Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin 2013 Mini-Tournament: Rivers to the Reich

Holy shit, that was quick. Musso, how did you do as the German? We were supposed to play both sides at the same time, wonder how imbalanced this map may or may not be.

 

I haven't played as the Germans yet...just 20 turns in as the Russians. But I think that Hawkerace wants to quit..

 

He didn't want to play via PBEM and you can only play one game at a time via TCP/IP.

 

Win or lose, I'm going to post an AAR of both my Trollville games with Tomcat once I we are done. Although good, it's not the greatest map ever, but playing both sides is a very interesting look at the battle. The Russians have a huge advantage to start, that is until the Germans get their reinforcements.

 

My twin Trollville2 battles continue. Tomcat is putting up stiff resistance and the battle is a grinding, close-quarters slugfest with almost every unit firing at sub 500 meter range every single turn. We are about a third of the way through both battles right now. Looking forward to seeing the the next round map, which is also a river map.

Musso/Hawker, any news on your games?

 

Nadda. Still not in contact with him.

 

A grind fest? I am making him work for every inch!!! Turn what 15 as axis? And still waiting for my panthers, and now OMA is just sitting and waiting with his T34's in plain sight of where they will most likely spawn in. I thikn in eiather game though OMA has the advantage and he is sure pressing it hard..

I have decided I don't like prepared maps! Random ones are so much better, that way no one has the advantage and no one knows what is going to happen next.

I tried to attack over the river as the Russians with Machine gun and infantry cover fire, but the movement area is just not large enough. I can see with this map, that once each side is entrenced on either side it will be costly for either side to attack. I think improvements for this map would either to make it large/wider to allow more opportunities, or less units forcing the sides to either split their forces to defend specific areas of the map, or go for local superiority and overwhelming force to cross the river, the way it stands any build up on either side ultimately will lead to the other side seeing and each die can virtually be fired upon from the other side of the map, so more topography I think would also do.

 

The map is certainly unforgiving. The River is the low point of the valley, so once you get a good LOS from somewhere with your tanks, enemy movement is severely limited. In our brief game, I managed to get some Tanks down into the town area looking out towards the bridge, where anything that moved got destroyed. I also crossed on the Left (South I think) side of the map with some infantry and tanks, hiding the Infantry in the trees by the bridge. They repelled German Inf. there while my tanks hit German units from the flank in a deadly crossfire.

I agree - random maps are more fun due to the random factor - but don't work well for a Tourney as each pairing will be playing on a different random map.

 

I am having to use all my firepower at close range to blast my way through Tomcat's positions. Advances come very slowly and only using massive amounts of ammunition concentrated at key areas. Tomcat has done a good job of covering every area possible, so I need to blast any area with coverage to make progress.

The Trollville2 map is for sure a grindfest. It requires very odd & specific tactics as it is a relatively small map, a wide river and in that small space are 26 tanks with very limited sight lines and very restricted mobility. The battle is decided by who does a better job isolating and destroying their opponents armor. Once a superiority in AFVs is established, then it should be a matter of using the tanks like roving artillery to reduce the central village. Once full of infantry, the central village is basically a fortress. How do you deal with a fortress? Reduce it!

Although quirky, I do like the map. River crossings are always extremely dangerous in CM as in real life. The only way to forge a bridgehead is to ensure the crossing is unopposed. With the high unit density on this map, that is a tall order. The map presents a serious set of tactical problems which I rarely see. A fun map, but probably would have been more fun with less units.

Randon maps are fun, but depending on the terrain generated, they can deal a very bad hand to one guy and a great situation to another. The Trollville2 map requires effective use of cover arcs, use of concealment at all times, and demands a heavy focus on tank hunting. I spent a lot of time in the map editor reviewing LoS and the reinforment schedule, which helped me in the battles.

Apparently, I did the same thing as you did Musso. In both games I grouped my tanks in two large groups, each force was hull-down firing across the two bridges. This had the result of severely restricitng Tomcat's mobility across the map. Early on there were several gun duels between 4 or 5 of my hull-down tanks against 1 or 2 non-hull down tanks. The math doesn't always work out as expected for engagements like that, but they did in these battles.

 

Holy shit those panthers are lethal! The panther we are given have veteran crews, so they aquire targets and get rounds off very quickly. It's been a while since I've used Panthers, I have six t-34/85's lined up on a reverse slope awaiting two of those beast and I'm worried I might lose all six!

 

I figured they would be. Sadly, I never got to play that far into the map. The towel was thrown in right around the time they showed up!

 

My battles with Tomcat continue. Full credit to Tomcat for having the gritty determination to see the battles through despite grim odds at this point. He is a solid opponent, and I've had to grind down his units with heavy mortar and constant tankfire to get across the river. We've made enough progress that I can probably start making AAR posts without giving away any useful battlefield intelligence. I'd still like to play this map again with a 70% reduction of tanks of both sides, it would make the river crossing much more difficult and force the use of infantry alone to capture some objectives.

 

Looking forward to reading the AARs.

 

Sad that this didn't pan out again. We always seem to get it started but then people flake out and it fizzles.

Unless we did something based on TimeZones, so that we could get through the first rounds as fast as possible by doing TCP/IP play, before the 'championship' which could be done that way or via PBEM.

 

We have completed both games now. With me as the Axis it ended in a major defeat due to a severe tactical error at the first turn which gave the whole battle advantage to OMA. As me as the soviets I am yet to see the result as we are on turn 30 and have agreed to a cease fire. At the last moment OMA was beginning to cross the river in the centre and was already well established on my left flank with his panthers. I still controlled the town on my side and the right flank. That battle would probably have dragged on for another 10 turns if there was no ceasefire. A great opponent and a great couple of games OMA is worthy of the impending victories. You will have you hands full Musso.

 

Thinking he was still in the setup phase, Tomcat apparently forgot to issue German orders on turn 1. Adding to that we have the Russian units being a bit faster, I managed to rush units across the river immediately in that game. I did a slightly better job tank killing in the games, which is the key to victory on this map. I had those things doing so much area fire a few of them were fully depleted of their cannon and mg ammo.

Tomcat is a sturdy opponent and he's not afraid to go for broke in tough situations. I recommend him to anyone wanting a game, and would be happy to play him again.

 

How are the games going?