PzLehr vs Feurer Krieg

[DasHoff]

also, that big bunker is pretty epic. i remmeber on the 2nd battle i had like 3 squads in it, but it was still contested. he had one guy left hiding in it; it took ages before they finally found him

[panzerlehr62]

Thanks for posting Hoff, it makes for a good discussion of two of the hardest maps in this game for the allies. I want you to re-look at one of the bunkers. Try moving the at-gun in that bunker just a tad down from were you have it and tell me what you find.

Also let me point out somethg important about bunkers. Dont always think putting an at-gun in one will just give you that LOS everytime. By positioning it a diffrent direction before you place it inside can give you "sometimes" a totally diffrent LOS. So always test, test and test some more before you decide that bunker is worthless. Ive also had a bunker that wouldnt let me put a gun inside the first try (sword beach, round bunker, top area in the forrest) it took like 10 trys and it finally went inside. May not always work, but never give up until you try a few times or you run out of #$@## words!

Yes Ive had very good luck using at-guns in the water on the beach too. Mortar rounds are muted by the water and dont have near the deadly blast effect when they hit on land.

Gz...

[DasHoff]

ah, yeah i just quickly threw that together, if i was the german player i guess i would have to look harder at the LOS.

[panzerlehr62]

Limited action at best. Second battle of the night crashed (my computer no less) at about the 3 or 4 minute mark and that put an end to the night. What we ended up with was a pretty boring first battle, outside of the limited at-gun vs tank duel (overall it wasn't much). Top it off it seemed like the movie groundhog day replaying that map again!

Tailleville/Taineville:

Turn 1, Day 2.

WN 29 / 716th INF DIV vs 9th BDE/ 3RD Canadian ID

[panzerlehr62]

Buron:

Turn 1, Day 2.

25thSS PzGr./12SS Pz vs 8th BDE/ 3RD Canadian ID

First tank duel resulted in a draw: 5 German and 5 Canadian losses. It also looks like 2 more German tanks were damaged so maybe one of them fails to return.

[GS_Schimpf]

Do you have a screen showing the losses at the Buron battle? Just out of curiosity.

[panzerlehr62]

Sadly I didn't grab a snap shot after this battle(I forgot about using the print screen key). Ive got a program I can run to do just that, but with the last crash on this map and the fact my machine is so old there was no way I was going to run any extra prgrams in the background. I almost think it crashed on us the first time just because almost every unit was moving at the same time for the first several minutes of the game.

I put together some pic's from the game map of what the BGs look like now. As it turned out we both had a tank with 2 kills. Germans only lost one infantry team and by the looks I probably did too (only 2 men left in a rifle group).

Two factors that could have swung this game either way were one I couldn't switch out the centaur and two the German 234/1 arm car lost a wheel and never joined the battle. Fuel played an overall effect because I didn't want to risk losing more tanks to fuel so I was pretty much limited myself to 5 plus the Centaur (first battle that crashed I had 6 of 7 out of fuel at the start, unreal odds for just being low). Last time I had battle with low fuel I lost all 3 tanks in that game so I don't have great luck there either.

Gz...

[GS_Schimpf]

Any news on this GC?

[FeurerKrieg]

Interestingly enough, we just played a couple battles last night.

At Crepon the Germans reopened their supply route through Cruelly, and at Bayeux Schelle brigade was nearly run over by the veterans of the beach landings.

I'm sure Pz will have the details at some point for you.

[panzerlehr62]

Crepon:

Turn 1, Day 2.

915th RGT/ 352nd INF DIV vs 231st BDE/ 50th British ID

Let me give a special thanks to Steve and Jim who go the extra mile for us when we have problems. They fixed our game file and now things will continue again for the good or bad of it!

Losing the initiative in a battle makes for a long 20 minutes. I didn't look forward to this fight and all I can say is I am glad its over. The extra wait only added to the agony. The only good news to come from this, the German attack was very mild and supply is on its way.

[panzerlehr62]

Bayeux:

Turn 1, Day 2.

30th Schnelle Brigade vs 69th BDE/50th British ID

Defending Crepon with the 915/352ID left Bayeux to fall to the allies undefended June 6th. 30th Schnelle payed a heavy price for that June 7th. Lucky for them I can't see and they will live to fight turn 2. The only good news for me is there is now only one flag left, so hopefully I wont miss it next time!

[Concord]

Fantastic GC guys! Great work on the reports and screenshots panzerlehr62!

I am playing 2 concurrent GC's with a buddy of mine one night a week (LAN nice and stable so lots of battles get done).
We do a full round as the Allies and then switch sides for the next round. It's nice and relaxing playing the Germans. [;)]

Can I ask you panzerlehr62, did you use tanks on all of your initial beach landings, or did you hold them in reserve for later like DasHoff suggested (IIRC)?

[panzerlehr62]

Thanks Concord...

On some of the beach maps I came ashore with only infantry. Mainly it was in the Omaha maps were the allies only got 1 to 3 tanks for the BG, like Fox Green (only 1 tank day 1), Easy Red, and Dog Red. Then later in the day as I got a good foothold and had some protection for them I began to start using them.

Utah area you will have no problems using a few tanks from the get-go.

Sword, Juno and Arromanches I used as many tanks as I could the first turn to blast my way inland. It kinda hurts not having as many infantry units to fan out when you have a lot tanks (basically doing nothing) so you kinda have to limit your attack a bit. Its the maps with concrete bunkers that have LOS to the beach you have to worry most about. If you are fairly close to them it seems the tanks have a fighting chance, but if they are several hundred meters away forget about it. I paid a heavy price in infantry on some of the maps in the Omaha area but at the end of the day I still have most of my tanks for the future battles to come.

I actually found playing the allies early on to be fairly relaxing too, was only in the Omaha area I began to wonder if I would ever get ashore. Things now are not so relaxing, mainly because the battle lines are much more complicated. One thing attacking 15 to 12 with a even front line and full supplies, and its another to be in meeting engagements low on supplies with no real front line established yet. Always seems I get the worst area of the map to enter, but I am sure my oppenent feels the same way too at times. I think once things settle down (mainly in the Caen areas) I will again begin to enjoy it a bit more.

Hoff seemed to have great success against the german at-guns coming off the beach maps as the allies, but if you read most of the posts out here you will see some pretty impressive numbers posted by the german gunners (myself included).

Keep having fun,

Gz..

[Concord]

Makes sense! I think the key insight for me here is the distance of the bunkers from the beaches. When playing vs the AI, I always brought on armour. The AI would choose positions for its AT guns which made it easy for me to knock them out very early. Against a cunning human opponent though...he won't make that mistake.

We had another grand campaign session last night...it was my turn playing the Allies. The first beach battle was Uncle Red, and I didn't bring on any armour (I was spooked...worried that I would lose them all). I had BAR teams, mortars, machineguns, and two AT guns. I was able to expand my set up zones up and down the beaches, but his hidden defenders punished my forces. I was lucky not to be booted off due to morale, and the battle ended with 2 minutes to go because both sides were "exhausted"!

The second beach assault, I took all three tanks in. I was able to smash the hidden posts with my tanks. I had a tank damaged, and might lose it from my order of battle, but they made a huge difference to the outcome.

However, I will definately think twice about bringing tanks onto those beaches where there are bunkers on distant hills!

Problem is, time is limited. I'm also sure nasty German units are approaching the conflict, and my paratroops are showing red ammo levels already! Yikes.

[panzerlehr62]

Yeah, you can't use the AI to gage anything in this game. Its good for a game fix until you can find someone to play, thats about it.

Ive found so far the 82/101st AB's do fine no matter what the supply situation is. Matter of fact I think they like to be behind enemy lines and surrounded!

I used the first turn to basically clear the beach flanks and try to possible make the seawall. If there was some type of structure close to the seawall that I thought would help me for turn 2 (possibley to shield a tank), I would make that a primary objective. After that I kept my attack limited to a small area that I could press on my advance from. If you spead out to much, your teams will get picked off one at a time and morale will fail. Even as bad as I suck in this game, one thing I never had happen on a beach map was morale failure. Very seldom was it ever an issue. You basically have about 6 teams you can lose, after that as you approach about 8 morale will probably stop you. So use a lot of smoke (I always tryed to use about 3 mortar teams), take as much ground as the game will allow, then hold steady and wait for the timer to end it (or offer a truce). If the German player gets a wild hair (or bored waiting on the timer), maybe he will do you a favor and counter attack (if you are smart you saved your offshore arty, it does wonders on teams out in the open).

In the Omaha area were its the tuffest, don't worry so much about time. Only one German depot (Trevieres) to bring in new Bgs, and from what I can tell its only bringing back Bgs that were routed from day one. If you continue to make progress every turn, by about the 4th turn the German Bgs will begin to break as they run out of at-guns. The Germans only have 3 Bgs in reserve to start with in the area. Ost 439 is no problem to deal with, because it has no anti-tank weapons. 914 and 916 are worthy, but they can't cover 5 beach exits by themselves. Now the German player could move the 915 up from Bayeux, but from what I can tell that probably won't happen because they are needed to cover the breakout from Arromanches which happens fairly quickly.

Were I screwed up (were time is important) is in the GJS area. The Germans have plenty of depots for new Bgs and by my account will out number your British and Canadian Bgs once they have all entered. They also contain some of the best German Bgs in this game.

Good luck,

Gz...

[Concord]

Thanks for the insights.

By the way, I think my first beach Uncle Red was such a doosie because my opponent was able to set up in a series of small bunkers all along the seawall. He was able to see me moving around (even though I was sneaking), and fire at will. Nasty! All I could do was area fire at his gun flashes...which exposed the positions of even more of my troops.

[panzerlehr62]

Arromanches:

Turn 1, Day 2.

Wow, the final battle for a turn that seemed to last longer then the battle for stalingrad!

WN34/716 vs 185thBDE/3rd British ID

After basically a full days rest, responsible for cutting off 2 of my battle groups, WN34 finally gets its feet wet with a little combat. At-gun heavy it forced me to make an adjustment were I wanted to enter that map. Had I come in orginally from the sea, I probably woulda got my butt handed to me. Insted I decided to disband and use the Bg from Gold, which in a way was fitting since this was there orginal beach to defend.

[panzerlehr62]

End of turn 1, day 2 action report!

[panzerlehr62]

Turn 2, Day 2 (June 7th):

[panzerlehr62]

Exit 2:

Turn 2, Day 2.

919th RGT/ 709th Inf Div vs 8Th RGT/ 4th INF Div