Tutorials

My first actual playing experience with CMBB was to follow the two tutorials given in the manual. I first played the beginner's tutorial that uses the battle called "The Iron Roadblock" and then the advanced tutorial which uses the battle called "Jaegermeister". As I sit down to write this it's been a little while since I actually played these but I'll try to recall how they went the best that I can.

The Iron Roadblock

What can I say about this other than that I just kept clicking Go.

As a tutorial, this is not meant to teach you anything about tactics or equipment, just how to use the game's controls. There's not even much to play around with as the Soviets. I did go back and try moving the ATR so that he'd have more of a side shot on the tanks but at that range it's still just plink, ricochet, plink, ricochet.

Not an interesting battle, but I suppose total newbies have to learn the controls somehow.

Jaegermeister

This tutorial is supposed to be more of a real battle and teach you a little about some different tactics. Unfortunately, the instructions in the manual are confusing and unclear and arguably not the best strategy for this battle. The best I could make out from the tutorial was that I was supposed to have a group of tanks with infantry mounted on them sneak through the trees on the left, a recon group of infantry head out to the right on foot, and a main force going straight up the middle. Reinforcements show up and you are given some loose instructions on what you're supposed to do with them.

I gave up on the instructions in the manual around turn six or seven. I didn't seem to care much what they authors wanted me to do, and I'm not sure I would have understood it anyway. So I just kept going on my own. At that point I had advanced most of my infantry up the hill in front of the starting position and some into the house with the small flag on top of the hill. My vehicles were mostly scattered behind the hill with the SU-122s looking down the hill near the road and most of the rest behind the ridge to the right. A platoon of tanks was dutifully travelling off to the left with infantry in tow for no good reason I could think of. On the right my recon group had advanced across the open into the trees leaving them all exhausted after a long run through a perfectly uncontested area.

So now I started trying to do things that actually made sense to me. A warning is in order here, though, that I didn't have any experience with what troops and equipment are good at what tasks yet. Using the SU-122s for cover I moved some infantry down the hill toward the forest near the village. Some artillery came down on me but I did get some troops into the forward edge. Enemy troops were met and defeated, but the artillery turned a lot of guys back to the cover at the hilltop. I got a couple machine guns into the little house on the hill and that helped suppress some of the infantry being spotted in the cemetery.

I also spotted some tanks at the far right edge of the map. So I lined up my tanks behind the ridge to the right and started popping them up over the ridge with shoot and scoot orders. I imagine that from the perspective of those German tanks it must have looked just like a shooting gallery. Little tanks popping up over a distant hill, all eventually being knocked out. Give that man a giant stuffed bear!

The tanks on the left didn't fare much better. I couldn't find an advantageous position for them and while looking, enemy tanks way down the road spotted them and despite a little more clearheaded thinking I still lost them all. I did dismount the infantry, though, and they cowered along with a panicky crew or two among some trees until I figured out what to do with them.

I realized, now, that it was up to the infantry to save the cavalry and I got serious about moving them forward and taking some flags. The recon guys on the right (who I had kept moving forward because I didn't know what else to do with them) got new orders. Their job was now to continue through the trees and try to close assault those tanks on the far right. The dismounted infantry on the left cautiously moved forward (leaving the crews behind) to see about entering the village from the far end. The main group of infantry I pushed forward through the forest at the base of the hill. I brought more troops down off the hill with a roundabout path that kept them out of the line of fire. Eventually I was able to reconstitute some platoons and move through the forest with some confidence.

About the time the recon group was getting close to the German tanks I also got an artillery spotter into line-of-sight of the tanks, too. I ordered up some artillery and let my guys rest. The arty did ok, incapacitating two tanks. I then sent my men in. They boldly took all of about two steps and then occasionally tossed a Molotov cocktail (I'm not sure what else I thought they were going to do). Those brave soldiers burned the hell out of a few blades of grass, but I'm not sure the guys in the tanks even knew it was going on.

Back in the forest I pushed some guys into houses on my side of the road, hoping to charge the church (with a big flag) across the street. There must not have been a lot of Germans left over there, though, because the flag became mine from across the street. I went ahead and put some troops in there anyway because I figured the second story view might help.

Out at the far end of the village I got some guys into a distant house and started moving them forward. I planned to leapfrog squads forward down the line of houses. An unseen machine gun opened fire on them causing one to panic and pinning the other one. I backed up the unpanicked guy and hoped to find some other use for him.

I eventually gave up my "close assault" of the tanks and used those guys to take a stab at one of the distant flags. My hope was that the AI had moved all his men into the village where the real fighting was taking place and left the flag undefended. It turned out he had. My men got close enough to fly their flag and I left them hiding there in the trees.

About that time the tanks they had "assaulted" were rolling into town and my men were reaching the second floor of the church. From there they had a wonderful view of the newly arrived tanks blasting the hell out of them. I tried to get them back downstairs, but couldn't do it fast enough. Additionally, now that the German tanks were nearby the flag was contested and no longer mine.

With my successful "capturing" of that distant flag I decided to try it again. I took the unpanicked guy from the far end of the village and sent him walking toward the farthest flag on the opposite corner of the map. I figured if they weren't defending the next one nearer, they probably weren't defending the farthest one either. This time I was wrong. He got nearby and got shot at, so I backed him off and told him to keep his head down for the rest of the battle.

Back in the village the tanks rolled right up to my men and some artillery started to hit the houses I had taken, too. But luck is sometimes on my side and the tanks got too near a platoon that had satchel charges that I wasn't even aware of. Those sneaky little bastards took out two more tanks for me before the battle finally ended.

The result was a draw. Not bad for my first real battle I think. I've read that a lot of other people had trouble with this one too, so that makes me feel better.

So what did I learn here? Well I did just about everything wrong with my tanks. I made them visible all in the same area and one at a time, getting them all killed before taking out a single enemy tank. Long sightlines like down the road from the near right side are better. I do think I eventually moved my infantry well, though, clearing that forest and moving into some houses with leapfrogging movement and covering machine gun fire.