Section Leaders:
  Fionn Kelly & Madmatt 

Reviewed By: Maastrictian

The views and opinions expressed here don't necessarily reflect those of the staff and management of CMHQ, they might, but we would never say that in public!

September 27, 2000

Just 3 Little Stuarts 
(Bob Cook) 
Played as Allies. A fun little battle, which does a great job
surprising you about how effective well placed Stuarts can be. In many
ways this is similar to Mr. Cook's other offering, Recon Meeting in the
Ardennes. Where Recon Meeting fails (its use of unlikely units and the
overpowered nature of the Allied side) this battle succeeds. Here the
Axis has sufficient force to do the job, especially units capable of taking
on a Stuart. The design of the map, specifically way the road goes
through the town, gives the Allies a subtle but useful advantage in a very
interesting way. As usual the Puma make an appearance here. This unit
makes it in to every recon battle I have ever seen (except one) and its
presence is annoying, but certainly not the end of the world. This one
might be a bit too easy as the Axis, but that's just speculation.

 The title vehicles

A Stuart goes to meet its maker
] 

Under the Noel Trees 
(Frank Radoslovich) 
Played as Allies. Victory flags are what the AI uses to figure out
what it should do. Unfortunately, this battle did not have any. The
German advance was subsequently very hesitant and there was really no
chance of the Germans exiting the map, even if I had not tried to stop
them. This scenario showed a lot of promise, the map is a bit dull, but
not too bad and the mission seems interesting with good historical
background. Unfortunately there are a couple of problems. The above
mentioned flag issue is the most important. Secondly, the default setup
for the Allies is pretty poor, troops set up in the open, stuff like that. 
The Allied and Axis briefings also need some work. This scenario needs a
revision, but after some work is done it should be quite good.

Capture of Balta 
(Dieter Fischer) 
Played as Allies. Lets go through the problems: There were no Axis
or Allied briefings. The briefing that was there gave very little
information. (Where and when was Balta? What did the Stuarts represent?
etc.) Many units started out of C&C and in just plain bad positions. 
Axis reinforcements came in horribly placed and were cut down by my
infantry. In short, this needs a lot of work.

7 Roads to Hell 
(Aaron S. Clark)
Played as Allies. This one was tough to decide about. An obviously
well researched battle that is rather innovative (I really like the idea of
fighting a delaying action to protect an unarmored column.) The Allied
OOB is mostly historically accurate (just a few changes made for game
balance) and the German OOB consists of a large number of panzer IVs and
only a few heavier tanks! There were some minor flaws however. For
instance some of the padlocked German units start out of command, always
annoying. My major complaint is a common flaw of historical scenarios:
lack of imagination with the map. While the gross details of the map are
historical (ridgelines, river towns and the like) the little touches that
make a map seem real are left out. The biggest such "touch" was some sort
of subtle contouring and elevation variations. The map was table-top flat
for large swaths. Additionally, small stands of scattered trees would have
been nice. 

German tanks emerge from the fog to menace an Allied column

A Traffic jam as Allied vehicles try to move past shattered panzers