I've been thinking. What makes concussive firepower so powerfull is basicly the increased range. In the range 7,8 and 9 hexes, concusive rule tripple the effective firepower of tanks versus infanteri in buildings. At other ranges its only an increase of 50%.

Combined fire: in some cases I find combined fire natural and work as it should. These cases are

1) 2-4 infanteri attacking a single tank at point blank range.

2) 2 or 3 shermans attacking a single tiger at short range.

Regarding entrenchments in buildings: I like it a lot and it makes a lot of sence. This could also be usefull in a lot of other scenarios I guess, and maybe especially for future stalinggrad scenarios. If you in addition allow the russians to setup an AT gun in a fortified building ...

Grand Stone said:

Indeed. I've always been puzzled why AT guns are not allowed to be inside buildings. This happened a lot (partly ruined buildings, but still). i know that gamewise they are supposed to be "vehicles" buty it wouldn't be so difficult to make an exception for this case. If not a blanket rule, then at least in certain scenarios.

As for combined fire, also see my post called "Beach scenarios and bunkers".

My two cents ...

Since I was Kingtiger's opponent during the last playtest session, I thought I better put in my two eurocents as well. Especially since I really enjoy playtesting as well! Anyway, last saturdays battle has been the first for me since a very very long time ... there are just to many games to play and definately not enough free time! I did prepare somewhat by skimming over the general rules the morning before the battle, but I didn't really go into the scenario specifics and the strategy decks and suchs. You could almost say I went into battle without a plan (yikes!) because I also didn't know what side I would be playing ... though I could make an educated guess since Kingtiger tends to prefer the German side in about every game we play.

The changes we made (see also Kingtiger's post) were adding a german AT-Gun, having the US units starting off-board, no medals for the US units. We hoped this would balance out things a bit, because the last time we played this battle the US had basicly already won after 2 or 3 rounds ... we spent more time setting up the board and the playing pieces than playing the actual battle!

Short recap of the battle:

The US 1st div moves advances dismounted on the right flank, crossing the open terrain under heavy MG fire, to the safety of the blind hexes behind the buildings. Losses were fairly high, but with a bit of creative healing and squad tranfering the units were still all in good condition. I could have gone in the trucks, but with an AT-Gun on the hill in op-fire and even an MG very capable of damaging and stopping the light vehicles ... I thought I'd rather walk. The 2nd div advances on the extreme left flank, using the forest to stay out of sight. The Germans could not do much besides the op-fire shots.

Some carefully aimed mortar fire supressed the MG and AT-Gun crew, giving the US units an excellent opportunity to dash forward. On the right flank the infantry advanced to more forward positions behind the second line of buildings and occupied a few forward positions offering sight on important german positions on and around the hill. On the left flank the Shermans suppressed a well-entrenched german MG position in the forest, followed by two squads assaulting from their halftracks clearing the position of hostiles. Again there was not much the Germans could do about it.

From then on the US 1st div used a combination of mortar fire, calling in airstrikes and concentrated MG fire to keep the Germans busy on the right flank. On the left flank the US 2nd div used their mobile Sherman fire-support to soften up German positions and finish them off by the dismounted infantry. One squad was destroyed while mounted in a half-track by a double assault, but the attacking Germans were killed the next round so it all evened out. One of the Shermans was destroyed by a surprise attack from a Pz IV while busy rolling up the left flank, but the panzer was destroyed by another Sherman while another pair of Shermans moved onto the central hill and destroyed the AT-Gun which wasn't in op-fire at that time (due to the threat of supressing mortar and air strikes).

At that point I had 5 Shermans and 2 M-10's which basicly could do whatever they pleased and there was nothing the Germans could do about it. At that point the Germans had been cleared from the left flank, were withdrawing from the right flank, the barracks were surrounded from basicly all sides and the reinforcement hex was blacked by US mobile units, blocking the Panther and other reinforcements.

Game over man ... game over!

Follow-up:

- Though I had to move carefully at certain points during the battle, there was never a point were I actually was threatened or in danger of losing the battle/or advantage. The German units were too few in number and too static to take advantage of any bad decision or bad luck of mine. The Germans might have a good op-fire roll, but can never really make a limited counter-attack to finish it off. The Pz IV might score a fantastic one-shot-kill ... but the other Shermans will simply kill it in return. Every time the Germans will engage by either holding a position strongly or attacking, the US will hit them back at least as hard (and probably a lot harder.) The big difference here lies in the mobility. The Germans have a limited number of fairly static units that have to defend a line across the entire field ... the US comes in after the Germans have deployed with more and mostly mobile units making it very easy to overpower certain points in the thin defensive line.

- Time is on my side! The US has twelve whole rounds to complete the mission. That's huge. It means I never have to rush into an attack before I'm satisfied with the preparation of the battlefield. I have all the time in the world to chip away at the defence, supress the heck out of time, mucking up their op-fire, call in the bombers for some extra punch and use concentrated fire as much as I can. Normally you pay a heavy price for using concentrated fire ... because it takes a lot of units to perform, you pay a cost in both time and flexibility in the field. Not in this case though. The US can use concentrated fire as much as they want and still never feel the pressure of a deadline coming close ... and since the Germans will have run out of active units long before the US will, they can never take advantage of all those fatigued US units.

- I didn't really realise it at first, but even the weather is a big advantage for the US! I wanted to use airpower, so I was a bit annoyed by the bad weather early on. I could have taken the artillery deck just as easy though and have no problems at all. Who cares if the trucks are stuck in the mud ... halftracks are great, tanks don't care either and walking during a combat is actually prefered to sitting in vulnerbale trucks. Heavy rain? Thank you! Suddenly the entire German army is firing with long range penalties by default and my impressive armoured forces shoots just as hard as before. This actually completely destroyed any small hope the Germans still had of delaying final defeat.

Very well written review, and it seems like both of you had a good time at the start of the scenario. And yes, an MG in op-fire mode is quit deadly, even at long range

Latro said:

Very good addition to my comments! I''m sure they'll be useful to Bill Jaffe!

Don't you mean "COMBINED fire" instead of "Concentrated fire" (taking a lot of time etc.)

Grand Stone said:

Yes, but as i said that felt right as you can normally not expect to attack a heavily fortiefied position and not lose any troops on the approaches...(Which is what it's like without the fire and move/ advance restriction; so the original set-up).

Kingtiger said:

Yeah, I noticed that small eroor myself as well ... unfortunately the people who designed these very fancy looking boards forgot to add the very simple and useful "edit" function. (Or hid it so well that I simply haven't found it yet.)

Kingtiger said:

I didn't really mind that either. After all, that's what defensive lines were designed to do ... shoot at the attacker while they try to get closer!

Latro, nice information from your prespective.

I noticed that there are some easy fixes for this scenario and some others that might require some rules changes but the feedback you and Kingtiger supplied is priceless

BJaffe01

BJaffe01 said:

You're welcome! Don't hesitate to contact us should you want us to playtest a new scenario you're working on! (we've done that too officially for other games).

BJaffe01 said:

How far along are you? I have the map for the scenario set up, I just need to know which changes you would like to have tested.

AT guns are sorely lacking from the Normandy set. Some pillboxes should be outfitted with AT guns - via operations card. The same goes for buildings. Some building are more robust in construction than others and this is not reflected in the rules. Reinforcing buildings should be allowed via operations card as well.

Some defensive preparations are more in depth than others and this needs to be reflected. An AT gun in a bunker and some more strong points that support each other would go a long way to balance this scenario. Nothing fancy but a few operation cards could settle everything.

AT gun equipped pillboxes (there weren't many but they did exist).

Heavy construction (+4 cover or negate some of concussive ability) - large robust concrete or stone constructed buildings.

Reinforced buildings/ruins - houses converted to defensive position.

The trenches from fotb will help out quite a bit too.

I don't have an issue with the combined fire although I believe that only one bonus for concussive firepower (leading unit) should be allowed. If you want to destroy the building you can and that is a different tactic.

KlausFritsch not far enough yet sorry. i caught a cold and haven't thought about it. i'll try to have something in day or 2.

BJaffe01

BJaffe01 said:

Get well soon, no hurry. That gives me time to work a little on the 3-D terrain.