First Game of 2016 AAR

Well, there is not much of an AAR to write about my first game of 2016 because it went so badly for me that it didn’t lasted more than three turns after contact before I lost about or over 75% of my force.  So don’t expect much of a write up or a lot of pictures.

Curtis T ran a Cold War Commander (CWC) game at The Fantasy Shop in St. Charles, MO.  The back story of the scenario is Cold War goes hot in 1971 with the Soviets invading the West.  The game was set somewhere in Denmark with the Soviets pushing west and a mixed NATO force pushing east.  Steve H and Eddie M were running the Soviets and I was running the NATO force.  I am not entirely sure what the Soviets had for a force, but it appeared to have been eight T-64 tanks, four BMP-1 APCs with infantry, two ZSU-23-4 SPAAs, two forward artillery observers (FAOs), two HQ + one CO units, an armored tracked recce vehicle, and 4 or 6 off-board artillery pieces.  NATO forces were eight Chieftain MK1 tanks, four AMX30 tanks, four M113 APCs with infantry, two HQ + one CO units, one forward air controller (FAC), and two F-86 Sabers.

The game started off with units on blinds (the wood octagons on the table in one of the pictures) moving for positions.  I don’t know what the Soviet plans were, but they divided their force equally and went for both flanks of the game area.  I decided to drive the Chieftains up on my left flank (towards Eddie) because of the cover that was available instead of right flank, where Steve was moving.  I deployed the AMX30’s and M113’s to the center rear to try to protect the Chieftains advance from a flanking move and hopefully control the center with the AMX30’s decent gun range.

So have a few turns of moving blinds, Eddie and I made contact with each other.  Then on my turn, as CWC uses the traditional UGO-IGO system, Eddie used his two BMP1s’ Saggers in Op Fire to engage one of my Chieftains and damaged it, but unable to knock it out.  Steve fired two Saggers also and destroyed a Chieftain.  But as part of my turn I was able to destroy both of Eddie’s BMP1s with the Chieftains. 

During the Soviet turn, Eddie failed to call in their artillery on my Chieftains, but Steve’s FAO was able to call in multiple batteries, multiple times, and roll well enough to basically wipe out my Chieftain task force, so that of my force of eight Chieftains and one HQ, plus the CO, was reduced to only three Chieftains and the HQ.  Mostly this was Steve’s good rolling, but I deserve a lot of the blame as I didn’t know or remember that the artillery blast diameter was so freaking huge as it is 20cm or 8” across (this is what I get for playing too many games were artillery is not represented or poorly represented).  As part of this turn, Steve raced his tanks right in front of my blind containing the AMX30s so I could get side shots on them.  Unfortunately, I failed to remember that any units on a blind can’t do anything but move was part of a blind and that their actions are done once they come out of a blind.  So, I failed to get a good Op Fire on Steve’s tanks, plus on my next turn they came out of the blind and were not able to fire.   Basically my second turn I was a total wash as my Chieftains were not able to do much either.  Luckily, the second round for the Soviets was fairly uneventful as neither FAO was able to call artillery.

Turn three I was able to call in my F-86’s to attack Steve’s BMP1s, only damaging them, so really no effect as in CWC at the end of your turn, any hits go away that occurred in the opposing players turn.  The AMX30s killed one of Steve’s tanks, but nothing else.  On turn three Steve’s tanks pulled back and I engaged them again with Op Fire, but I don’t remember to what effect.  I had all of my AMX30s and M113s clumped together in a small batch of woods so an artillery blast radius could hit them all.  This was because when you deploy the units out of a blind, they are restricted to only being able to be placed up to 20cm from the blind (the same as an artillery template).  Also I failed to get enough commands to have moved the units after firing and then spread out to minimizing the number exposed to a blast template.  Steve successfully called in multiple batteries, multiple times, on their position.  Game end

So lessons learned in this CWC game: Spread units out to 10+cm in between each as much as possible if there is artillery on the opposing forces.

Before the artillery bombardment

After the artillery bombardment

Cheers

Sapper