Subject: Fw: Combat Mission online: another AAR but... Henri H. Arsenault ... Last night, I went to the CMHQ chat room and agreed to play a game with someone called GI. I let him decide and he chose the Germans in the Road to Wiltz scenario. WARNING: SPOILERS!!!...Warning!, GI abandoned the game before it was over (more on that later), but we played enough to presume that I had won. .... ..... .... ... ... This is one of the fine scenarios that come with the game, only 20 moves, but with a lot of action. We didn't discuss any conditions before starting - not even the scenario name, so I assumed that he had played this scenario before; I had never played the US, but I had been beaten twice as the Germans in human vs human games, and had beaten the AI as the Germans too, so I was quite familiar with the German situation, but I had never checked out the US dispositions besides playing against them. He had set the timer at 3 minutes, which probably turned out to his disadvantage since he was the attacker. I saw that I had three platoons of infantry, two of them in the town along with two tanks, and one off on the right edge with a tank destroyer; each platoon had a MG, and I also had a 57 MG AT gun in front of the town and a 105 mm observer and an 81 mm mortar. The map has a big hill with an objective right smack in the middle facing the town across a road, and two large hills on either side of the town, also with objective flags. There is no flag in the town. The Germans enter along a road on the right (as seen by the US) with a Puma, a Hetzer, a Panther, and a platoon of infantry including an 81 mmm mortar, all carried in halftracks. This road starts from the top of the map, passes to the right of the big hill in the middle, and veers towards the town , passing between this hill and the town. Another road comes down the map on the left, and veers towards the center hill just before some forested terrain at the foot of a big hill on the left, and veers Southwards (let's say N is top) again just before the center hill, and finally intersects the other road NW of the town. The West road contains four Grman halftracks containing an infantry platoon; some distance behind them at the other end of the map are two German tanks. On the far right of the map, a platoon of German foot infantry appear as reinforcements after a move or two. So each side have 3 platoons of infantry somewhat out of position, and the US have five tanks facing 3 German tanks and an AT gun. However the Americans are closer to the two hills on either side of the map, so it is the Germans who will be on the offensive. Now I knew two things: 1)The halftracks on my left will almost certainly be coming towards me hell bent for leather to try to take the hill on my left, with their supporting tanks far behind; 2) the oncoming Germans on my right will be leading with their armor, and will be visible to my AT gun as soon as they reach the curve in the road. In front of them and on their right will be wooded terrain with the possibility of hidden US infantry with bazookas (I did get one there eventually). So I took one tank and sent it to the right, zigzagging therough the forested terrain in order to surprise the halftracks before they could bring up their armor support, a maneuver that I would not have done had I not known the initial disposition of the German tanks of the left. On the right, I used fast movement to move my platoon and tank towards the centar and across the river and behind the hill to the right, knowing that they would reach the top before the Germans. I sent most of one infantry platoon moving fast followed by the 81 mm mortar up the hill to the left, and dispersed the remaining infantry platoon in the woods to the right of the town, from where they could attack the hill in the midle, harrass enemy units moving towards the town, or support the objective on the hill to their right. I moved one bazooka team across the road from the town and moved my 105 mm artillery to the top floor of the church, from where they could see the curve in the road to the right, the hill across the road in the center, and some of the terrain on the left. This was the best position I have ever had for an artillery observer. I also positioned a MG unit in a house on the road left of the town and another HMG unit on the hill to the left. My 81 mm mortar on the left hill had a pretty good view of the area near the foot of the hill on the right as well as on its North slope, which turned out to be unpleasant for the Germans. The game started well as my tank on the left made its way between the tree copses, and sure enough, it soon came face to face with a halftrack some 30 m away. The tank traversed and missed its first shot, but the second one killed the halftrack, whose infantry was mercilessly machinegunned as they piled out of the destroyed vehicle; scratch one German squad, whose panicked remains scampered into the woods. My tank continued North, and as it reched the E-W road, the three other halftracks appeared some 50 m away; again the tank managed to miss a few shots, but finally put two of the halftracks away. My original plan was to shock the enemy and then to pull the tank back to the top of the hill on the left, from where it could cover the road coming from the right towards the town, but I got bloodthirsty, and the first thing I knew, the Germans had brought up one of their PVIVs, which killed my Sherman with its first shot while the latter was focused on machinegunning infantry. Still, I had (I hoped) crippled a US infantry platoon at the cost of a tank. I was busy following what was going on on the right, so I might have missed something, since the second US tank on the left never appeared, so maybe it was immobilized or killed. At about the same time, the German leading vehicles appeared at the curve to the right, led by the Puma, and my AT gun dispatched it with its second shot. I saw that the armor was accompanied by halftracks and a number of infantry all bunched together, and to the dismay of the Germans, my 105 mm in the church had already called down fire on that very spot in anticipation of just such an occurence, and as the AT gun blasted away, artillery shells began to fall. I had ordered my tank in the town to do a little dance of hunt and reverse in order to aid the AT gun, but I had no desire to leave him stationary to face the Panther, so he also participated in shooting at the Germans who were too bunched up. My AT gun fired round after round at the Hetzer, but bounced at least 6 shots off its armor, as both the Hetzer and Panther blasted away, killing some of the crew. It is my impression that my AT or artillery killed the commanders of both the Hetzer and the Panther and possibly immobilized the Hetzer, since neither of them unbuttoned again and the Hetzer didn't move any more. The dismounted German infantry tried to move onto the big hill in the center, but in full vew of my 105 artillery, they were blasted to pieces, and I figured that this platoon was now a negligible force. By now my units from across the river had arrived from the right, and I sent them up the Eastern hill to hide with the intention of ambushing the remaining foot infantry that I knew was slowly approaching the hill on foot. But I made the mistake of sending the tank destroyer along with them, and when it appeared to the Panther, the German tank put a few shells through it, leaving me with only one tank. I decided to advance this last tank once more, hoping to snipe at the Panther, but it was the latter who got the edge and who killed my last tank. Things didn't look too good. At this point, a German infantry squad stormed the top of the hill on the left, but I had a squad hidden in the woods in their path, and they were ambushed; I sent another platoon to help, and the Krauts were soon wiped out without any casualties on my side. At almost the same time, the remaining German infantry platoon on the right appeared at the bottom of the hill to the right and began to climb to the top; unfortunately they were in full view of both my 105 artillery in the church and of my 81 mm mortar on the hill to the left, and they were soon pounded into the ground. A more concerted attack with the remains of the German platoon supported by at least a halftrack was also repulsed a bit later on the other hill to the West (left). So there was good news and bad news: at this point, the Germans probably had no infantry left to speak of, my infantry was intact and I held both hills on either side of the town, while the hill in the center seemed unoccupied (but the battered German probably assumed that I had at least a squad or two on the top, when in fact all I had across the road was a bazooka unit who was unsuccessfully stalking the Panther). The bad news was that my 3 infantry platoons and low-on -ammo artillery now faced between 2 and 4 German tanks without any armor of their own, with only 2 or 3 bazookas and grenades to fend them off. If the Germans still had a few combat-capable infantry squads, they might be able to throw me off the hills with the help of the tanks. But if his infantry was a battered as I think it was, his morale was probably quite low, whereas mine was sky-high. Still, if he had 2 or 3 tanks, he had a pretty good chance of throwing me off one hill and of gaining the unoccupied center hill, thus winning the game. But it appears that at this point my hapless opponent "GI" lost his nerve, and without warning, he aborted the game; thinking that it might be an accident, I went back to the chat room just in time to see him log off, never to reappear. This kind of impolite behavior is one of the hazards of picking up unknown opponents off a chat site; I have no problem with opponents abandoning the game, whether it is because they have lost the will to fight or because the Missus needs them in the kitchen, all they have to do is to say so. But aborting the game forces me to go back to the chat room and to wait in case it was an accident and in case the opponent comes back, after which the game can be restored ar an agreement not to continue can be made.Some people just go to the chat room, start a game with anyone willing to play them, then abort without warning only to come back later under a different pseudonym. Such people do not realize that in doing so they are harming newbies to online play, because as a result some experienced players will refuse to play with anyone that they do not know. In any case, except for not knowing exactly what my opponent had left, I consider this a nice victory, and it is the first time that I have ever been able to use my artillery with such effectiveness -as a matter of fact one might say that my two artilery units practically won the battle all by themselves. (My artillery is usually killed early, or else never manages to bring fire to bear until it is too late...). If I ever play this scenario as the Germans again, you can bet your sweet patootie that I will hit that church with everything I have early in the game... Henri