Monkeys with Typewriters Scenario 4

wrongway149

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MwT4 "Stalwart Sons" Gary Fortenberry is now in the download section.

Kerry
Victory conditions... wahhh??? :hmmm: Don't make me refer to an SSR already! (-1)

SSR 6-- Too many overlays and then a terrain change on top of that!!
(-2)

15 SW for 16 German squads!! (none of them assault engineers) (-1)

More of them is probably the LAST thing the Germans need for balance (-1)

Canadians are almost as bad (-1)

SSR 2 and 5 -three OBA modules PLUS a pre-game bombardment just seems like overkill (-1)

This whole scenario just seems like so much overkill. Managing it all might be more work than fun for either side.

Same criticism as Steve regarding sources. Looks like you tried to put it all in there.

Title is kind of straight to the point, though (+1)
 
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Fort

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The Germans were extremely well led in this battle, the OB reflects this..."Papa" Krause was mentioned in several memoirs and after-action reports as being everywhere at once...several other notables as well. The Canadian 9-2 was added to help out the balance. There is a ton of firepower on both sides, the choices made at setup for the Germans will be hard to change as there is very little cover to move to reinforce an area in trouble...and the Canadians have a lot of open ground to cross in the south. The ordnance should help a bit as well as 3 OBA modules.
Give a try if you want, but it's a big one. I would play it on VASL as either side if anyone is up for it.

Laters,
Fort

(On an afterthought, and after seeing the preferences revealed, I should've sent the judges the smaller tourney sized scenario I worked up....was a german attack, but I figured this one had the feel of the actual battle a little better than a smaller action would)

If you play it post your thoughts, and....Thanks, Kerry!
 

Fort

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Victory conditions... wahhh??? :hmmm: Don't make refer to an SSR already! (-1)

Easier than repeating the SSR in the VC


SSR 6-- Too many overlays and then a terrain change on top of that!!
(-2)

Trying to get the terrain to have the feel of the battle is very difficult. The overlays are needed to make the hanagar/building complexes shown in aerial photos of the area prior and post battle. I don't mind overlays as much as some it seems...shrug.

15 SW for 16 German squads!! (none of them assault engineers) (-1)

Lots of SW's were at the battle.

More of them is probably the LAST thing the Germans need for balance (-1)

The PSK is the main this added to deal with the crocs...the ability to reach out to 4 hexes with an man portable AT asset was the reason for it.

Canadians are almost as bad (-1)

SSR 2 and 5 -three OBA modules PLUS a pre-game bombardment just seems like overkill (-1)

The royal navy had a BB and several other ships tasked with supporting...the weight of artillery tubes allocated to this battle was immense. If you decide to try the scenario, you'll need it all.

This whole scenario just seems like so much overkill. Managing it all might be more work than fun for either side.

I figure if an ASLer can handle an HASL, they can handle a large scenario. I know they are not popular, with the trend towards smallish, fast play designs. I went in a different direction.

Same criticism as Steve regarding sources. Looks like you tried to put it all in there.

I used the sources posted...there were several documents in the thread.

Title is kind of straight to the point, though (+1)
Title is from the canadian national anthem:

"O Canada! Beneath thy shining skies

May stalwart sons and gentle maidens rise

To keep thee steadfast thro’ the years"


Thanks for the input.
 

wrongway149

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Title is from the canadian national anthem:

"O Canada! Beneath thy shining skies

May stalwart sons and gentle maidens rise

To keep thee steadfast thro’ the years"


Thanks for the input.
All my opinion, as I am not a judge for the contest.
 

sswann

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Fort, It seems that you and Michael have taken on the job of submitting the 'monster' size scenarios. Upon reflection, my major concern is the size of the German infantry OoB. Next to Michael's (Prelude to Caen) scenario, you had 16 powerful German 6-5-8/9 squads. I have been criticized for my use of 5-4-8 MMC for the Germans, but all should remember that the 12th Panzer had already spent weeks in battle under the constant attack by allied air power.

On even more reflection... I should have used a mixture of 6-5-8 & 5-4-8 & 4-6-8 squad MMC to more properly represent that varying squad sizes after weeks of combat in my own design.

Also, of your 6 German groups, you specified the set up locations of 5 of them. For what should be outnumbered Germans, you remove from the player some of his flexibility of play. Two armor leaders for the Germans (who do not have to pay movement cost to fire their MA on the first shot since the Canadians must come to them) is overkill.

I would remove the ALs and loosen the set up restrictions for the Germans. Otherwise a cool lookin all-day scenario.
 

Fort

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Errata:

The 648's in the canadian OB are assault engineers/sappers.

And,

SSR4" after in form of, delete "1-...". The Air support is "3" FB's with bombs.
 

Glennbo

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but all should remember that the 12th Panzer had already spent weeks in battle under the constant attack by allied air power.
Ummm...all SHOULD NOT remember the weeks of constant air attacks since it wasn't mentioned in the original source that we were all supposed to restrict ourselves to. First I've heard of it anyway. :crosseye:
 

wrongway149

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On even more reflection... I should have used a mixture of 6-5-8 & 5-4-8 & 4-6-8 squad MMC to more properly represent that varying squad sizes after weeks of combat in my own design.
I don't think that would be appropriate. They were still nasty, highly motivated mother-hunchers. I think of teenage gang thugs, with a hard-core ideology to top it off. :freak:
 

Fort

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I don't think that would be appropriate. They were still nasty, highly motivated mother-hunchers. I think of teenage gang thugs, with a hard-core ideology to top it off. :freak:


"Over the next four weeks, the division managed to halt all Allied attempts to take Caen, despite the Allies' superior numbers and overwhelming air supremacy. The ferocity of the combat during this period equalled or exceeded anything the German troops had encountered on the Eastern front. Both sides claim that the other gave orders not to take prisoners but it was scarcely needed by the Allies at any rate. Time and again to the consternation of the attacking Allied troops, the youth of the 12th SS fought to the bitter end. Despite their successes in breaking up several major attacks, the division suffered immense losses, and in the first week of July 1944, Meyer ignored orders to hold the line north of Caen and withdrew the shattered remnants of his division south of the city. In the fighting from the day after D-Day until 9 July the division had lost 4,000 dead with a further 8,000 wounded and missing.

The division was to have little respite though, and on 19 July took part in the defence against the Anglo-Canadian Operation Goodwood. Following this, the division was pulled out of the line and used to form the mobile reserve for I.SS-Panzerkorps. Rather than rest and refitting, the division found itself involved in constant fire-brigade actions. In early August, the division took part in defensive actions to halt two Allied operations, Totalize and Tractable. At the launch of Totalize, the sixty remaining panzers of the HJ were faced with over 600 tanks of the Canadian First Army. Despite these odds, the division managed to halt the offensive short of its objectives.

Hitlerjugend, reduced to a few thousand men and a handful of vehicles, now took part in operations to try to keep the Falaise Pocket open and to help trapped German forces to escape. On 20 August the pocket collapsed and tens of thousands of troops of the Seventh Army went into captivity. The scattered remnants of the division were pulled back behind the Seine River.

The 12th SS had established a reputation as fierce combatants. Of the battles around Caen, it was said by a former opponent "The 12th SS-Panzer Division, which defended this sector, fought with a toughness and intensity which was not encountered anywhere else during the entire campaign.""

I can see Steve's argument, but I think 12th SS definitively stamped "ELITE" on themselves in Normandy...so I think 658's and heavy concentrations of leaders/Armor Leaders/SW's as valid.
 

BruceC

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All very interesting stuff. Good work all.

I don't think that would be appropriate. They were still nasty, highly motivated mother-hunchers. I think of teenage gang thugs, with a hard-core ideology to top it off. :freak:
Yeah, talk about misguided youth. Such a shame that these were led into such a vortex when most of them should have been in school. War truly is hell.
 

Ronnblom

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I have been criticized for my use of 5-4-8 MMC for the Germans, but all should remember that the 12th Panzer had already spent weeks in battle under the constant attack by allied air power.

On even more reflection... I should have used a mixture of 6-5-8 & 5-4-8 & 4-6-8 squad MMC to more properly represent that varying squad sizes after weeks of combat in my own design.
Sure, you would expect the SS troopers to be 5-4-8 or 4-4-7. Or rather, given the artillery preparation they've just gone through, broken SS 2-3-7 HS. But yet the fought very well and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers.

There are basically two ways of determine things like squad FP and morale. Either you do the computational hardware- and head-count oriented approach, were you look at number of men and what guns they had. Do this, and you'll end up with 7-6-8 Marines and 3-4-7 Finnish squads. The other approach is to look at how they actually performed in battle, and focus is what capabilities and level of performance the squads need to be able to do on the board what they did historically on the battle field. Voila, the Finnish 6-4-8s.

Back to Carpiquet. This is how Michael Tamelander & Niklas Zetterling summaries the battle (translated excerpt from Avgörandes ögonblick, p258):
Already on 4 July the pressure on the 12th SS Panzer Division increased again, when the Canadians attacked the airfield at Carpiquet. The attack was named "Operation Windsor" and were characterized by pathetic clumsiness. Despite more than four battalions of infantry supported by a tank regiment, flamethower tanks of the 79th Armoured Divison, 428 field artillery pieces and the 16" guns of the HMS Rodney the attack was thrown back. The Canadians lost 367 men. The German defenders were 150 infantrymen, three tanks and a lone 88 mm gun.

I'm not sure Tamelander & Zetterling are entirely correct in his rather harsh assertions on the Allied performance in this battle, but it seems clear, we have a case of something very asymmetrical and something hard to portrait in a good way in ASL. And even if they are way off, I think it's an interesting discussion, because there are certainly situation when 10:1 force ratio wasn't enough. A 10:1 ratio doesn't work too well in this game. Even 6-5-8 squads will have trouble with a 2:1 squad odds ratio, and if you downgrade them to 5-4-8, things get even worse.

You could forget about the historical situation, and pretend the Allies only had a slight upper hand numerically and did well tactically. This you do best by limiting yourself only to Ango-Saxian sources (preferably regimental or divisional histories). It'll be a fun scenario, no hard feelings other than possibly some history nerd complaining. It's not PC to complain about such things anyway, so odds are it's not going to happen.

Another option would be to follow the count-guns-and-men approach, and lookup in your artillery manual what that prep bombardment would do to those Germans. You'll end up with five OBA modules, 24x Canadian squads against five broken 2-4-7 SS squads and a wounded 9-2 leader.

Yet another option would be to still use the historical force ration, but now you go the design for effect path (in a hardliner way). Maybe you'll use Axis Minor conscripts for the Canadians and mostly 6+1 and 7-0 leaders, and Fanatic 6-5-8s with absurd number of leaders and SW. It'll certainly be an innovative design competing with Mila 18 in provocativeness. Mr Dorosh would explode.

Or you do a little of everything. You say to yourself that the Canadian failure was primarily on a higher level than ASL (maybe it was, I don't know), and despite there seemingly overwhelming superiority the actual battle field superiority was not that great, since they failed to use the forces allocated in an effective way. You skip some of the OBA, in the name of design for effect (and it didn't have the desired effect, thus not present). You pick top-notch German troops, but you do not cross into the silly land of 10-3 leaders and > 1 SW per squad. These troops will not be able to do what the boys of the 12 SS did historically, but they'll do well on the board.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Sure, you would expect the SS troopers to be 5-4-8 or 4-4-7. Or rather, given the artillery preparation they've just gone through, broken SS 2-3-7 HS. But yet the fought very well and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers.

There are basically two ways of determine things like squad FP and morale. Either you do the computational hardware- and head-count oriented approach, were you look at number of men and what guns they had. Do this, and you'll end up with 7-6-8 Marines and 3-4-7 Finnish squads. The other approach is to look at how they actually performed in battle, and focus is what capabilities and level of performance the squads need to be able to do on the board what they did historically on the battle field. Voila, the Finnish 6-4-8s.

Back to Carpiquet. This is how Michael Tamelander & Niklas Zetterling summaries the battle (translated excerpt from Avgörandes ögonblick, p258):
Already on 4 July the pressure on the 12th SS Panzer Division increased again, when the Canadians attacked the airfield at Carpiquet. The attack was named "Operation Windsor" and were characterized by pathetic clumsiness. Despite more than four battalions of infantry supported by a tank regiment, flamethower tanks of the 79th Armoured Divison, 428 field artillery pieces and the 16" guns of the HMS Rodney the attack was thrown back. The Canadians lost 367 men. The German defenders were 150 infantrymen, three tanks and a lone 88 mm gun.

I'm not sure Tamelander & Zetterling are entirely correct in his rather harsh assertions on the Allied performance in this battle, but it seems clear, we have a case of something very asymmetrical and something hard to portrait in a good way in ASL. And even if they are way off, I think it's an interesting discussion, because there are certainly situation when 10:1 force ratio wasn't enough. A 10:1 ratio doesn't work too well in this game. Even 6-5-8 squads will have trouble with a 2:1 squad odds ratio, and if you downgrade them to 5-4-8, things get even worse.

You could forget about the historical situation, and pretend the Allies only had a slight upper hand numerically and did well tactically. This you do best by limiting yourself only to Ango-Saxian sources (preferably regimental or divisional histories). It'll be a fun scenario, no hard feelings other than possibly some history nerd complaining. It's not PC to complain about such things anyway, so odds are it's not going to happen.

Another option would be to follow the count-guns-and-men approach, and lookup in your artillery manual what that prep bombardment would do to those Germans. You'll end up with five OBA modules, 24x Canadian squads against five broken 2-4-7 SS squads and a wounded 9-2 leader.

Yet another option would be to still use the historical force ration, but now you go the design for effect path (in a hardliner way). Maybe you'll use Axis Minor conscripts for the Canadians and mostly 6+1 and 7-0 leaders, and Fanatic 6-5-8s with absurd number of leaders and SW. It'll certainly be an innovative design competing with Mila 18 in provocativeness. Mr Dorosh would explode.
On the contrary; I would question the description of the Hitler Youth Division as 'elite'. They were 'fanatic', and I think there is a very large difference, in terms of actual abilities on the battlefield. They were ill-disciplined, but brave. An elite division is brave, but also skilled. The 12th were still relative amateurs, despite their high firepower. Their inept and unco-ordinated counter-attacks on D+1 proved that, and their inability to really accomplish much in Normandy beyond act as a doorstop kind of seals that image. They fought with ferocity, but that's fanaticism, not experience or skill at arms beyond the ordinary.

But the 3rd Canadian Division was also inexperienced, and by the time of the battles around Caen, described as "strung out" and "jumpy" in various histories. Actually, there is a good description of leadership in Nick Stasnopolis' review of Search & Destroy. The game came out in 1974, and he reviewed it in 1991 for Fire & Movement magazine. The game had a 50-metre hexgrid and was squad-based, set in Vietnam in 1965-66. The game mechanics, he felt, more accurately captured the nationalities and the aspect of small unit leadership.

Of all the optional rules, those for leadership are the most impressive. Mr. Young adeptly shows how different cultures and a disparity in technology created two very different leadership structures. Instead of flitting from unit to unit enhancing combat rolls, the leaders become conduits for information and control. For instance, to use their full capabilities the NLF units must be within eight hexes of their cadre. This reflects their lack of modern communications equipment, which produced a reliance on written messages and sound signals, thus limiting operational radius. It also resulted in units that tended to be more autonomous and were less severely affected by a loss of leadership. So the hardcore NLF units retain their full combat abilities but halve their movement when outside command radius or when their cadre unit takes casualties. This is in direct contrast to the U.S. forces.

The Army's more bureaucratic command structure lead (sic) to a very different set of leadership problems. Units, because of the myriad radios they possessed, could operate as far from their leaders as their radios could transmit and still be able to get specific instructions. Unfortunately, this also produced a dependence on contact with higher headquarters that made units less capable of functioning once the umbilical cord was cut. Thus a disturbance in the flow of information, either through loss of a radio or loss of a leader, was far more devastating to the Americans. In the game U.S. squads can be paralyzed for up to three turns if the squad radioman is hit or their headquarters takes casualties...

Few tactical games during this period are comparable to (Advanced) Squad Leader which is quite popular and is of a similar scale, but has a needlessly complex combat system, leadership rules that would be more appropriate for 18th century combat and ridiculously simplistic casualty rules. It also displays the typical American fascination with gadgets while ignoring war's social, political and logistical aspects. The wargame industry has basically ignored the more accurate portrayal of company level combat in S&D for the more glamorous version portrayed in (ASL).
So if ASL itself hasn't given cause to explode, nothing will. :) You work with what you've got. It's funny you mentioned the Axis minors, though, because I used French infanty counters to highlight the fact that the francophones had trouble inter-operating with the anglophones, though I don't know for a fact that was really the case. I've actually read very little about that aspect. Just a little chrome on my part for the judges.
 
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sarfs

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Just had a chance to look at this.

In SSR 2, receive is misspelled.

Are all the MwT scenarios in the download section. I only found 8, but there is a scenario #13.

Jim
 

wrongway149

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Or you do a little of everything. You say to yourself that the Canadian failure was primarily on a higher level than ASL (maybe it was, I don't know), and despite there seemingly overwhelming superiority the actual battle field superiority was not that great, since they failed to use the forces allocated in an effective way. You skip some of the OBA, in the name of design for effect (and it didn't have the desired effect, thus not present). You pick top-notch German troops, but you do not cross into the silly land of 10-3 leaders and > 1 SW per squad. These troops will not be able to do what the boys of the 12 SS did historically, but they'll do well on the board.
Some people get it. :smoke:
 
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