DLC '44 West #06: Villers-Bocage

[VPaulus]

Please post here your comments about this scenario.

[karlto]

A great, different, city-fight, nice break from Stalingrad and Warsaw. You may have overdone Wittmann a bit - while certainly he had a flair for attack (seems to the point of recklessness) - +50 attack seems a bit over-the-top. Otherwise, good, tough city-fighting. If you tone down Wittmann, you might want to tone down some of the opposition as well, some of those British tanks are really tough.

[Kamerer]

6) Villers-Bocage – beta 1

Level: Field Marshal
Prestige: Begin: 6,550. End: 7,850. Net: +1,300
Result: DV 16/18
Replacement policy/prestige: none used.

Problems:

• • River hex at 4,21 not continuous.

General impressions/comments:

• • I felt the concept here was a bit off – d+30 “command” vehicles don’t act like command vehicles, rather like assault units.

Even adding lots of extra infantry and artillery, it’s a stretch to take the town cleanly/affordably. But to win the scenario, the objectives are only to kill the command vehicles, if one can locate them without going into the town.

I think the “command vehicles” don’t behave very rationally; it’s very difficult to kill them even with strong Panzers, and the Aux 50 Tiger can’t be everywhere. I understand the concept is to highlight the Tiger’s prowess, but I think there’s a more realistic way to do it without such lavish att. and def. bonuses. This scenario felt very, I can’t quite describe it, “off the mark” a little bit.

[ThvN]

beta1

Colonel, Imported Core, DV 14/18

Prestige before/after deployment: 10421/7561
Prestige on last turn/incl. victory bonus: 8368/9618

As there are no airplanes allowed this time I had an interesting deployment fase, as I had less ground units available than I was allowed to deploy! I had a lot of prestige, so I was able to buy some extras without trouble. I did deploy the bonus Firefly with the hero, but not the bonus M10, as I judged it to be too fragile.

A very different kind of scenario than the previous ones, this time a real 'mission map' with moving goals. The command units you have to kill are a various lot, but the 'command' tanks (not the transports) are very troublesome to attack with my normal units, their high defenses make all the usual supress/close assault tactics nearly worthless, but worst of all this lack of supression means that the command tanks will nearly always get a shot in and kill something, while my retaliation will just cost me ammo.

The map has a nice layout, the lack of room to maneuver in the city make good traffic management essential, which made dealing with the command tanks extra problematic. To explain, it can be very frustrating to try to leave room for the 'silver bullet' Tiger so it can get at the enemy while not leaving vulnerable spaces that can be exploited by the AI. Now my frontline was sometimes locked up for a turn or two because I couldn't kill a command tank that was holding me up and I couldn't move the (slow) Tiger next to it because I first had to rearrange my units so it could get through. If it's just causing a delay because a 'command' transport takes a few turns to kill, it's not a problem, but when you are being shot at by units that you can barely damage it gets frustrating.

This happened mostly around (14,16) when meeting the 'command' Firefly, I once lost a Jagdpanther there in clear terrain while defending, simply because it got mobbed while fruitlessly defending against the Firefly; if a Jagdpanther, which is one of the best defensive anti-tank units in the game, is simply target practice than I can't help but think that command unit is either too strong or the wrong type of unit perhaps. I don't mind tough units being protected by a screen of good units, but some of these encounters with the command tanks really break the immersion (and my armored vehicles , I believe I spent almost 3000 prestige afterwards to get al the damaged units back to normal strength).


BTW, just throwing this in as an afterthought, this map reminded me that it would be real nice to have a feature in the game where you can 'swap' two units which are next to each other (so they will take each others place), to avoid abuse it will probably be best to only allow this if they both have all their movement left and have not yet fired, and the swap will consume all their movement, but I really missed such a feature on this map.

[LostAgain]

Playing FM with an imported core.

This was the first time I really felt challenged, but I have a bit of trouble understanding how a transport truck can take hits from 2 King Tigers, an '88, AND a Panzerjäger without any damage when it started out at 5! I had 3 King Tigers and none of them could do more than knock both the command trucks and tanks down 1 at a time while the Wittmann tank which is a Tiger I killed any command vehicle with one hit. By the way, just for the challenge I typically killed the command vehicles with my core rather than the Wittmann tank, just to challenge myself.

I like that the units are very difficult to take out in this round, but it's the wrong units that are hard to take out. For example, the fireflies had 16 ground defense as opposed to 11 for the Sherman when they're basically the same tank! The English just put a 17 pd gun on it. Even that pales though when one considers the invulnerable transport trucks and the command tanks. The command tanks also give pause for thought; in reality many of these didn't even HAVE a gun, as extra room was needed in the tank. These just had a fake wooden one to at least give the appearance of being able to be offensive. Bottom line on this for me though is that I'd rather you left it as is rather than make anything easier, as to my mind so far all of '44 West has been far to maudlin and easy.

I really like the idea of a Michael Wittmann tank though. How about permanently putting him and a few other aces in the pool of available heroes with appropriate attack values? If possible, aircraft with super aces would also be great! Even a very small chance of getting such a heroe would add excitement to the game although I imagine making heroes for specific types of vehicles would probably be a headache.

[RobertCL]

Nice scenario but maybe a message saying that infantry is always needed in city streets fights would not be useless.
Because your tanks are extremely vulnerable in cities against infantry and they cannot capture hexes defended by an infantry unit.

Like the idea of extremely powerful tanks but British command units (even trucks) have extremely high defense values as stated earlier by someone else.

[Kamerer]

6) Villers-Bocage-Nightmare – beta 2

Level: Rommel, stock core
Prestige: Begin: 0. End: 500. Net: +500
Result: MV 14/14

Core changes:
Disbanded one Pz.IV/J for points to buy:
Purchased a Panther G.
Upgraded 2nd Bf109 to K model.
Upgraded 2nd Fw190 to Dora model.
Disbanded Wolverine.
Disbanded a minefield - I had been saving one, but needed pp to buy:
Purchased a 21cm artillery piece.


Problems:

• River hex at 4,21 still incorrect.

General impressions/comments:

• • Reduced turn count was a surprise; it’s a tough city fight and that made a reasonable scenario much rougher.
  • Plays better with changes to bonuses, that helped a lot.
  • With stock core, no chance to penetrate into city fully with inadequate artillery provided (stock core has only 1 towed field artillery piece to begin – not very representative), and all air units removed.
  • Still a muddled scenario I think. A job to do, but not the right/enough tools to do it.

To give players a better shot at this scenario, I would consider:

• a) Allowing air, or
  b) Providing some aux artillery units, maybe one/two aux infantry, also
  c) Restoring to 18 turns (too many short scenarios in this campaign as it is, I think).
  d) Reduce bocage inside city – which is not authentic from what I can tell.

[zappel]

Beta2 - Colonel-Level - Imported core - DV at turn 14
Comparing to the previuos missions a completly different scenario: no aircrafts on both sides.
Good for me, bad for AI. Starting the scenario I was shocked because I deployed all ground units even the not necassary AA and still had seven open slots. My core was very small, only 35 units including two minefields and seven air units which all are obsolete in this scenario. My PP was also very low so I could only bought one StuG IV.
BTW: is it wanted the StuG is primary assigned to AT not ART like StuH42? I wonder because StuG is in the upgrade path of AT and I use it predominantly as a ART.
I thought this mission would not be winable because of the lack of ground units but I could finished it with a DV. The AI was very defensive and got only a few good and some not so good tanks (Sherman and Cromwell/M3). I had a lot of fun to capture Villers-Bocage and earning a lot of prestige.

To give players a better shot at this scenario, I would consider:

• a) Allowing air, or
  b) Providing some aux artillery units, maybe one/two aux infantry, also
  c) Restoring to 18 turns (too many short scenarios in this campaign as it is, I think).
  d) Reduce bocage inside city – which is not authentic from what I can tell.

I don't agree. Because there are no aircrafts I like this scenario. I'm playing on a lower difficulty level but despite I had so little units I could manage to win the scenario. I could finish the scenario in turn 12 but I waited to kill the last commando vehicle to capture the remaining flag hexes and receive PP in the meantime. There is no need to get additional aux units or planes to win [at Col-level].

Finally: WHERE CAN I GET THIS +20-ATTACK-MEGA-HERO FOR A CORE UNIT? NEED HIM!!!

[monkspider]

Villers-Bocage
Marginal Victory 14/14
Default Core
General Level
Losses: One of my Panzer-Grenadiers
Ending prestige 532

This is a very unique scenario, but it seems like there are some problematic elements to it. Not allowing aircraft is a cool change of pace but it leaves you with a lot of open core slots and, at least with the default core, not really enough prestige to fill them. Maybe you can reduce the core size for this one to take into account that air units/AA aren't being deployed, but give the players a few aux units as Kamerer suggested. I really loved using the special Michael Wittman Tiger, but it seems like due to the large amounts of urban terrain/bocage, you don't really get as many chances to use him to good effect as you might expect. Finally, even getting a marginal victory was difficult but it seems I was closer to a decisive victory than I thought, only one Allied command unit remained. It would be good to tell the player exactly how many command units there are. For example the decisive victory conditions should be "Destroy five Allied command units" or however many there are. Based on the large number of objective hexes that still remained, I assumed there were more remaining than there actually were, and I wasn't as dilligent about trying to hunt them down as I could have been. The short turn count and large amount of bocage really makes this one a difficult one to tackle, I do recommend reducing the amount of the bocage.

I do like LostAgain's idea of having a few historical aces that you can occasionally get that would give super bonuses, maybe not +20 attack like in this scenario, but more than you can usually get.

[Kamerer]

6) Villers-Bocage – beta 3/rc

Level: Rommel, stock core
Prestige: Begin: 0. End: 600. Net: +600
Result: MV 14/14

Problems:

• • River hex at 4,21 still incorrect.

General impressions/comments:

• • Now the scenario seems to flow better – I think the city tiling change made a real difference.
  • Still not going to get a DV with the stock core/Rommel, but my core is not bad. I had ¾ of the city but still 3x firefly, 3x AT, 3x artillery, and a few infantry to root out.
  • I think the clincher is you deploy -7 or so units if you start with a stock core, as you have no reserves and not much pp to buy many worthwhile units.
  • I would still add a few turns to make it a little more practical. I’m sure with an imported core it could be done.

[zappel]

Just a weird thing:
I bought one paratrooper to increase my core units. I was not able to deploy the paratrooper while there was no air deploy hex in this scenario. I had to buy a transport for the paratrooper to deploy it. Funny because there are four air transports available in this scenario. Droll.

[zappel]

Beta3 - Colonel-Level - Imported core - DV
Yes, I like this scenario. No bothersome allied fighters just good old ground combat. Feeled like GC39.
This was the first time I got a DV after a AI turn. The last Firefly-Commando (strength 5) attacked my Panther (strength 12) and made suicide. What a pity because I wanted to capture some more flags to earn more prestige.
Despite this the scenario was nice, I noticed no change to Beta2. While the difficulty level of the first scenarios has been increased this is a more simple and easy scenario, it is good for recovery.

[ThvN]

beta3, colonel, imported core. DV 12/14

The scenario is no longer frustrating when the special Tiger is elsewhere and you run in the Command Tanks, so that's a relief. Still, you need pretty good hardware to take them out (I tried), so not too easy either. Because there is no airforce allowed and my core is heavily anti-air, I struggled to fill all deployment slots, but this time I bought a few cheap infantry which were helpful in mopping up all those Allied anti-tank guns in the city hexes. This scenario is a nice change from the 'tank rushes over open terrain while watching the skies' in the previous scenarios.

[billmv44]

Beta 3, General Level. Imported Core. Ending Prestige 1118. DV on 12/14.

This scenario brings back memories of Moscow and Stalingrad. The hard won lessons in those scenarios paid off here. I kept my tanks out of the city hexes and used infantry backed by artillery to eliminate the enemy infantry and anti-tank units. My tanks and recon units searched out the command units fairly easily. That is not so say, this was easy to win. Those Brits are tough!