My plan as blind zeus was based on the following assesment of enemy likely course of action:
Enemy was most likely to use routes 1/2 and attack along the roads. This could either be a fast mech. rush on route 1 or a slower push on route 2. Route 2 was the most likely considering the risks in option 1.
Option 3 was also possible. They would use infantry to screen the swamp while the vehicles support a bit behind.
Near the objective village the attack would take two edges of the town and then either edge would push into the town while the other would support.
MY ASSETS:
My initial assets:
4x recon squads split into:
2x marksmen teams
4x recon teams
2x atgm teams
2x HMG teams
3x BMD-2
6x squads that I split into:
3x at-teams
3x mg-teams
6x rifleman teams
My first reinforcements:
3x squads
1x Bmd-2 (to replace a bugged out vehicle from the initial forces, maybe?)
Counterattack forces:
9x motorized squads in btr-80
5 or 6x tank destroyers
MY PLAN:
Initially I wanted to have the ATGM and HMG teams set up in defense right at the beginning. There were excellent enfilade firing positions on all avenues of approach. These positions were in good defilade towards the enemy assaulters on their respective flanks. However, I was only allowed to have one atgm moved there so I ditched the whole thing as no mutual support was to be had. I instead setup a thin defence there. Consisting of rifleteams (1), Marksmen teams (2), and some reserve rifleteams (3). The idea was to find enemy attack routes with the riflemen, harass with marksmen and mortar. The idea was to get atleast the marksmen and some of the riflemen away alive to the second line. If the enemy chose to bypass these, they were going to be used as asscrackers. The recon platoon had no AT weapons.
The second line was a tougher line. I made an L-shaped defence mostly oriented towards the eastern road/forest. On both the roads I made a point where I tried to concentrate multiple AT-systems to a single position. Each killbox was planned to have 1 atgm, 1-AT team in the box, one BMD-2 to watch the road up to the killbox, one at-team in reserve backward of the killbox. The MG and HMG teams were setup so that they could fire in support along all of the sides, in front of the rifle-teams and into the killboxes. All the rifleteams were setup in such a way that enemy infantry had to engage them from the sides or walk right on top of them. Rifleteams were in defilade for attackers coming directly at them and could be supported with enfilading HMG and MG fire. Mortar was planned to be used to delay and cause as much casualties during the phase as we could. Mortar and MG fire were planned to engourage pushing on with vehicles and less with dismounts. This could maybe cause more casualties to vehicles since they weren't screened.
Above picture shows the killbox at the eastern edge. 1,2,3 were the AT-team, ATGM and BMD-2, that I wanted to concentrate. 4 was the reserve section that was supposed to be used when the enemy started to push through the box. For this flank I added the second BMD-2 as there was a good road to a firing position that would add even more AT capability if needed. Orange numbers 5 and 6 shows the MG and HMG that were used for enfilading fire.
This above picture shows the western killbox. 1-3 were AT, 4 was reserve AT, 5-6 were enfilading HMG and MG.
This above picture shows the Infantry screen setup in defilade. And the enfilading MG and HMG firing lines in orange.
The last phase was to try and delay until the reinforcements came. My idea was to try and retreat some of the forces back around the village and in to the village (1). If we could hold some edge of the town or the forest edge (2), we would be able to dismount the reinforcing platoons in the cover of the forest or the town (3). We could then sweep through in force around or in the town.
Overall I think the plan was a good one and the problems lay in the execution.
ISSUES in EXECUTION:
Delay phase with the recon went ok. We did delay the enemy. We did not manage to retreat most of the forces. This was in part due to issues with controlling some troops initially. Also our smoke usage was not on point. I dont know how effective mortar was at this phase.
The strong line phase went ok. We had trouble with the ATGM since their positioning differed from the plan. They did take out at least one vehicle. The HMG had infinite ammo with scripts, I do not know if Nurmi (missionmaker) held back using them due to that. I wanted to expend all of the ammo. We had trouble with setting up the MG team on the eastern edge, I think the western one could have been used more, its positioning was good.
We expended all the mortar ammo, this was partly due to a bug/mistake. This had the desired effect of putting the dismounts back in, at least somewhat. We were not able to capitalize on this as much as I wanted. Our reserve BMD-2 was supposed to move to firing position when mortar was hitting the enemy but it got stuck and remained so for the game.
When the enemy tried to push the swamp line, we managed a counterattack that killed a single squad. AT team was near, but it did not fire.
We had trouble moving the initial reserves due to issues with waypoints on some zeuses. The later reinforcements should not have been pushed so far by me. Instead they should have been used to secure the route for our final reinforcements. This was the biggest mistake of the plan. This was however a difficult thing to know since I had no idea timewise when any of the reinforcements would show. When the initial reinforcements came,
I should have altered the plan and begin to work towards supporting the coming counterattack.
The retreat phase went not so good. We almost totally failed in retreating any meaningful forces during this time. I did manage to bring back two BMD-2. We did not get back enough AT capable inf. And some of it got wasted due to bad movements and bad smoking.
The counterattack phase went bad. The BMD-2's I managed to retreat, the other I routed badly into enemy and the other went to close to enemy in its support of the dismount area. This phase was once again delayed by technical issues with the spawned vehicles. We lost the dismount area just as we were dismounting. After this we had to try and attack through the forest. We were unable to combine infantry and vehicle movements in such a way as to suppress both, enemy vehicles and infantry that had gotten to the edges of the town and forests.
Overall I feel that we need to keep playing more and try and keep finding/fixing technical issues and gameplay issues related to blindzeus usage. We also need to gather more experience and routine in controlling troops in fast paced missions. We have come a long way from the situation where this type of gameplay was a year back.
