Game manual?

[DennisS]

Try campaigning,at least you and your units will improve from experience.
Did you lose alot infantry or did your HQ's get beat-up?
I have times where The AO barely survived,and was thankful to get a marginal to go on and fight another day

OK, understand that this is the first battle I played to completion, and without reading the rules. I did run through the tutorial. The first (lame) attempt at a scenario, I never even attempted to use the "R" key...and really didn't have the concept of "command" down.

As a retired Master Sergeant, I fully appreciate span of control, and command, control, and communications. I am pleased that these concepts are treated with the respect they deserve.

So, in this first real attempt, this is how I purchased my forces:

40 x 40, heavily wooded, spotty fields offering decent fields of fire.

750 points, I am the Americans, January 1930.

The points may not work out to be perfect, memory is tricky at my age..heh heh.

One spotter aircraft
Light tanks, a dozen or so.
One company of leg infantry.
Three mortars, 81's I think.
Four machine guns, medium and heavy.
Two scouts...on foot
One arty spotter

I had no transport (mistake #1), and had to leg it to the victory locations. There were two large groupings of flags, and I sent about 40% of my forces to each one, and kept a small reserve on the north-south road between the two areas, including all four of my machine guns.

I sent two of my light tanks along the northern and southern roads, each generally oriented east-west. I found good locations just off the road for all four, and gave them instructions to not shoot until stuffses were within 4 hexes.

Well...along the northern road, a TON of personnel carriers came along. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! It took a couple of shots from the 37mm popgun to kill them all, and heaven knows how much infantry was killed along with them.

This was the key to this game. I don't know how many points the AI spent on these APC's, but I never saw another one during the game.

The northern vp area was eventually attacked, en masse, by fair number of infantry units, I would estimate about 20. I shifted my machine guns to the north, and found excellent fields of fire for each.

My vp locations were on the west side of a major road, and any assault HAD to come across the road. They never made it...a PERFECT kill zone. I zeroed in my mortars on the other side of the road, and brought up the reserves.

The AI had some artillery, and I used my A0 to un-suppress units just about every turn. This worked out pretty well.

Don't know what I will try tonight, there is no way I am up to a campaign yet...have to figure out the mechanics.

I have all the Combat Mission games, Advanced Tactics, and a slew of other games, but this one is the best, by far.