Your Worst Blunder

[sandman20]

I have made plunders all the time, but this one happened recently.

I've PBEM in progress with Gary Tatro. I play by Italy, he play by India.
Well, I had an Ammo dump and some 75mm's Onboard. And bad thing was that they were all in the same hex:rolleyes: .

Suddenly some Indian infiltrators appeared from somewhere and KABOOM, no artillery & Ammo dump anymore, all gone in few seconds and now I'm almost without artillery support.

I wont do this anymore, I'm quite sure about that...I don't even know why I put them all in the same hex.

[sztartur2]

I have made many mistakes, here is the one which is on the top of the list.

I played a game with H2H, me comanding the germans opponent commanding the russians in 1944. This alone may be enough to lose a game.

I had cca 40 tanks and assault guns, grouped together and some cavalry on the two flanks, and I had some recon units and a few artillery. No AT and AA guns, no APCs and no regular infantry.

I started my advance in the open terrain in the center. (I red Guderian's book about armour warfare which tells to use armor concentrated. ) There was _NO_ infantry with them at all.
What happend in turn 3-6 is the whole group was hit by a massive artillery barrage. Then came the soviet infantry. Then came the tanks. My force was no more.

A lesson learned in the art of combined arms warfare.

[Black Sabot]

Defending a small village from the AI, I suddenly felt the need to retreat an engineer squad safely in cover in a nice solid stone house. No movement points left, however.
No problem, I'll just drive up this halftrack, click, vrrrooaarrr, crash.
***structure collapses***, *SO engineers destroyed*
Halftrack promptly gets shot by an AT gun

[Sonni]

Now I have had my definitely worst blunder.

I don't have much experience in PBEM, only bout 5 battles so far.

Me and my friend agreed to play a 10000 pts battle on a 100 x 160 map (or something like that, at least it was 2 mapscreens). I was playing Germans and he was playing the Brits, it was something like 6/44. I bought what I thought was a combined arms task force, and in fact it was a one.

My worst plunder was the deployment. The upper part of the map had a large hill dominating it, and the lower part had a large town. I planned the deployment carefully and decided to rush the hill with most of my panzers, and with a SS PzGr Mech. Company. To the lower part I deployed 2! Tigers, 2 hetzers, 2 Flakpanzers and 2 regular PzGr. Mot. Companies, and a engineer company with some blitz trucks.

My plan was to take the outskirts of the town at turn one, and to dominate the main road with the tigers. I thought once I am in the town, I have no need for those panzers, the mass of infantry will do the trick.

When the battle started, I moved my trucks from the starting line toward the city, and they all got like 2 hexes away from the buildings. I sent the files to my opponent.

When I got the next turn, my both tigers were burning, and there was like 20 blitz trucks burning. My opponent had some Achilles & Fireflys in the town, many armored cars and maybe 2 companies of mech. infantry. I watched the replay and I didn't know should I laugh or cry, as it was so easy for my opponent to destroy everything. after two turns I had no troops anywhere near the town, EVERYTHING WAS GONE!!!! None of my troops got in the town, except a few squads that retreated to a building.

Lesson learned: don't rush at turn 1, especially with blitz trucks



How stupid can you get?

- Sonni -

[STEELER13]

Yo All,
A long time ago, when I had just mastered SP1(or so I thought), I began PBEM with a guy named C.Mitch Hagmaier, who also designed many many scenarios for SP1. After a game or two which we had two draws he offered to play pbem scenarios he was designing. One was the Russians mopping of the Germans after Bagration. I, as the Russians, won a bit too easily and I made the MISTAKE of saying, give me a company of tanks against infantry and the tanks will always win. He took me up on that by sending me his next scenario.
This time it was also July 1944, but American tanks against retreating German infantry===>in the hedgerows! His scenario was beautifully designed with a single road leading through several squared fields bordered with heavy vegetation. I thought, hey, he wants me to take the road, I will surprise him and just crash thru the hedgerows and get the obejectives at the end. Man, big mistake...he had 37mm AT guns, PanzerSchreck teams, a few guys with a satchel charge, even a few guys with grenades and a flamethrower. HE SLAUGHTERED ME. In desperation, I even sent a tank up the road, and actually almost achieved the objective except a 20mm AA nailed me at a corner 5 hexes from the final objective! Needless to say, I was completely humbled!
I then went to the books he recommended and read up on the Hedgerow campaigns, and realized what a bloody mess it really was and I had a new understanding of why it took 2 months and a second landing to get from Normandy to Falaise.
If Mitch is out there, or anyone knows his email, please let me know. I also highly recommend his Kursk series of scenarios, especially the first one as very balanced and can be played either side against AI with a tough fight.