the point exchange in what you called DM's hail mary. I believe DM lost 3 1/2tracks and 50 pxtups? What was your cost? Just the Firefly?

That is quite the rig you drive. Red Dog country.
.

 

[holoween]

Nobody likes smoke! I was thinking of revising that to smoking your own passage through a 'delicate' area? Fleeting glimpses are hard to hit. Opinions anybody?

Smoke is massively underused and often makes the difference between a successful and failed attack.

 

[KGBoy]

I apologize for my scatterbrained approach but was also thinking of your armour purchase restrictions on a 10k point game with relation to a whole mess of underused troops. So maybe armour restrictions should be revised on games this size to 50% say and not 331/3%?

 

[KGBoy]

Smoke is massively underused and often makes the difference between a successful and failed attack.

My statement wasn’t clear sorry. In this case it was used but coverage in the game overall is quite unreliable and therefore extremely problematic.

 

[Larsen]

@Stafford, what do you think would be the right (the most interesting) point value for a QB for this map?

 

[Stafford]

@Larsen the other game I have set up uses the maximum allowable in a QB, just over 7k points. It will be interesting to see how that compares. KGBoy does raise a good point though, the 30% rule is fairly typical for small to medium games but in one of this size doing 50% could definitely work, afterall - that's still 5k left for infantry, transport, and scouting! It would also allow for a decent amount of armour to take the field in the big armour battles we all dream of (but seldom play).

@KGBoy I lost the firefly to enemy armour, and an AA crusader to infantry attack - that was all. I knew pushing the firefly that far forward could be risking it, but from my point of view, every halftrack killed with troops inside was troops I wouldn't have to deal with if they were allowed to dismount, so I needed to get every tank that could into the fight while the rush was going on, especially in that spotting from their positions was... spotty.
I called it a hail mary attack for several reasons, firstly DM was running out of time, we only had 40 minutes left and on a map this big it takes a decent amount of time to put together a large assault, secondly I felt that while my troops weren't in the best shape either physically or mentally, I could see that his weren't doing much better - the small skirmishes on the crest of hill 36 were putting many of his guys to flight, and he was right in that if he had gone over the top well... the amount of my troops on the reverse slope just waiting for that to happen + armour, it would have been very ugly indeed. With both attacks that he made, I brought in several platoons of reinforcements and parked them behind hill 36, to take the place of any of the others that were too badly beaten up by artillery.
After the first attack failed I thought he might try to launch a full blown direct assault out of Wynton, over the ploughed fields and into the flank of Louvoy - much of it is in defilade until the last couple of hundred meters, while I had both an AT gun and several tanks covering that flank, if he had heavily smoked that area and then rushed his forces in - it would have been a chaotic mess, but he may well have been able to establish a foothold in town before I was able to move troops over from hill 36 to repel him. However this would be a highly risky strategy, and if it goes wrong that probably would have been the game.

Speaking of smoke, it's highly situational and its usefulness depends on a couple of things, firstly the weather - if it is raining or windy, yeah you won't get much more than a turn or two use out of it, DMs smoke in this game hung around for a long time so it was worth using. Secondly it is excellent against static or slow-moving targets, say if you want to close the range (ie, Russian SMGs vs German HMGs), or you need to move between cover. It can also be used as a decoy, ie, drop smoke in an area that you aren't going to go so the enemy will move reinforcements to cover that area, then go a different route that he has moved forces away from.

 

[Drifter Man]

I guess I still don’t get the rating system. What is the ratio if not the point difference between the opponents. Neither gained ground points nor targets points.

Well if our result was 350:250 for Stafford (approximately), then our difference was 100 points and our ratio was 350:250 = 1.4.
I don't know which one matters for determining tactical vs minor vs major victory etc. Probably the difference rather than ratio.

 

[Drifter Man]

I recall seeing a question from someone about how to I find these keyholes? By looking. Get down to ground level and use the Mk.I eyeball to see what you can see from the gaps between the trees

I thought so

if we had made a gentlemens agreement for no big cats/no fireflies, I would have been fine with that. C'est la vie...

Fireflies are fine - the gun is powerful but otherwise they are just as vulnerable as anything else. What I was genuinely concerned about was the Churchill VII, which is nearly indestructible. Even Panthers have trouble penetrating the frontal armor of the Churchill VII.

Aircraft are a bit of a roll of the dice, since they can attack your own forces by accident, but since we were separated by better than 3kms I figured I'd be pretty safe. They can also be completely useless, or devastating, or somewhere in between - overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

I don't think it can get much better than it did. Only 3 out of the 12 attacks were ineffective or nearly ineffective. In the rest I lost 3 major armor pieces disabled, two halftracks destroyed and about a platoon of infantry.

Nobody leaves armour static in completely open country for no reason!

I do And it could have been fine if it weren't for the plane that disabled one StuG and threatened to kill the other two (that you decided to call it off and send your tanks straight in - I realized you had this option but I could not have guessed what you would do).

I believe the reason my fireflies were unable to spot the enemy armour was - again - CM spotting, they were firing over a treeline, and it's not exactly clear where the sprites for the tree foliage starts and finishes.

I think it was simpler than that. My StuGs already had tentative contacts, on even fired a shot at one of the Fireflies some 2 turns earlier when they were going up the hill. One Firefly was shut down instantly and the other one had to close hatches right away because my 105mm were exploding around the hill. Closing hatches reduces your spotting chances by about two thirds.

I think that DM overlooked one of the most potent parts of heavy artillery, the shock value.

I agree. I don't know how to use it. I mainly tried to score some points for casualties with it.

the second I felt was something of a hail mary

It was attack or ceasefire - so I decided to get some action going for our money. I did not have a clear plan what to do with that attack.

From a historical standpoint I can agree with allied airpower being cheaper than German, possibly even a little too cheap in some cases. That said, I have seen AA vehicles shoot down aircraft before, and they're usually a staple of my purchases when playing the German side in any decent sized game.

And so it will be a staple of mine from now on!
In CMBN German airpower is impossibly expensive, in terms of purchase points and rarity. I doubt I will ever see a German plane in a QB. I considered bringing one, then I saw the numbers... and quickly forgot about it.

 

[Bulletpoint]

Even Panthers have trouble penetrating the frontal armor of the Churchill VII.

Hmmm I think the Panther can penetrate it out to 1200m though..

 

[Drifter Man]

Hmmm I think the Panther can penetrate it out to 1200m though..

It can penetrate - it just isn't the same overkill as with most other Allied tanks. I only did a few tests at 600 m. The Churchill has a decent chance of surviving the hit.

 

[Bulletpoint]

It can penetrate - it just isn't the same overkill as with most other Allied tanks. I only did a few tests at 600 m. The Churchill has a decent chance of surviving the hit.

That's odd, because the penetration calculator website says it should reliably penetrate it frontally out to a good 800 metres. I don't know if that website is reliable, but its results have matched well with the in-game results so far, in my experience.

 

[KGBoy]

...the 30% rule is fairly typical for small to medium games but in one of this size doing 50% could definitely work, afterall -

As a spectator ( and I know that's the most important person in the game) .
Aside from the Typhoon incident (which wounded DM's armour seriously) there was just one other tank on tank play (where Stafford lost a Firefly). After that neither side could mount a good armour attack. Then you have a map so big that infantry can't manuever without vehicles. The result is stasis.

As an aside, I thought the map maybe was too narrow for that size of game?

@KGBoy I lost the firefly to enemy armour, and an AA crusader to infantry attack - that was all.

I can't add yet. I'll get to this but, what's point difference then DM?

I knew pushing the firefly that far forward could be risking it, but from my point of view, every halftrack killed with troops inside was troops I wouldn't have to deal with if they were allowed to dismount, so I needed to get every tank that could into the fight while the rush was going on, especially in that spotting from their positions was... spotty.

A great move. And I was looking forward to the battle of the ridge.

DM ... was right in that if he had gone over the top well... the amount of my troops on the reverse slope just waiting for that to happen + armour, it would have been very ugly indeed. With both attacks that he made, I brought in several platoons of reinforcements and parked them behind hill 36, to take the place of any of the others that were too badly beaten up by artillery.

And at this point flanks become the issue. The battle could have been mighty!

After the first attack failed I thought he might try to launch a full blown direct assault out of Wynton, over the ploughed fields and into the flank of Louvoy - much of it is in defilade until the last couple of hundred meters,

That was my vote right DM?

while I had both an AT gun and several tanks covering that flank, if he had heavily smoked that area and then rushed his forces in - it would have been a chaotic mess, but he may well have been able to establish a foothold in town before I was able to move troops over from hill 36 to repel him. However this would be a highly risky strategy, and if it goes wrong that probably would have been the game.

But if DM held west side of Hill36... hence your firefly loss. Well spent!

smoke ...as a decoy, ie, drop smoke in an area that you aren't going to go so the enemy will move reinforcements to cover that area, then go a different route that he has moved forces away from.

I'll never trust smoke again.

The AI ratings worked very well I thought. If this were a campaign, clearly the British were staying and the Germans were pulling back hurt but not grievously wounded.

And (for what its worth) you were right in your map read, it was always about Hill36. A wider map might have made it less so.

 

[Bulletpoint]

While many prefer more action, I actually liked that this battle seemed historical. The Germans advance with limited armour and get massively strafed and delayed. When they arrive, they find they can't dislodge the defenders, but they try a couple of hasty assaults anyway, with really bad results. They then withdraw. Sounds like many battle descriptions from Normandy.

 

[Stafford]

I do And it could have been fine if it weren't for the plane that disabled one StuG and threatened to kill the other two (that you decided to call it off and send your tanks straight in - I realized you had this option but I could not have guessed what you would do).

My massed armour vs your Stugs was always going to go ahead, regardless of whether the air attack was successful or not, what I really wanted was to force your Stugs to button up thereby reducing their spotting and hopefully prevent them from getting the first shots off as my tanks came into view. Even with a 6-7 vs 3 engagement, by stacking the odds in my favour I was hoping to kill your three Stugs for the loss of only one or two of my own tanks, I even put the gun damaged Cromwell into the firing line on the off chance it may be targeted instead of the more useful armour.

It was attack or ceasefire - so I decided to get some action going for our money. I did not have a clear plan what to do with that attack.

Don't get me wrong, describing it as a 'Hail Mary' attack isn't intended to disparage you, it's just that I felt that even if you were successful in taking Hill 36 at that time... what then? 40 minutes to go and while you would arguably control both flanks of Louvoy, you still have to take it while fending off flank attacks from me. I think you'd have to also take the hills east of hill 36 to secure the location for an attack to go in without interference from me.

Regarding Churchills, they're pretty good against 75 L/48s, almost invulnerable in fact, but the long 75 can definitely put the hurt on them - I played a game on Rhone Valley some months back (you may have seen a clip from there where my tank commander apparently forgot his seeing eye dog), where I had Churchills vs a Panther and a Jagdpanzer with the same gun, the Churchills were completely unable to penetrate the frontal armour of the Panther unsurprisingly (I eventually got it with a PIAT, IIRC), and they also had trouble with the frontal armour of the Jagdpanzer. So while the Panther may have trouble penetrating the front of a Churchill, sooner or later it will get through, whereas it is virtually invulnerable to fire coming the other way (lucky shots excluded).
Churchills are also slooooooooooow, not ideal for a big map. I was also expecting you to bring Panthers, so they would have been a bad choice in that situation.

As an aside, I thought the map maybe was too narrow for that size of game?

I think so too, if I can be bothered I may make some changes to the map that I feel would improve its playability. What I really want is to encourage fights in and around the towns, but also allow flanking movements where speed and daring may turn the battle in your favour if the in-town battle isn't going to plan (could end horribly too of course, but them's the breaks!).
If I were to trim down the starting zones, and add it to the sides of the map (ie squaring it up), this would allow more scope for movement, the hill where my fireflies got nailed would become another terrain feature that could be skirted around and allow defilade for movement or hull down positions into either side of Hill 36.
Louvoy and Wynton would essentially be swapped, the biggest town should be in the centre of the map to be fought over, and provide cover for both players to approach either side relatively safely, this means not only the town will have strategic importance, the woods either side will too - although not as CPs.
The minor side objectives, Rexton and Littlefield would be moved more centrally on the map but out on the flanks, this makes them contestable and if the battle is close, may encourage players to go for them to try to gain a minor score advantage.

 

[Drifter Man]

As a spectator ( and I know that's the most important person in the game) .

Absolutely!

I can't add yet. I'll get to this but, what's point difference then DM?

Not sure what you mean - the outcome was 353:254. Objectives 230:140, Casualties 123:114. I don't know how much the last attack added to the Casualties on both sides, but guessing from purchase point value, I suffered more.
Only now I noticed that the objectives do not add up to 400. @Stafford, you failed to claim the Louvoy objective - this cost you 30 points

While many prefer more action, I actually liked that this battle seemed historical. The Germans advance with limited armour and get massively strafed and delayed. When they arrive, they find they can't dislodge the defenders, but they try a couple of hasty assaults anyway, with really bad results. They then withdraw. Sounds like many battle descriptions from Normandy.

I agree. I think that decisive victories in CM occur when the frontline fails at some location. This could not happen to us because we had essentially unlimited reserves that we could pour into any critical point on a narrow front. The casualties exceeded 200 men on each side - enough for a victory in a normally sized battle. But each of us needed to kill 1000 men, and that's hard to do in 2 hours. I can now say I am speaking from experience

That's odd, because the penetration calculator website says it should reliably penetrate it frontally out to a good 800 metres. I don't know if that website is reliable, but its results have matched well with the in-game results so far, in my experience.

I can't say anything to that. I'll test more thoroughly when I get there. I certainly do not suggest you can expose Churchill VII to Panthers. But you can do that against anything with the 75mm PaK/KwK 40 with relative impunity.