New Scenario WF

[Big Ivan]

Cam

I just got done playing your scenario Disaster at Dompaire. I was the Allies against a German A/I. I stopped at the end of Allied Turn 10 with 1546 points and an Allied win. I played it blind right off this post w/o looking at it first in the editor. I used the optionals Indirect Fire by the map; command control, Extreme FOW and VV. I stayed away from Armor Facing simply because the A/I does lousy with it. Also stayed away from EA because I feel it tends to bog the game down a bit.

First off I love the map and the concept for the scenario. There is a good Osprey Book that talks about the destruction of the 112th Pz. Brigade in Patton's Lorraine campaign. Hope you have it.

In a quck summary, the A/I pulled the Panters out by T2 in the center and started a push along the central stream. As my Allied armor came up I had the high ground and caught most of them in the fields below with height advantage shots. The wrecks mounted as we traded shots but the A/I caught the worst of it. I then pulled up my infantry along with 90% of my armor and began the business at hand of reducing Dompaire and its surrounding environs. There were a couple of suburb hexes that were a bit tough to take but once I pulled out the rest of the Panthers and Mark IV's and shot them up the clearing of Dompaire became easy. There wasn't as much infantry as I thought there should be. I got to the hotel and cleared it on T10.

Much to my chagrin, on turn 7 German armor began to arrive near Sur. I had to disengage at least a third of my armor (M4; M4-76 & M10's)from Dompaire and beat feet to the other end of the board to meet that threat (that's why playing blind may be a good thing because you don't know what's coming). I was lucky and got to Sur and stopped the German attack by T10.
For some reason the A/I in the last three turns didn't press to hard on the Sur attack. I still can't figure that one out, because they had a whole lot for the taking. At Sur I had 3 M5 Stuarts, 2 M4-105's and some flak trucks and HQ's. It wasn't until turn 9 that I got some real armor back there to bolster the defense and then the Mark IV's began to disappear. Whew!

Some suggestions if your going to have this as a play against the A/I scenario.

The map is beautiful but it could be a bit bigger. Not much though.
Add a few more German infantry to Dompaire. Maybe some second class stuff like Luftwaffe LW's. A company or two but not more than that.
Maybe add some more blocks at key points along the Allied advance path to slow their coming forward to quickly and a couple of mines wouldn't hurt either.
I noticed the Germans had little artillery except for on board morters. Possibly adding a couple of off-board big guns might help bolster the defense of Dompaire.
Fixing some tanks, infantry and AT Guns in ambush positions within Dompaire might be a nasty trick against the Allies too. By that I mean a position unobserved unless your right next to it. I would trench these also for the added defense benefit.

The A/I brought the Panthers out and they were easily killed. Had they stayed in Dompaire the assault would have been mich different. I don't know how you could suggest to the A/I to keep them there w/o affecting the German flank attack units. That's one of the flaws of the game that you can't set A/I play for individual battalions or regiments.
VP hexes were good and atainable with a fight, maybe a few more smokes for the Allies and I only used 2 airstrikes. With all the French ground units I really didn't need them!
Finally make the victory conditions a little tougher to achieve for the Allies. Remember the A/I at times is less than intelligent so occasionally it needs help.

Hope this analysis helps you in making a good scenario! I enjoyed playing it and finally all I can say is work with it a bit. It has the potential to be a great scenario! You may even want to look at making two different scenarios. One for A/I play and one for H2H play.

Best Regards,

Ivan the Big:smoke: