@9:30 The briefing is wrong about the defenders of Tourville. There was no "29th Panzer Division" in Normandy, the village was defended by a scratch force of infantrymen and local security troops.
That panzerfaust shot is basically the CM AI unfair advantage of being able to make a hit like that. No doubt when I try that even on a tank it will miss and I get blasted for trying.
This was the first campaign I played all the way through and I play it again every so often. So it's awesome to watch you go through it. Don't worry! It gets worse! You can get a lot out of your carriers in this mission. You'll have to watch for panzerfausts, as well as infantry in the second and third floors of the buildings, but the absence of armor or any real AT threats lets you be aggressive with them. The infantry gun is a bit worrisome but once you get the spot you should be able to throw mortars at it till it dies.
Amazing video as always Hapless, always a cheerful sight seeing one of your videos come up on the feed! I'm dying to buy the WW2 titles on steam, but they seem to never come unfortunely! Keep the amazing work!
@@usuallyhapless9481 Really hope so, it's almost impossible for me to buy it in dollars because of the currency conversion. But in the mean time, your videos are more than enough! :D
Been meaning to give this campaign a try for a while now but seeing these videos and how brutal some of the missions are I rather just watch. Great content/video as always hapless
Watching you play battle for Normandy makes me want to buy that game lol. I’m still fighting through some FI campaigns, and watching you helps me think about the missions and how to tackle them. Keep up the good work dude!
By the way for anybody wondering about the final scoring of this mission I have the explanation, which IMHO battlefront does not do a good job of explaining. I only know because I have started trying to create my own scenarios. Maybe the best way to understand the scoring for exit objectives is not thinking of them as adding to your score. Instead think of them as subtracting from enemy score. Example you have 10 tanks to exit worth 1000 points total, or 100 each. The enemy starts the mission with that 1000 total already on the scoreboard but for every tank that exits they lose 100....
Yep. My issue with this particular mission from a game design perspective is that the B Company exit is right next to Tourville- if you have to secure Tourville anyway, why bother with the Exit objective? Surely if Tourville is clear, the exit is guaranteed? That's without considering that if B Coy need to go to Mondrainville it's not like they need to use the main road, they could swing off the map at any point down the right edge and go cross-country like they've been doing all morning.
I feel like sometimes the mission briefings are a bit too cryptic for their own good. I've definitely had cases where points assignments surprised me, where I was unsure which units / ammo counts would effect future missions and where I misunderstood what kind of mission I would be expected to fight. I think they want to be a bit vague to discourage super gamey play styles (like treating attached units as much more expendable), but in the end it is a game and I kind of want to know the rules of the game I'm playing especially if I'm going to get judged by the game in the end. Like in the valley of death mission you can beat back the better part of a BTG while taking minimal losses and end up with a defeat because you thought you were fighting a delay while you were actually fighting a defence.
Great work! I didn't jump on this campaign until watching your videos so fortunately had a bit of a heads up on what to expect and strategies I could implement myself. Except I couldn't wait for this episode to be released so gave it a crack myself! I lost far too much time being overly cautious at the rail crossing choke point, and even more time subsequently creeping up to Farm du Colleville and into the right hand orchard due to early spots along the Bocage line on the far fight flank that was before wheat field. No contacts and a waste of a TRP. By the point I was ready to echelon through B Coy to advance up to Tourville I was running out of time which led to a quite hasty assault including expending most of my artillery and smoke, my Bren Carriers acting as mobile MG nests, and the 6-pounder throwing rounds into any building with a contact. This campaign is a killer for sure.
Cleaning out the Hitler Youth from that town is absolutely brutal. They're extremely well dug in and half the time when you flank them they'll just turn on you with automatic weapons and smoke your entire team even though completely flanked and under fire.
I'm suuuper late but I hope you see this anyways, a quick suggestion/tip if I may, when I play combat mission and the point values aren't clearly layed out I have the habit of making a save and then immediately calling a cease fire, that way I can check what exactly the point values are for all the objectives. I feel that it reduces some of the frustration related to the score system, maybe it could do the same for you? Anyhow, wonderful as always Hapless, I'll head over now to the next video of yours I have saved up! 😊
That's a good idea (actually what I do for QBs too!). Kinda takes the fun out of it in campaigns though. Plus, at least half the frustration is that I know what happened and the battles in the campaign don't necessarily reflect that. IIRC 2 ASH covered the ground in this battle in about 6 hours, not 1 1/2.
@@usuallyhapless9481 I personally don't find that it spoils anything in compaigns, if anything it feels like it's easier to keep immersion in the campaign and follow the narrative, but that's just me 🙂 oh yeah I can imagine the frustration if one knows what really happened in history, I have that when I watch series or movies, I've actually skipped shows like Rome just because I've heard that it's not historically accurate, so I feel your pain, haha!
Not saying it's what happened in this case, but there are some scenario designers who like being vague and dishonest in the scenario briefings thinking it adds realism, personally I think a game should be fun first and don't really like having no clue what I'm doing or having an enemy company teleport into my rear that I have no warning about.
@@Coddykin Fog of War can be put in by designers simply by saying "Unknown" etc. They also need to understand that orders will be executed to the best of a commander's ability, so a "main effort" should be stated in the briefing and carry most weight. The only real excuse in this case is that the Germans may have a different main effort to the Brits who might not have been aware of it. In reality, you get to check understanding with superiors and orders formats stress what is important and why so I agree that poor instructions from designers can be a big problem in Combat Mission.
CM mission briefings are an interesting dark art. Sometimes you have to adjust to the mission-maker's standards- obviously with Paper Tiger I need to remember I'm going to get punished for leaving objectives!
I don’t mind lying mission briefings, as they seem to be honest depictions of the fog of war. However, lying objectives comes across as poor game design.
I personally don't mind the vague scoring description, makes it feel more like a really operation to me. You know what your objectives are: take control of the 2 villages and exit B company by a certain time so you can keep the operation moving and on schedule... in light of that vague description only getting 1 of the 2 villages and B company not moving onward does seem like a major defeat to the operation as a whole. Getting a list of exact points for each thing feels a bit gamey, although I can see why people prefer it.
Well, yes and no. I don't think the problem was so much vague scoring as it was the aggressive time limit. "Take two villages and get a Coy off the map in 90 minutes" is a big ask, especially when it took 6 hours in the actual battle. Mission briefings are a fine art though- having something more manoeuvrist that sets out the intent of the battalion would have been a bit more useful.
Hello Hapless, I feel like reconnaissance could've greatly sped up your progress in this mission. (Admittedly I've got lucky by taking out the IG-gun with a lucky round leaving the right flank open for a "mechanised" assault with the brencarriers). Would it be possible that you dedicate an episode to "Reconnaissance". Something along the line of "The patience to see" on the Bill Hardenberg er-Blog? (I know your episode on "Spotting", but this goes a little further with a recon plan and dedicated recon-units). I'll hope you have the time and interest to devote an episode on it. Keep up the great work!!
@@user-sk5pf7jv3r great suggestion. i never know how to use my mechanized scouts. they are too fragile in those tincans and get obliterated from distance just like poor chaps we've seen in the video.
a hapless loss to the A.I. is has hard to find has rooster teeth........ yes this campaign is bringing some painful memories to me... i have been watching your vids for years now and always wanted to see u in this campaign.... but the main one i wanted to see u try is the battle pack campaign for CMBS... charge of the Stryker brigade i think its called not that i want to see u lose or anything ... but it does somehow ease the pain i felt in this campaign...
@@usuallyhapless9481 There is also a really cool stryker focused scenario on the map that you played the 8 wheeled handycap on. After playing it, I think I understand why you picked that map, it's basically the perfect terrain for the stryker infantry to beat back russian combined arms. If you're not up for another fulll CMBS campaign, maybe that could be a fun one of video :) BTW the russian campaign in CMBS is also very interesting though that one also has some kind of cryptic mission briefings
The bottleneck has been tournament integration for Slitherine. That's now been patched into CMCW (for v1.06), Battlefront is going to run a larger scale test this coming week to double check it works- if that's ok, it can be easily added to CMBN and then it's up to Slitherine to get it onto Steam.
I played this campaign and found it really difficult. One way to speed up infantry fighting is to put squads into Brens and having them closing up to enemy infantry holding in buildings and fox holes. The light armour and MG on Brens are usually enough to deal with sole-infantry combat as in this scenario. This campaign is frankly not enjoyable to play with all those time limits. It does show how difficult breakthrough operations are without mechanised equipments.
Apart from the unfortunate objective misunderstanding this was another fairly successful infantry attack. You know, despite you constantly bemoaning the British Infantry's lack of firepower they seem to be holding their own fairly well.
This was hands down my least favourite mission of the whole campaign. I do not do well with attacking, aggressive time limits, and traversing large maps. Also it's emblematic of some of Paper Tiger's harsher practices with scoring, as you have discovered.
@@usuallyhapless9481 The video was excellent by the way, don't be disheartened. Like you I hit ceasefire and thought "I've done enough, surely?" 10 minutes later Was ranting and raving on the BFC forums...haha, good times.
It might just be American bias on my part but the British rifle squads really seem anemic when compared to their German and American counterparts. The Bren is fine (certainly better than the BAR) but they just don't seem to compare to American squads who get carried by their Garands and Germans who get carried by the MG42. In any case though this is a great series so far and an absolute ballbuster of a campaign.
This is common knowledge actually. The Commonwealth forces usually won because of tank, air, and artillery support to make up for the deficiencies in light infantry equipment. It seems this campaign may have been made artificially difficult just to provide a challenge.
@@karlhungus545 Honestly a really nice change of pace, many of the campaigns are trivial to get total victories on and only really start to become difficult when you obsess about limiting casualties or conserving ammo
No, British sections really are pretty anemic on the firepower front. This might be something that I'm just failing to adapt to: I feel a lot like I keep getting into the right positions, but don't have the firepower to follow through- which is a problem I probably wouldn't have with Garands. Historically speaking, the British did have a lot of problems with infantry-armour coordination and 2ASH really did breakthrough here without armoured support... but it took them until 1500 and this mission finishes at 1040.
What's aggravating is that the Bren gunner is usually the first one to get a bullet. Which is quite frustrating because you have to waste valuable time retrieving the weapon during a section's progression, as it is indispensable in most theaters (esp. Monte Cassino).
@@chalkchalkson5639 Yah, this is as far as I got with this one. I had played CM too much, and when I ran into that MG bunker, I just didn't go back to it. IIRC, the Courage and Fortitude is 'unwinnable' when you hit a certain battle (narrow, on a hill, can't remember what it's called). There are several discussions about it on the BF site.
Hard to say. Certainly the Battalion's organic mortars would have been limited by what they could bring in their carriers, but the 25pdr batteries would have stockpiled ammunition for prolonged support. There is a lot going on on this day though- 2 ASH have basically found a weakpoint in the German lines and there's fierce fighting happening on either flank which would have drawn in more artillery support.
When there are exit terrain objectives in a scenario, there are also units assigned that must exit. If any of those units do not exit by the end of the scenario, the program counts them as destroyed and they are added to the victory points calculation.
Seasoned Hapless viewers will note the amount of exasperated sighs in this one. Still a great video as per usual. This campaign seems brutal.
It's actually really good, but it slaps you in the face in a couple of places.
NOOOO MUH MUH GARAND! I NEED SEMI AUTO FIRE ON EVERY SOLDIER 😂
Nothing says 'end of the work week' like a video from Hapless
That panzerfaust boy was a true gamer
that panzergrendier lol
"say hello to my little friend"
Little psychopaths!
@9:30 The briefing is wrong about the defenders of Tourville. There was no "29th Panzer Division" in Normandy, the village was defended by a scratch force of infantrymen and local security troops.
The simple maps you make are so helpful. Feel marginally better at Battlefront and even graviteams
That panzerfaust shot is basically the CM AI unfair advantage of being able to make a hit like that. No doubt when I try that even on a tank it will miss and I get blasted for trying.
I know how you feel.
great editing as usual, does really help understand the battle.
This was the first campaign I played all the way through and I play it again every so often. So it's awesome to watch you go through it.
Don't worry! It gets worse!
You can get a lot out of your carriers in this mission. You'll have to watch for panzerfausts, as well as infantry in the second and third floors of the buildings, but the absence of armor or any real AT threats lets you be aggressive with them. The infantry gun is a bit worrisome but once you get the spot you should be able to throw mortars at it till it dies.
Amazing video as always Hapless, always a cheerful sight seeing one of your videos come up on the feed! I'm dying to buy the WW2 titles on steam, but they seem to never come unfortunely! Keep the amazing work!
Thanks very much! They are coming to Steam, hopefully fairly soon.
@@usuallyhapless9481 Really hope so, it's almost impossible for me to buy it in dollars because of the currency conversion. But in the mean time, your videos are more than enough! :D
Been meaning to give this campaign a try for a while now but seeing these videos and how brutal some of the missions are I rather just watch. Great content/video as always hapless
Watching you play battle for Normandy makes me want to buy that game lol. I’m still fighting through some FI campaigns, and watching you helps me think about the missions and how to tackle them. Keep up the good work dude!
Nothing better than a Usually hapless video.
By the way for anybody wondering about the final scoring of this mission I have the explanation, which IMHO battlefront does not do a good job of explaining. I only know because I have started trying to create my own scenarios. Maybe the best way to understand the scoring for exit objectives is not thinking of them as adding to your score. Instead think of them as subtracting from enemy score. Example you have 10 tanks to exit worth 1000 points total, or 100 each. The enemy starts the mission with that 1000 total already on the scoreboard but for every tank that exits they lose 100....
Yep. My issue with this particular mission from a game design perspective is that the B Company exit is right next to Tourville- if you have to secure Tourville anyway, why bother with the Exit objective? Surely if Tourville is clear, the exit is guaranteed? That's without considering that if B Coy need to go to Mondrainville it's not like they need to use the main road, they could swing off the map at any point down the right edge and go cross-country like they've been doing all morning.
I feel like sometimes the mission briefings are a bit too cryptic for their own good. I've definitely had cases where points assignments surprised me, where I was unsure which units / ammo counts would effect future missions and where I misunderstood what kind of mission I would be expected to fight. I think they want to be a bit vague to discourage super gamey play styles (like treating attached units as much more expendable), but in the end it is a game and I kind of want to know the rules of the game I'm playing especially if I'm going to get judged by the game in the end. Like in the valley of death mission you can beat back the better part of a BTG while taking minimal losses and end up with a defeat because you thought you were fighting a delay while you were actually fighting a defence.
Excellent as always.
Great work! I didn't jump on this campaign until watching your videos so fortunately had a bit of a heads up on what to expect and strategies I could implement myself. Except I couldn't wait for this episode to be released so gave it a crack myself!
I lost far too much time being overly cautious at the rail crossing choke point, and even more time subsequently creeping up to Farm du Colleville and into the right hand orchard due to early spots along the Bocage line on the far fight flank that was before wheat field.
No contacts and a waste of a TRP.
By the point I was ready to echelon through B Coy to advance up to Tourville I was running out of time which led to a quite hasty assault including expending most of my artillery and smoke, my Bren Carriers acting as mobile MG nests, and the 6-pounder throwing rounds into any building with a contact.
This campaign is a killer for sure.
Another great video Double and a really tough scenario. I always admire the logic of your plans and clarity of your commentary
Cleaning out the Hitler Youth from that town is absolutely brutal. They're extremely well dug in and half the time when you flank them they'll just turn on you with automatic weapons and smoke your entire team even though completely flanked and under fire.
Always a lovely surprise to see you have uploaded a video!
I'm suuuper late but I hope you see this anyways, a quick suggestion/tip if I may, when I play combat mission and the point values aren't clearly layed out I have the habit of making a save and then immediately calling a cease fire, that way I can check what exactly the point values are for all the objectives. I feel that it reduces some of the frustration related to the score system, maybe it could do the same for you? Anyhow, wonderful as always Hapless, I'll head over now to the next video of yours I have saved up! 😊
That's a good idea (actually what I do for QBs too!). Kinda takes the fun out of it in campaigns though. Plus, at least half the frustration is that I know what happened and the battles in the campaign don't necessarily reflect that. IIRC 2 ASH covered the ground in this battle in about 6 hours, not 1 1/2.
@@usuallyhapless9481 I personally don't find that it spoils anything in compaigns, if anything it feels like it's easier to keep immersion in the campaign and follow the narrative, but that's just me 🙂 oh yeah I can imagine the frustration if one knows what really happened in history, I have that when I watch series or movies, I've actually skipped shows like Rome just because I've heard that it's not historically accurate, so I feel your pain, haha!
@6:20 I thought that mining what is meant to be a railway station platform was a bit mean, when I first played this.
I concur. Though I guess one could argue that they represent some kind of booby trap rather than land mines.
@@usuallyhapless9481 Yes, maybe some kind of trip wire device.
I have had the exact same "problem" with some of the vague mission objectives in CM.
Not saying it's what happened in this case, but there are some scenario designers who like being vague and dishonest in the scenario briefings thinking it adds realism, personally I think a game should be fun first and don't really like having no clue what I'm doing or having an enemy company teleport into my rear that I have no warning about.
@@Coddykin Fog of War can be put in by designers simply by saying "Unknown" etc. They also need to understand that orders will be executed to the best of a commander's ability, so a "main effort" should be stated in the briefing and carry most weight. The only real excuse in this case is that the Germans may have a different main effort to the Brits who might not have been aware of it. In reality, you get to check understanding with superiors and orders formats stress what is important and why so I agree that poor instructions from designers can be a big problem in Combat Mission.
CM mission briefings are an interesting dark art. Sometimes you have to adjust to the mission-maker's standards- obviously with Paper Tiger I need to remember I'm going to get punished for leaving objectives!
I don’t mind lying mission briefings, as they seem to be honest depictions of the fog of war. However, lying objectives comes across as poor game design.
So, in this battle the German’s greatest advantage was bestowed by the British staff officer giving the brief?
High quality video making as always.
Love these videos!
I personally don't mind the vague scoring description, makes it feel more like a really operation to me. You know what your objectives are: take control of the 2 villages and exit B company by a certain time so you can keep the operation moving and on schedule... in light of that vague description only getting 1 of the 2 villages and B company not moving onward does seem like a major defeat to the operation as a whole. Getting a list of exact points for each thing feels a bit gamey, although I can see why people prefer it.
Well, yes and no. I don't think the problem was so much vague scoring as it was the aggressive time limit. "Take two villages and get a Coy off the map in 90 minutes" is a big ask, especially when it took 6 hours in the actual battle.
Mission briefings are a fine art though- having something more manoeuvrist that sets out the intent of the battalion would have been a bit more useful.
Hello Hapless, I feel like reconnaissance could've greatly sped up your progress in this mission. (Admittedly I've got lucky by taking out the IG-gun with a lucky round leaving the right flank open for a "mechanised" assault with the brencarriers). Would it be possible that you dedicate an episode to "Reconnaissance". Something along the line of "The patience to see" on the Bill Hardenberg er-Blog? (I know your episode on "Spotting", but this goes a little further with a recon plan and dedicated recon-units). I'll hope you have the time and interest to devote an episode on it. Keep up the great work!!
Yes. It's on the list, it's just a big subject so it's taking some time to consider thoroughly
@@usuallyhapless9481 great! Looking forward to it very much!
@@user-sk5pf7jv3r great suggestion. i never know how to use my mechanized scouts. they are too fragile in those tincans and get obliterated from distance just like poor chaps we've seen in the video.
a hapless loss to the A.I. is has hard to find has rooster teeth........ yes this campaign is bringing some painful memories to me... i have been watching your vids for years now and always wanted to see u in this campaign.... but the main one i wanted to see u try is the battle pack campaign for CMBS... charge of the Stryker brigade i think its called
not that i want to see u lose or anything ... but it does somehow ease the pain i felt in this campaign...
Thanks very much man. People keep recommending the Charge of the Stryker Brigade to me. Obviously I'll have to check it out at some point.
@@usuallyhapless9481 There is also a really cool stryker focused scenario on the map that you played the 8 wheeled handycap on. After playing it, I think I understand why you picked that map, it's basically the perfect terrain for the stryker infantry to beat back russian combined arms. If you're not up for another fulll CMBS campaign, maybe that could be a fun one of video :)
BTW the russian campaign in CMBS is also very interesting though that one also has some kind of cryptic mission briefings
The best movies.
Anyone have any idea when CMBN is hitting steam? Feel like it's taking forever.
The bottleneck has been tournament integration for Slitherine. That's now been patched into CMCW (for v1.06), Battlefront is going to run a larger scale test this coming week to double check it works- if that's ok, it can be easily added to CMBN and then it's up to Slitherine to get it onto Steam.
I played this campaign and found it really difficult. One way to speed up infantry fighting is to put squads into Brens and having them closing up to enemy infantry holding in buildings and fox holes. The light armour and MG on Brens are usually enough to deal with sole-infantry combat as in this scenario. This campaign is frankly not enjoyable to play with all those time limits. It does show how difficult breakthrough operations are without mechanised equipments.
Apart from the unfortunate objective misunderstanding this was another fairly successful infantry attack. You know, despite you constantly bemoaning the British Infantry's lack of firepower they seem to be holding their own fairly well.
This was hands down my least favourite mission of the whole campaign. I do not do well with attacking, aggressive time limits, and traversing large maps. Also it's emblematic of some of Paper Tiger's harsher practices with scoring, as you have discovered.
The next one feels worse :P
@@usuallyhapless9481 The video was excellent by the way, don't be disheartened. Like you I hit ceasefire and thought "I've done enough, surely?" 10 minutes later Was ranting and raving on the BFC forums...haha, good times.
It might just be American bias on my part but the British rifle squads really seem anemic when compared to their German and American counterparts. The Bren is fine (certainly better than the BAR) but they just don't seem to compare to American squads who get carried by their Garands and Germans who get carried by the MG42. In any case though this is a great series so far and an absolute ballbuster of a campaign.
This is common knowledge actually. The Commonwealth forces usually won because of tank, air, and artillery support to make up for the deficiencies in light infantry equipment. It seems this campaign may have been made artificially difficult just to provide a challenge.
@@karlhungus545 Honestly a really nice change of pace, many of the campaigns are trivial to get total victories on and only really start to become difficult when you obsess about limiting casualties or conserving ammo
No, British sections really are pretty anemic on the firepower front. This might be something that I'm just failing to adapt to: I feel a lot like I keep getting into the right positions, but don't have the firepower to follow through- which is a problem I probably wouldn't have with Garands.
Historically speaking, the British did have a lot of problems with infantry-armour coordination and 2ASH really did breakthrough here without armoured support... but it took them until 1500 and this mission finishes at 1040.
What's aggravating is that the Bren gunner is usually the first one to get a bullet. Which is quite frustrating because you have to waste valuable time retrieving the weapon during a section's progression, as it is indispensable in most theaters (esp. Monte Cassino).
@@chalkchalkson5639 Yah, this is as far as I got with this one. I had played CM too much, and when I ran into that MG bunker, I just didn't go back to it. IIRC, the Courage and Fortitude is 'unwinnable' when you hit a certain battle (narrow, on a hill, can't remember what it's called). There are several discussions about it on the BF site.
You seem to conserve your artillery support very frequently. Were the 15th Scot supposed to fight this much in Normandy with so little support?
Hard to say. Certainly the Battalion's organic mortars would have been limited by what they could bring in their carriers, but the 25pdr batteries would have stockpiled ammunition for prolonged support. There is a lot going on on this day though- 2 ASH have basically found a weakpoint in the German lines and there's fierce fighting happening on either flank which would have drawn in more artillery support.
When there are exit terrain objectives in a scenario, there are also units assigned that must exit. If any of those units do not exit by the end of the scenario, the program counts them as destroyed and they are added to the victory points calculation.