CMBS Rollin' on the River Con vs Undercover Geek AAR - Game Over

[Con]

Turn 267 Time Remaining 0:23

The last dozen or so turns have been about consolidating my forces and repositioning them.  Apart from a brief encounter with a Stryker (more on that below) there has not been any real combat taking place.

I have punished UCG severely for his attempt to take this part of the Ukraine away from Mother Russia.  However now I have to go on the offensive and retake my main objectives.

I have a couple of touch objectives worth 50 points each and I am pushing one of my T90s towards them but I need to be cautious since the Americaninskis  Javelins can be out there hiding.  The math is not in my favor to trade a T90 worth 400 points for a 50 point objective so I am willing to let most of them go.

However the Loading Area (railroad embankment), the weather station and the railroad bridge area are worth 200 points each if I occupy them.  Key word is occupy that means getting my troops onto those parcels of ground.

While I have punished UCG forces mine have been nearly shattered in the process as well.  Those still alive are remnants and mostly broken ones of their original formations.  My only hope is that UCG remaining forces must be in worse shape than mine.  However its now my turn to go on the offensive with these desperate ragtag men.

I decide to split my forces into two groups (since I am running out of time) and I need to capture two objectives (or at least deny them to UCG). 

Group 1 I designate Battle Group Stalingrad.  They are consolidating around the loading area and making sure it is free of any Americans.  Their task will be to take the weather station. 
Group 2 I designate Battle Group Kursk.  They are consolidating in the forest on the far left flank close to the river.  Their task is to capture the railroad bridge.

I hope my patriotic names will instill more nationalistic pride in my few remaining men and push them to achieve these last tasks.  All the infantry is rated as nervous or worse when it comes to morale.

Battlegroup Stalingrad consists of
3X T90s (one is immobilized on the embankment area and is out of the fight).  Out of the remaining two one has suffered some serious damage to tracks and counter measures but is still a potent fighting machine the other is undamaged.
2 Kornet ATGM teams
2 Grenade launcher teams
2 MG Teams
1 squad of infantry
2 HQs
and about 3-4 teams of previous crew-members of knocked out AFVs that have been volunteered for infantry duty.  Supporting them I have
1 FO team
5 MT-LMB of which 3 are equipped with the 30mm cannons

Battlegroup Kursk consists of the following
2x T90 both in good fighting condition
3 Kornet ATGM teams (1 is at 30% strength)
2 Grenade launcher teams
2 squads of recon infantry
2 HQ s (1 is radio operator only)
Supporting them is
1FO
4X MT-LMB 6Ms all equipped with 30mm cannons

Realizing that these guys will become hysterical pre-teen school girls at the sound of a shot I will need to devise a plan to get them into the objectives without them being spotted.  What does this mean......smoke lots and lots of ganja dense smoke.  I want these guys to be able to cross the open ground under more smoke than you would see at a Rastafarian weed convention.

First order of business is to stop using any arty at the moment and to save it for smoke missions.  Second I need to get my FOs for Battlegroup Kursk and Battlegroup Stalingrad into position where they can get LOS onto the approaches of the objectives so they can order smoke to cover the attack.  I will need to move my forces to their form up points (FUP).  Once smoke has been established I need to advance and seize the objectives.  Prior to this I will need to send a recon (or sacrificial lamb to the FUP to make sure it is clear and then to see if they can scout out any US forces on the main axis of attack).  I need to avoid getting shafted by javelins and having my troops fragile egos shattered by anything that is bad for morale....like gay 80s music from the Scorpions.

If all goes well my FOs should be in position to call in arty smoke so that it starts dropping with 10 minutes of play time left assuming an 8 min on call time (and hopefully some additional run off time will be added)

I will also send out medical parties to any Russian wounded I can find at the embankment battle sites to try and save as many soldiers as possible.  Any bit helps when it comes to counting victory points.





In other news during turn 257 one of my T90s on the extreme right flank spots another Stryker on the other side of the river heading back to US lines?  He proceeds to swiftly dispatch it by once again shooting one of UCG vehicles in the ass (actually an impressive shot taken while both the T90 and the Stryker are rapidly moving at over 1800 meters).  the question is was it dropping off US troops (including those bloody Javelins) somewhere that could thwart my plans?



Russian                  US
14 MT-LBM 6M               17 Inf/HQ/Recon Strykers          
3 BRDM-2M               3 MGS Stryker
1 BTR-80 1V152               3 ATGM Stryker
2 Tunguska               4 Mortar Stryker
5 T90A
1 MT-LBM

[Con]

Turns out my men are spared the horrors of another attack.  UCG throws in the towel I guess it was more Custer and less Patton after all.

However my forces are a shell of their former selves and would surrender to a troop of boy scouts right now if they showed up.  A costly victory indeed.  The US commanders hand is going to get very cramped writing 139 condolence letters!

I agree with the scoring and outcome.  What do those who were watching the battle unfold think?

Con
 

[JasonPratt]

I think your img code needed a bit of repairing there... ;) Oh, okay already repaired... [editing out mine]

I also think this game needs a much better tally screen at the end.  :P I'm glad you kept notes, because I wouldn't have gathered from this screen (which I saw first over in UGeek's thread) that you still had 2 partially operational tanks plus 3 in good shape. (Nobody's fault but mine there; I just didn't keep careful track of them when you were talking about them before your battlegroup tally.)

I'll be very curious what Geek says in his after-action comments on your thread (and vice versa). I haven't thought of any tactical post-mortems yet; in fact I'm probably not competent to do so.  :-X

[Con]

OK Here is my Post Mortem

Modern Warfare is very different in feel and scope from WWII.  Infantry can be lethal to all types of armor with their RPGs.  Arty can drop in incredibly short times.  Precision rounds prevent you from holding and dominating a vantage point.  Drones provide LOS advantages you can only dream about.  Aircraft can be killing machines but are terribly vulnerable to SAMs and MANPADs.  AFVs and Tanks can cover huge amounts of ground in amazingly short time.  What this leads up to is a very strange dynamic that modern warfare is incredibly lethal, brutal and fast.  If you can see it you can kill it. 

So IMO in order to win these games its all about doing the following
1. Take your time....Rushing into something you haven't scouted properly gets you killed.
2. Flow across the landscape like water, always seek the lowspots to try and minimize LOS of the enemy (and use smoke)
3. Get your infantry/spotters into good LOS and keep them there
4. Keep your forces spread out but out of LOS for as long as possible
5. Keep a reserve, then keep a reserve of the reserves (and maybe a third reserve).  These battles are constantly shifting momentum.
6. You need to feel for the moment when things are breaking (either for you or against you) and act decisively
7. AFVs are still battle taxis.  Use them loaded with infantry only in spots where you are sure they cannot get a direct LOS onto them
8. Hammer known infantry positions with anti personnel arty.
9 Consolidate your forces before an attack.  You will need to bring a lot firepower to bear to route out defenders.

That being said I think this scenario was a difficult one for the Russians.  My recon forces didnt spot UCG at all.....I lost the weather station and momentum rapidly to his forces.

I also was under the impression that UCG forces arrived on the other side of the river (I dont know how I got this impression the briefing is vague on this but I just thought it did).  I also thought Strykers could ford or were amphibious but they are not.  I spent part of my setup worried that UCG was going to try a right hook on my left flank and hit the village from that direction.  I now know it would be impossible to cross the river with the Strykers but it was part of why I deployed my heavy weapons int he village and they were not available when I needed them at the embankment.

His move to get a recon group onto my side of the embankment still shocks me.  I had a shorter distance to go and I drove my men like there was an old fashioned Commisar behind them but they still didnt get to the embankment before UCG.  That was a ballsy move.

However he hit the embankment sporadically, (I did too).  When I did decide to reinforce it I tried to pick a different spot from where the fighting was taking place and picked the same spot where UCG was massing his troops.

I had real difficulty calling in arty first trying to spot and then the time taken (relatively) for Russian arty to arrive was painful.  That being said reading UCG AAR my arty did do a lot more damage than I thought it was doing.  That worked out well for me.

UCG committed everything to one massed attack right down the center to try and take the village objective.  If he had taken some more time and cleared me off the embankment and then staffed it with Javelins and the Stryker ATGM and Guns I would have been toast.  Leading the charge with these assets hurt him badly when he needed them most they were already burning and slagged steel hulks.

I was very wasteful with my troops early on and kept throwing more men into the grinder.  This really hurt me later when I was thin on troops and couldn't support the tanks and had to send them in blindly.  It was very lucky that UCG didnt pick multiples of them off with no infantry support.
I should have set up more of my heavy weapon support teams in positions where they could support the infantry on the embankment.  By the time they were re-positioning most of the Russian troops there were already dead.

Moving my AFVs every couple of mins was something I did after having played as the US side and seeing how effective and fast using precision munitions to immobilize tanks and take out SAMs like Tunguskas.  During my setup and deployment I paid careful attention on making sure these assets were spread out far and wide so that they could be found all clustered for arty.  I also looked to make sure I had multiple hiding spots for them that they could keep moving between so that they were not stationary targets for the precision munitions.

Putting the ATGMS into good fields of fire was worked out very well.  I also did a little trick I put the Saxhorns ATGM which had a shorter range and were wire guided out further (closer towards the enemy) and the Kornets further behind them.  The Saxhorns got spotted first and UCG devoted a lot of time to killing them diverting attention away from the Kornets allowing them more time to kill his AFVs with their much longer ranged laser guided powerful rockets.  I also set them up so they were far enough apart that an arty barrage would take them all out but that they could still mutually support each other with overlapping fields of fire.

T90s are fun but Abrams will still clean their clock.  Even though UCG didnt have Abrams the mere thought that they could be present made me hesitant to commit my T90s until I had better intel.  I tried to use the T90s in teams where they could support each other and that worked relatively well in the forest.

Overall I think if UCG had been more cautious about his troops and committed to holding the railway embankment and been patient he would have whipped me handily.

Last thought I loved the fact that we both independently recognized the Hollywood movie vignette that this game can bring on the sequence actions in the Weather-station where my lone surviving recon member makes a desperate dash (albeit futile) for freedom.

Con

[undercovergeek]

I'll post over here so it's easy to combine all the info

Firstly well done and thanks for a great game Con

Secondly what an awesome AAR!

I started about halfway between the embankment and my side of the map and was really shocked to find you where I did in the initial turns, thinking you'd be further back

I've read and re read my briefing notes and realised the mistakes I made - the first thing I was supposed to do was kill all the Tunguskas, something I ignored, the next was to capture the points that I did. My biggest error was not realising what the designer was trying to tell me, without telling me - there will be tanks!! I had apaches, atg vehicles and missile carrying drones and I still didn't think I wonder if there'll be tanks

Then I got hung up on the Tunguskas realising that my air power was useless without destroying them - this was the reason for the jaunt up the middle - I had a rough idea where they all were after watching attacks on the drones and choppers, I think I would have broken out of the forest at the northern end and done it too had it not been for the small matter of the T90s arriving - that was really bad timing, assuming that's a hard coded arrival spot for the tanks whatever I did on that side of the map was doomed to failure

In hindsight I should have flooded the right side of the map and used the forests to cover an advance toward the village and the Tunguskas and then come around the top and headed for the embankment the same direction con did, then I would have been behind the tanks!

I pressed attacks everywhere because I became too overconfident in my forces ability to spot first and kill con

However I had a great game and on some days we exchanged 10 or more turns, some turns had me waiting and cursing con for not replying as I needed to see what happened next - surely the sign of a great game

I agree with con about the vignettes and love the little stories that unfold on the battlefield and writing about them makes you feel closer to them - the weather station, the first meeting at the embankment, the Tunguska battles

I hope we can do it again soon

[JasonPratt]

What strikes me when reading the after-action analysis, is that not once, especially on Geek's side, does the nominal reason for the mission on Geek's side seem to make an appearance: screen with initial forces to secure a corridor, and roll a battle convoy through and off the other side.

This makes me wonder whether the mission was designed to be an accidental meeting engagement, where the battle convoy was supposed to roll through, in theory, but in practice the arrival of such a strong Russian probe forces the American convoy to deflect over into fighting it out.

My question to each of you is: do you think, from your various perspectives, the nominal American mission could even be successful? Could Geek have won by managing to screen a corridor and getting his second wave of assets off the map?

[Con]

I think that if UCG had used more traditional american tactics he would have clubbed me. 

The US has awesome firepower and fast reaction time.  The scenario timer is 150 minutes or turns.  You need to get infantry out support them, pick an axis of advance and clear areas of enemy out.  Use smoke and your superior spotting and long-range firepower especially those Javelins to decimate my forces.  Scenarios can be tricky due to the coding of reinforcements that can be a big game changer.  In this case I did not have an accurate time when the tanks would arrive or where (just my back edge of the map is shown in the tactical briefing).  The T90s did pick the worse possible moment from UCG view but from mine it was in the nick of time saving my bacon.

Having played as the US and now as the Russians IMO the US has all the tools to win any engagement decisively as long as they are patient.  The Russians need a fair bit of luck and the ability to endure being ground down a lot so keeping plenty of reserves is a key.

Con

[Con]

UCG if you want to try playing the Russians and are up for another scenario or QB (though I suck at picking forces) let me know

Same for anyone else out there I like having a couple of games going at once and right now I am completely open no opponents  :(

Con

[JasonPratt]

Con, granted, but the question was, do you think he could have done that if he had tried to accomplish the nominal American mission, which was NOT to fight with the battle convoy but to pass them through the map asap?

If he's supposed to be screening your forces to create a corridor, then what happens?

[JasonPratt]

Btw, I don't have CMBS, but I do have the WW2 games (CMx3 versions I mean), though at the moment only the Italian game is installed (with its expansion). And it's on my Surface, so on one hand in theory I could send turns in faster (and show off to my bro and nieces  >:D ) but on the other hand I wouldn't be able to do screencaps and an AAR very effectively yet.

(Also I have zero experience trying to play this particular system in PBEM, so I don't quite know how to lash things up now.  :-[ )

[undercovergeek]

UCG if you want to try playing the Russians and are up for another scenario or QB (though I suck at picking forces) let me know

Same for anyone else out there I like having a couple of games going at once and right now I am completely open no opponents  :(

Con

Scenario away my friend - i know you hate picking QBs!