Cold war moderns game report

The East Germans have moved into their first town across the border in West Germany. The vehicles are GHQ T72s and BMP2s.

GHQ T64s (a very nice model) passing by a town on the right flank. They were used to protect against any counter attack by NATO forces, but ended up hiding behind the town when the Apache helicopters turned up in the next move.

These revealed themselves and opened up at short range onto the NVA T72s who have moved past the smoke screen of their smoke dischargers. Most of the M60s were positioned quite far forward and were dug in (like these ones).

This shows an overview after about 6-7 game turns. The Warpact forces had been advancing quite cautiously and were still to reach the halfway mark and the field defences. The recce forces have reached the middle of the table and the minefields.

The Warsaw pact forces are advancing slowly and prefer to have a long range shooting match with the Nato forces. Meanwhile the East German attack has stalled as the T72 Company failed its moral check.

Helicopters support arrives to the surprise of the Warpact players who didnt expect to encounter helicopters (and had their AA support of SA13s too far back to help). The NATO players had purchased a flight of Apaches and planned to use them as long range AT weapons. There was some debate about whether or not they are vulnerable when launching missiles so the Nato player used laser designators to launch missiles while the Apaches stayed out of sight.

None of us have used minefields much in the past so we spent a bit of time reading this section of the rules. The Soviets had a single mine clearing vehicle with 3 shots (Electric mine clearer) and a company of engineers. The engineers proved valuable, as they were able to clear a path through the minefield in 2 turns.

The engineers had cleared a 4 element wide gap and the soviets were streaming through under the covering of their fading smoke screen, A company of infantry has dismounted from their BMPs and are following the Engineers through the gaps.

The road between the minefields was cratered so the engineers MTLB (with dozer blades) filled in the crater. The Dragon team nearby wasn't paying attention and the engineers were able to do this without been fired on. Then a platoon of BMPs dashed through and into the village but lost one to a Dragon missile. After the game I realised I need to convert some of my MTLBs to the engineer version.

The recce sections scouts had dismounted before the forest and walked through a hidden minefield and managed to exit the other side safely.

Here's another photo of the NVA BMP2s that have entered a town. You can also see the ACAV M113 in the bottom of the picture.

At this point we ran out of time but the game was well poised. The WARPACT forces had broken through the first line of defences and caused heavy casualties but the East Germans had suffered heavy losses doing so. They were also vulnerable to the Strikers on the hill.

The main Soviet mechanised infantry forces have dismounted from their BMPs and are crossing through the gaps cleared in the minefields. As you can see there is a bit of a bottle neck, and the are vulnerable to artillery strikes as the smoke screen is starting to clear.

This picture show the furthest foward that the main NVA forces got. The T72 company had most of their tanks destroyed and the rest were waiting of new orders, which kept getting jammed.

One of the players town, which is very nice and was painted and based by Timecast.

The Soviets had a flight of Mig23s providing air support however they were beaten off by US F16s. For WRG you pay for different air superiority levels and roll each turn to see who controls the skies. The Soviet players did get to attack thee Apaches when they were on table but they missed!

WARPACT
The "plan was to form up the infantry on the far side of the minefield, covered by BM-21 smoke, then attack toward the autobahn (within 1500m). Confronting them would have been Scimitars and Scorpions I understand, that were situated on a cross road/rail we had earlier registered as a BM-24 target. With no opposing infantry I think our chances of reaching the autobahn were reasonable. However, by the time we packed up, no clear result had been achieved."

NATO
"We were going to shoot and scoot after a fashion but:
1) We kept on getting knocked out after our first shots - I haven't seen so many 6's and 5's thown for a while
2) The US ACAV's approach of firing smoke from its single 4.2" mortar doesn't work in the rules - you can't fire smoke from one heavy mortar barrel. In fact. the single mortar seemed worthless, and yet that's exactly how the US uses it's mortar in the ACAV platoons

There were two luck artillery shots, one onto the dug-in British infnatry platoon in their shelter tunnel, and one on the MLRS. On reflection we should have had the shelter tunnel in the middle of nowhere behind the town, and the men could have moved in using the communication trenches. It loses the element of surprise but is safer. Also, we should 'shoot and scoot' with the MLRS, they were our only artillery and too valuable to lose - there were plenty of opportunities available and one shot into those troop concentrations and it was all over.

I thought we did well, we were always going to be overwhelmed frontally and the M60A3's and M901 TOW were there to pick off the enemy when they appeared at battle ranges. We had very poor terrain, there was nowhere to go turret-down for the M901's which made them too vulnerable, and we didn't want to deploy near the Strikers in case they attracted fire. The Scorpions and Scimitars were set up to shoot into the flanks of anyone who penetrated the minefields. We did enough damage with direct fire alone to repulse several companies. The Apache helicopters didn't kill much but forced some tactical errors (splitting the T64's) which let to Soviet casualties, and the 5 elements added to the Soviet side when one was shot down was largely irrelevant.

The final infantry attack Steve P was lining up after the minefields had been breached probably would have reached the autobahn eventually, but canister from the Scorpions and 30mm HE from the Scimitars would have caused heavy casualties. These were dug in too so it would have been hard for RPG's to have hit them.

Bogged on the minefields, as we had planned!"