Welcome to War and Tactics! War and Tactics Forum is currently undergoing some modifications that might disable features you are used to. This is unabvoidable as we have to update the forum engine to a new structure that is incompatible with many of the features we had used so far. The good news: WaT will be more secure and stable, and most of the features we uninstalled will be a natural part of the new structure anyway. For the rest we will be looking for solutions. (APR 23, 2018)
Thanks to Mad Russian for getting this tournament off the ground and to Stoffel for following through when real life reared its ugly head on Steve. It was great to be part of it and play some excellent scenario's with Forgotten Ground and the Hungarian/Russian one (forgotten its name already) being the standouts in my opinion.
Is it worth pointing out that 1st and 2nd went to Band of Brothers members? Probably not.
I was just wondering, any idea when this tournament can be finally wrapped up? It would be good to see I final resolution of this long running tournament.
Turn 27 for the 'Hell' battle & turn 26 for the Kharkov one. I will be having a smallish break in about a weeks time in sending files due to an overseas trip to Mexico but once I'm settled in I should be able to churn out the turns again.
From my perspective as the Allied player this was a fun battle with the hard pressed 'stiff upper lip' Poms having to hold out against literally hordes of Pz IV's, some AA AFV's and halftrack riding Sturm squads, amply supported by loads of HMG's. The crucial thing here was whether the Axis player could be patient enough to consolidate all their Pz IV re-inforcements into 1, or maybe 2 large groups and then simply bulldoze their way through the defence, relying on borg spotting to ensure any tank or AT gun spotted would be instantly obliterated by the return fire of around twenty 75mm rounds!
Thankfully my opponent wasn't patient enough to do this so by committing his Pz IV's in groups of no more than 8 or so per thrust I was able to destroy or at least halt each individual attack with ambushing 6 pdr AT guns and/or M10's but not so much the Sherman V's as these had a horrible tendency to die at the hands of the mostly veteran Panzers. After potting 32 Pz IV's with the deadly 6 pdr's and M10's the attacking pressure started to dwindle to the point where only 1 force remained of 6 Pz IV's to contest just the one minor VL at the southern end of town. I'm guessing the Axis players may have been aggrieved about the battle conditions with constant rain and the damp conditions making bogging in open ground a likely event although in my case, I suffered an immobile Sherman V early on in the piece with no LOS to anywhere useful while my opponent had full use of his 40 Pz IV's, until the flyboys were able to even things up a bit towards the end with at least 2 immobilisations from their rocket run.
All in all I found this scenario to be a good contest although I would hate to think how the Allies would fare if the Axis player used concentration of force as their primary method of attack because once only a portion of your defence is facing off against 20+ Pz IV's in it's sector then it's goodnight to that defence and hello hordes of Panzers swarming through your rear areas! Thankfully I didn't have to face this sort of nightmare in my battle.
From the Allied perspective this scenario was bloody tough due to the long distances that had to be covered in order to get close to the large number of high value VL's at the rear of the map while the makeup of the battlefield virtually required the US armour to use the roads to have any chance of reaching them. The trouble with this was that the roads were all very exposed to enemy fire, often from two different directions, so it virtually guarantees high losses of US armour from hidden ambushing tanks, TD's & Assault Guns. If one tried to move the armour off the roads then they became bogged down either in restricted movement lanes between clumps of forest (I'm thinking of the very large forested area to the north of the map) or in the wheatfields, which made the tanks move at the speed of liquid molasses, often bogging down and subsequently becoming immobile in the process.
Consequently for me, the frustration factor was high which became compounded by the lack of any artillery at all apart from one lousy on board 60mm mortar and furthermore, the lack of even a Company HQ despite at least a Company's worth of infantry on the battlefield. This lack of decent HQ's made the American armoured cavalry infantry extremely fragile due to their pathetic 2 man HQ units which were often gunned down from spray bullets even when hiding behind their engaged squads up ahead in dense foliage. In comparison, the Axis side had amply led SS squads with 4 man platoon HQ's, 6 man Company HQ's & even a Battalion HQ while these 'supermen' infantry squads were all armed to the teeth with automatic weapons including StG43's, MP 40's and always 2 HMG42's per squad. The best the US infantry could shoot back with were SAR Rifles & 1 Thompson SMG per squad!
Having said all that, I thought the map was beautifully done with an interesting quandry presented to the Allied player... how and where to attack across the large open areas to achieve the goals of capturing or contesting sufficient large value VL's (16 all up) without losing too many AFV's in the process to hope to win the day. It certainly wasn't easy and I was only able to scrape up a draw due to the 7 extra turns the game provided to allow the battered remains of my armoured force to capture or contest a good number of the central and northern VL's while almost all the southern ones were left unmolested by the Allied forces. To say it was challenging would be an understatement!
Regards
vR
PS: By the way... shouldn't these threads be placed within the Round 3 discussion topic rather than Round 4?
In case you were waiting for me, put me down as a starter although I should point out that I will be spending 5 weeks travelling O/S in October/November with only limited access to turns via a laptop.
If it helps any, I should be able to post the results of my 2 third round battles very soon as I have finished the 21st Pz battle and am simply awaiting the return of what I presume will be the last turn of the Saddle Up battle (turn 40!). This will obviously help you in determining who plays who in the 4th round.
Onto your health issues, I hope you make a speedy recovery from what ails you and can get on with all the important things in life without these sorts of nasty occurences cropping up again.
I'm wondering what the rules were regarding opponents who prematurely surrender? I note that one of the top 3 had two surrender results in the mid 90's in round 1 because his opponent apparently didn't have the time to complete the battles. If these surrenders happened early on in the battles then it's quite an advantage to be in that favourable position through no skill on the players behalf.
I would have thought that it would be a requirement to complete at least 75% of ther allowable turns in a battle to at least get a feel for how the 2 opposing sides were faring after crossing swords to a significant degree. Alternatively, perhaps a substitute player should be brought in to complete the remaining turns or at least enough turns to get the battle over the 75% mark. Could you please clarify this?
BTW, you have my accumulated score incorrect to date as the 1st round scores should add up to 142 and there are no 2nd round scores listed although the results were certainly posted in the appropriate thread where the appropriate accumulated scores for both battles was 172. The third round battles are slowly reaching their conclusion and expect to be able to post final results for them by around the end of April.
Not so uncommon when an AT gun is placed in a location which a vehicle can reach and the mechanic you saw was the equivalent of an overrun. Just don't try it against a gun located in woods, forest or rough terrain as the game knows the approaching vehicle can't possibly enter the defending units location. Usually ends with a dead vehicle.
21st Pz Div. is at turn 20 Saddle Up is at turn 18
We've been steadily plugging away at these 2 battles but they're both a handful in terms of size and at out current rate we probably won't finish in another month. There's more chance that 21st Pz will finish earlier than Saddle Up.
Rest assured we will continue to plug away as best we can.
I know it's all well after the event but if the passwords for the 3 battles in the 1st round could be published that would be really appreciated. I need the password for the Axis side in Throne of God to be able to post a result in my battle against Tanker from way back in January.
I was wondering, could the preset passwords please be published for these 3 round 1 scenario's now that all battles are well and truly over? I need to report one of the battles at the Band of Brothers site to assist Tanker in remaining a member there but I can't for the life of me remember the password for the Throne of God scenario (Axis side).
Show Posts
