School Teacher 1

[MBot]

I just had to share this result. After this battle, the hill north of Sandberg has been renamed Jaguarhügel. These guys surely dished out a lot of damage. Interestingly, the first causality of the scenario was a Leopard 2 hit by a BRM-1K. That looked like a really good start for me.

I have to admit though, it is the second time I played the scenario. The first time I expected a second axis of attack from the north and kept half of my forces covering that approach. That only ended in a marginal victory.

Interesting to note is also that the Soviet turn cycle went down to 23 minutes after their HQ was being released of the burden of too many subordinates [:)]

[MBot]

Carnage.

[MBot]

Close packed defense.

[MBot]

Result

[Mad Russian]

That's the best result by far I've seen for that scenario. With all the changes to the code things are up in the air about what kind of balance any of them have at this time. We'll make adjustments to them if the changes push balance too far in any one direction.

Good Hunting.

MR

[MBot]

I was quite lucky with smoke. While the first mortar platoon went out of smoke rounds after the second firemission, the second platoon was able to renew smokescreens on my position until the end. Especially the wooden hex south east of Sandberg would have been impossible to hold without smoke.

My Jaguars and Leo2 were killing targets at excellent rates (though I do expect this from these types), I think the decisive element in this round was again indirect fire, especially the mortars. Apart from providing the smoke screens, they were able to fix in place multiple rifle and tank companies coming from the easter road. Even though they didn't kill a lot of units, the fixing of the enemy allowed my tanks to kill them off without being overrun.

Since the 2.03 patch, I feel that artillery is extremely effective in suppressing and fixing targets (slowing movement and dropping readiness and morale). Combined with the lightning fast reaction time, indirect fire has become decisive. I personally like it, but it might be something to look at again.

With regards to the balancing of the scenario, I think the one thing that hurt the Soviets the most was their own lack of artillery support. Would they have been able to suppress my defensive positions with artillery, they could have easily overrun me.

Something small which might be worth to look at is how a BRM-1K could disable one of my Leos from a distance of 2 km. It is not quite clear to me how he did that

[Enigma6584]

Damn but that was one hell of a kill zone for you. Nice job!

[ComradeP]

How did you deal with the Hinds, or did the AI use its helicopters poorly? The main reason I defended from a bit further to the rear was that defending the hill you placed your Jaguars on seemed risky with Hinds and Soviet artillery around.

You can create a very effective defense by using the hills in this scenario. Your result shows that a forward defense can work as well.

I had 1 tank and a couple Marders and PzG squads fallen out in the end.

My deployment was somewhat suboptimal as I had to readjust after the Soviet reinforcements arrived southeast of the objective, more or less adjacent to my scouts and some other units that had to reposition.

The infantry suffered from the usual being sort of stuck in their position whilst the artillery pounded them, it's one of the few mechanics I don't really like: any kind of hasty move, even a 1 hex move, takes a long time to happen and units don't take the initiative to move out of a hex regularly targeted by artillery fire.

[MBot]

Fortunately the Hinds stayed On Call in his rear area for the whole duration. Very early on my Gepards took down 4 recon Mi-8, so I assumed that the AI didn't want to risk their Mi-24 until that threat was neutralized. Perhaps it was a AI fluke, but it was something I might have done too.

He did hit me a lot with arty (causing a Marder and two Infantry to fall out) but had too little to suppress all my positions. By inserting fresh platoons into the defensive hexes I could keep up the volume of fire. One thing that worked really well was moving the reinforement tanks hastily into the hex behind the defenses, resuppling them there and then move them deliberately into their position with almost full readieness. That injected a lot of firepower into my lines. Of course this only works if the line units do well and buy enough time in the first place. Because of this, about 1/3 of my tanks weren't even engaged yet when the scenario ended.

I did try to rotate troops below 30% readieness or ammo from the forward lines, but as usuall that didn't really work. Once engaged, troops are very hesitant to disengage. They usually continued to fight until going into resupplying in place, at which point you can't move them anymore anyway. So I basically ended up building up stacks in the forward line. I think I could only pull back 2 Marder platoons to resupply in the rear.

I think my only major plunder was the southern hex of the 3-hex hill north of Sandberg. There 3 Leos and 2 Jaguars fell out because I didn't cover the position with smoke (wanting to preserve smoke missions for the closer positions).

[MBot]

ComradeP, I would be interested to learn what positions you occupied further back. I didn't recognize a lot of other options.

Frankly I was quite surprized by my outcome, the terrain enforces quite short engagement ranges.

[ComradeP]

One of my Leopard companies was in the north, dealing with a mechanized infantry battalion.

Near the objectives, I placed a company in hex 14,24 and a company along the ridge in the 8,26 area with the Jaguars. The tanks moved forwards later on. The Panzer Grenadiers were in hex 12,20 in company strength to deal with the Soviet recon and the one or two tanks that survived being hit by the Leopards in hex 14,24 and the Jaguars firing from the ridge. Smoke between hex 14,24 and the objective in hex 14,21 kept the Soviets from returning fire. My recon units shot down most of the Mi-8's and the Gepards shot down the remaining Mi-8 and the Hinds.

There's a screenshot of the final positions after the second Leopard company moved forwards a bit in the Feedback thread: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=3552926

The AI still had some tanks left when sudden death hit as I got a substantial amount of points from the mechanized infantry units. Looking at your end game screenshot, the same seems to have applied to you, although it seems the AI didn't attack in the north in your case?

My deployment or yours were the only good options I could determine, and with the Hinds around I picked a somewhat more in depth defensive position where the Gepards could fire at the Hinds coming through the woods before they could do any damage.

[MBot]

Very interesting. I did consider the high grounds to the south west for their field of fire into the town. But I dissmissed it because it would not prevent the enemy from getting into the town and clearing out the infantry again would be very hard once they are established. That did not seems to be too much of a problem for you.

I had all the 120 enemy tanks and 90 APC pushing in from the east. Since on my first play of the scenario this was the case, I also expected it this time. I was not totally unprepared for the northern axis though, two Leo2 of the battalion HQ kept overwatching the pass in the north and one of the reinforcement companies was initally in a good position to be redirected there. Ultimately a pair of Luchs settled my concerns by scouting the northern road right into the enemy rear. Just as sudden death stuck, they made contact with a major HQ unit and my M110 battery was conserving ammo for just that target...

[ComradeP]

The mechanized infantry in the south and tanks had to use the same road or move through the woods, so they moved in piecemeal. The mechanized infantry had already taken some losses from artillery fire and only made a weak push into the objective that was easily repulsed by the Panzer Grenadiers. If I had less smoke ammo or had not watched the northern road, things might have gotten ugly.

[MBot]

I am now at mission 5 of the School Teacher campaign. 1st Kompanie of the PzBtl 151 did quite well. Check out the tally of the Jaguar 2 platoon

[wodin]

I also found the Hinds unwilling to play.

[zakblood]

for me, this is my favorite campaign so far, still have all the help on to learn how to play, almost thought i'd got it until latest patch then needed to re learn it again, got some great defensive positions setup, with some good kill grounds in them, lots of cover, need more smoke as keep running out, downloaded some maps and printed out in black and white to plan on so always no where to go if needed to move quick.

played first one many many times now and always won with 87% best so far, will keep at it and learn more as with each update the AI keeps getting better