[OOC] Spearhead in the Gap; A WWIII war game (1985)

[Gunther]

We'll wait for @CaptainBritton to post in the IC, then @Landain, then I will continue on to turn 7.

[Gunther]

I now have 29 US dice rolls and 46 DDR dice rolls. As soon as Landain posts, I will continue with Turn 7.

[Gunther]

I will post in the IC thread, then @CaptainBritton, @Landain and then myself again.

I have another RP I am tracking and need to keep up with.

I hope this has been fun for both of you. It has been for me, but it has been more work than I expected too. I hope to have a simple written After Action Review (AAR) when we are done; something I can use for future roleplays like this one.

[Gunther]

My apologies for letting this die. I had not intention of letting that happen. This experiment was more of a fact finding operation than anything else. If you would both permit me, I would like to conduct an After Action Review (AAR). This is an opportunity to write your comments about the conduct of the RP/War Game. Maybe I can improve on the process or change it in anyway.

I must post the ending results of the game. I realize @CaptainBritton wanted to send a vehicle into the woods to see what if any units slid in past his left flank, but I know they would have never made it. But since, those tanks were moving through open or wooded terrain, their movement would have been slowed down. The Americans could have pulled a company (+) out of their positions and moved west along the road network in an attempt to block anything moving along the northern edge of the board. If CaptainBritton had done that, he would have found seven (7) East German T-80s survived the engagement from an original battalion.

The game system employs a point system to determine who wins. For this scenario. The US Player gets one point for every East German (step) eliminated. Since the US eliminated 29 units (steps). That provides the US with 29 Points. The US could have received an additional 10 points for having no East German units exit the west edge of the board. I realize we never ended it, but without some movement west by the US to stop East German movement, I know that based on the game system, they would have exited the map in two to three turns which is less than 12 turns. The East Germans receive 2 points for every US step eliminated which provides the East Germans with 24 points. Also, the East German player receives an additional 2 points per step for any units exiting the west edge of the board. Assuming we finished the scenario, five East German steps would have made it, providing @Landain with an additional 10 points. This establishes the final score as US: 29 v. DDR: (24 + 10 = 34) and Landain Won the game!

Honestly, I find it hard to believe the East Germans won this game. But that is how the rules determined the outcome. Only two platoons plus half of a third survived from the East German side. They lost 75% of their force. But the rules award two points to the Warsaw Pact per step and only one point to the NATO side per step they eliminate. If I did not award the extra 10 points to the Warsaw Pact, the US player would have won 29 to 24. That makes the most sense.

I also noted, the ATGM systems on both sides; TOW & Spiggots had the best effect for Anti-Tank fire. The East Germans could not hit anything at range because all the US vehicles were dug in at Hull defilade. Once they 1500 meters or closer away, they were able to hit the US vehicles. Naturally, the IFVs were easier targets than the tanks.

After Actions Review

1. Need a more detailed list of questions to ask the participants in order to gain specific detail on how the commander wants to deploy his forces and what actions to take on contact.

Warsaw Pact Forces

1. Leaders lead from the front, not from the rear. Usually, they place one subordinate element in front of them and the remainder of their command behind them. They may even travel with the lead subordinate commander. In WWII, LTC Creighton Abrams was always in the lead element as, he traveled with the lead platoon of his battalion. I know the first author who commanded the East Germans chose to place his HQ-1 in the trail of the formation. Landain did not do this. He positioned his HQ-1 behind his A Company for the road march.

2. The Recce Company can call in artillery on its own and doesn’t require guidance from the BC to deploy, return fire or move in another direction. They can operate independently.

3. The Observation Post (OP) assigned to the Field Artillery battery will provide the most responsive actions from the FA battery. This unit should be near the front, if not traveling with either the BC or the Recce company.

NATO Forces

1. Try to keep the platoons of each company together. They at least need to be able to see one another. If the company commander can see his platoons, they are faster at responding to his instructions.

2. The use of Target Reference Points (TRPs) will help to gain faster response from FA units. You can have more than one if you like. Starting with six to ten is good. Every fire mission after that becomes a TRP.

Questions

1. Did my attempts at maintaining the fog of war detract from the roleplay?
2. Were the map images I sent sufficient I depicting the situation as it changed?
3. Did the battle change too fast, so you did not know where the units moved from to get to where they were in the update?
4. Did the Private Messages detract or help from the wargaming aspect of the game/RP?
5. Is this game, appropriate to use as a tool for deciding the outcome of encounters?

I recently purchased a new game that I am considering using for an encounter such as this in the future. But I don’t know if I would use it for this. It would work for fictional vehicles used in Nation Roleplay, but not for real world historical vehicles.

Please include any observations you would like to include from your experience with this Roleplay / War Game.

[Gunther]

I used the rules for Assault! in this game, but I am going to use the rules for FATE Core System in the future.

[CaptainBritton]

Duly noted. I really enjoyed this. It was quite fun to have something that made me challenge myself and think about unit positioning, maximum effective ranges, etc. Particularly I loved the touches added on the personality traits of the subordinate commanders. It really made the units come to life for me, as if every man under my command was a real person which would act in different ways and respond in different fashions. I had a lot more IC posts in mind for my side, but ultimately I didn't end up writing out most of the scenes I imagined.

As for the questions.

1. I feel the fog of war somewhat made it difficult to write IC posts without revealing too much. However, it also was a challenge that I was happy to tackle, and overall I think for the betterment of the system, the strict maintaining of fog of war should be kept.

2. At first, the maps were a bit difficult to decipher, but with the improvement of camera quality, so too did my awareness of the battlefield improve. Though, in the real field I imagine you have to work with what you have, and if your map sheet isn't perfect, you make do.

3. I was aware where all of my units were for the majority if not the entire battle. Granted it was much easier as the defending player. I had a bit of a hard time discerning where some enemy units were at times. However, it didn't matter very much as my Abrams and TOWs acted as a literal delete button for everything that showed itself anyways.

4. The Private Messages were integral to maintaining OPSEC and the fog of war, and thus I feel enhanced the experience, as I was able to observe the actual happenings of the battlefield in a report-styled structure.

5. I feel as if the game goes to great length to model realistic encounters, albeit I'm a little bit skeptical of its scoring system for victory points. From the range values done for each individual weapon to the recreation of actual unit structures, it was quite pleasing to work with, if a little bit daunting at first.

As for the East German victory: While the First Battalion, 33rd Armored Regiment is now cut down to size, we effectively neutered the East German advance. Any breakthrough beyond that point would probably be hard pressed to push on to Frankfurt-am-Main any time soon. This battle's exact definition was a Pyrrhic victory. The quote attributed to Pyrrhus himself comes to mind: "Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone."

[Gunther]

... it didn't matter very much as my Abrams and TOWs acted as a literal delete button for everything that showed itself anyways.

@CaptainBritton

Amen! Ain't that the truth.

As for the East German victory: While the First Battalion, 33rd Armored Regiment is now cut down to size, we effectively neutered the East German advance. Any breakthrough beyond that point would probably be hard pressed to push on to Frankfurt-am-Main any time soon. This battle's exact definition was a Pyrrhic victory. The quote attributed to Pyrrhus himself comes to mind: "Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone."

@CaptainBritton

I couldn't have said any better myself. There is a footnote, I must state. The game, "Assault!" has no rules for Close Air Support (CAS) which I think it is sorely lacking. Although hte presence of US A-10s was invisible, the Soviet built SU-25 was heavily felt. I believe, the early American casualties were attributable to the Frogfoot's performance. The scoring rules would not have considered that. In which case, the two or four steps of American units lost to Soviet CAS would have handed the victory over to the Americans. The only thing that got past the Americans was a company(-) of T-80s. They would have eventually run out of fuel, run out of ammo and/or gotten taken out by a rear echelon force or friendly air attacks.

Thank you very much for your input. I appreciate this. Let's see what @Landain has to say. He hasn't been on in a while.

[Landain]

This was fun. I had no illusions I would win as the Warsaw Pact commander. When I noticed I would have to fight past a battalion of M1 tanks, it would be challenging at best. I thought maybe if I massed my formation, online in the open terrain, I had the best chance of pushing maybe a few survivors to the right past the left most American unit, but even that was not enough. I didn’t expect my dismounted infantry to be abandoned in the town of Ansbach. I also was not surprised by the effectiveness of the M1 Abrams main gun or the TOW missiles. I was happy to see the Soviet Spiggot missiles were just as effective and tried to make as good use of those as I could. I could see in the dice rolls it was tough because the M1s were dug in. It meant I was shooting at turrets only. But I think it was the CAS that had more effect than the T-80s.

I realize this was more of a probe than an actual assault, but the Soviet doctrine called for attacks of three to one rather than force on force as we had here. I think if I had two armor and a mech infantry battalion assaulting, it may have been decidedly more in my favor. I was surprised the A-10s, F-15s, or F-16s didn’t show up. Gunther mentioned they were flying around in the area in the IC thread. Why didn’t American CAS show up? There were plenty of targets to shoot at.

Regarding the questions…

1. The Fog of War did help to give that feeling of not knowing what was in front of me. I knew there were Americans out there. It could have been one company, two companies, Mech infantry or even an older tank; the M60A3. When I knew it was a battalion of M1s, I knew it was over, but that’s information I did not have at the outset of the game. At that point, I just had to make the best of it. I knew my T-80s were merely targets for the US player. I considered employing smoke, but US M1 Gunners use the thermal sights as their primary which makes smoke irrelevant. It would have had the same effect as a very large sheet of glass.

Did Gunther’s attempts at preserving the Fog of War hinder gameplay? He could have put the responses in the IC thread, maybe even in hiders. As long as CaptainBritton and I could read what was there and not allow it to influence our future actions or refrain from looking, it would be OK. But that takes some serious trust issues. Using the Private Messages (PMs) communicate was probably the best means of communication.

2. The map images I saw were fantastic. Could it have been better if you (Gunther) used operational graphics rather than photographing the little cardboard chits? The hex identifiers did make it easier to identify locations of friendly and enemy units.

3. I’m not sure what you are asking here. I knew how my unit was moving and it appeared the US units didn’t move at all. I think if a US unit had moved and Gunther stated it moved, that would have resolved any issues here.

4. The PMs helped a lot to preserve the Fog of War. The resporting system worked as far as putting it in a format of a message from subordinate commanders and listing the results of dice rolls.

5. This game was great for this scenario/war game. I loved it. I would love to do it again. Not sure I would be able to with work going on.

The FATE system. I have seen that in use. I think it would be great for use I a wargame, if the players were using units, equipment and vehicles of their own creation, either basead on real stuff or not. The Fate dice are kind of based more on events resulting in average ways and only rarely being very good or very bad. You would need to assign some good Die Roll Modifiers on player created junk rather than based on historical performance of this stuff.

Overall, a very good experience. I don’t care what the rules say, hats off to CaptainBritton for melting my T-80s on contact.

[Gunther]

I was happy to see the Soviet Spiggot missiles were just as effective and tried to make as good use of those as I could.

@Landain

Yes, the TOW has a longer range, but both systems required a flat base roll of 8 to hit. It put the ATGMs on a similar footing.

Why didn’t American CAS show up? There were plenty of targets to shoot at.

@Landain

@CaptainBrittonCan you respond to this? Personally, I think he wanted to use them on a location where he didn’t know your tanks were located at and was unsure where to send them. Your units were moving and his subordinate were hitting your units. Since CAS is not part of the original game, I would have allowed for the pilot to seeing the units move and adjust their aim up to more than a few hexes away. Four hexes equals one kilometer. It would not have been too difficult an adjustment for the pilot to hit something that moved a kilometer away.

Did Gunther’s attempts at preserving the Fog of War hinder gameplay? He could have put the responses in the IC thread, maybe even in hiders. As long as CaptainBritton and I could read what was there and not allow it to influence our future actions or refrain from looking, it would be OK. But that takes some serious trust issues. Using the Private Messages (PMs) communicate was probably the best means of communication.

@Landain

Personally, I think this might have worked. I would not have wanted to read the hiders for Britton as it would ruin the perspective of the game for me.

Could it have been better if you (Gunther) used operational graphics rather than photographing the little cardboard chits? The hex identifiers did make it easier to identify locations of friendly and enemy units.

@Landain

I actually thought of using operational graphics and tried to that for CaptainBritton early in the game. But honestly, it was so much easier to use the cardboard chits. Chalk that up to laziness. I would prefer operational graphics.

I’m not sure what you are asking here. I knew how my unit was moving and it appeared the US units didn’t move at all. I think if a US unit had moved and Gunther stated it moved, that would have resolved any issues here.

@Landain

This question was more for Britton than for you.

This game was great for this scenario/war game. I loved it. I would love to do it again. Not sure I would be able to with work going on.

@Landain

Cool. I might do it with player created equipment. Maybe a different time period or not using vehicles; light infantry or even musket or sword based infantry.

The FATE system. I have seen that in use. I think it would be great for use I a wargame, if the players were using units, equipment and vehicles of their own creation, either based on real stuff or not. The Fate dice are kind of based more on events resulting in average ways and only rarely being very good or very bad. You would need to assign some good Die Roll Modifiers on player created junk rather than based on historical performance of this stuff.

@Landain

I actually calculated the percentages of the dice results as follows:

Outcome Occurences Percentage
-4 1 1.2%
-3 4 4.9%
-2 10 12.3%
-1 16 19.8%
0 19 23.4%
+1 16 19.8%
+2 10 12.3%
+3 4 4.9%
+4 1 1.2%

But the only problem for use on the forum, is it appears to be 4d3. Each die has three equally occur result and you use four of them. But 4d3 provides results of 4 - 12 which means you would have to use 4d3 - 8 which would give you -4 to +4. Or tip the scale up to 4 - 12 using 4d3 as follows:

Outcome Score
Legendary 8 (16)
Epic 7 (15)
Fantastic 6 (14)
Superb 5 (13)
Great 4 (12)
Good 3 (11)
Fair 2 (10)
Average 1 (9)
Mediocre 0 (8)
Poor -1 (7)
Terrible -2 (6)
Horrendous -3 (5)
Catastrophic -4 (4)

Using this chart, we allow DRMs up to +4 which would allow the extremely rare outcome of a roll of +4 + 4 = 8 or Legendary. A roll of 0 + 4 would still give a character (unit) a roll of 4 which is Great. By using 4d3, we could still use the results chart above, using the numbers in parenthesis. 4d3 would serve the same purpose, giving results of 4 - 16 with the allowance of DRMs up to +4.

Are you familiar with the FATE Core system, @CaptainBritton? I think this is a better system and wouldn’t need so much detail in maintaining the Fog of War. It could still be preserved as long as we identify what each word above means or translates into game/Roleplay terms.

[Gunther]

Also, in PvP or force on force contests, the outcome is decided a bit differently. If CaptainBritton rolls a 14 (12 +2) and Landain rolls a 10 (no DRM), hte difference of the two rolls (14 - 10 = 4) which would give the outcome a Great rather than a Catastrophic -4 (4) which is below the average line.

[CaptainBritton]

On the topic of CAS, the enemy columns more often than not disintegrated before I could designate targets for my two A-10 strikes. Otherwise, I didn't even consider loosing the CAS about three quarters into the game I believe but by that point almost everything was over with.

As for FATE, I'm unfamiliar with it, but that's most dice or tabletop systems for me, at least the non-Warhammer ones. As for alternative ideas no matter the system, Napoleonic line warfare definitely appeals, albeit I'd be willing to do practically any wargame so long as you were running it @Gunther.

[Landain]

Fate allows you to roll dice and not have to worry about hiders and fog of war. You RP with the Thread Moderator and can negotiate about how things will turn out. The dice aren't absolute.

[Gunther]

As for FATE, I'm unfamiliar with it, but that's most dice or tabletop systems for me, at least the non-Warhammer ones. As for alternative ideas no matter the system, Napoleonic line warfare definitely appeals, albeit I'd be willing to do practically any wargame so long as you were running it.

@CaptainBritton

OK. So this is the idea I was running through my head. I will post a price list for Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery units from a European-esque setting from the early 19th century in a fictional world. You as the player will be given a total value of money to use to buy units. Obviously, it is a Napoleonic era flavor. The units will have inherent firepower and a constant movement rate. I would use Regimental sized units, with two or three battalion sized subordinate units. Each player (author) would control a Brigade sized element containing three or four infantry regiments, a cavalry regiment and one or two artillery batteries. Your units will then receive DRMs both + and - depending on what you choose as the player. There MUST be negatives in order to have positives. Positives will outnumber the negatives, but there has to be a weakness.

I want to use morale as a factor in the gameplay, where units that are fired upon will have to roll a morale check. If the unit passes, they stand and fight. If they fail, the run. If an adjacent unit (battalion) runs from a morale check, that unit will have to undergo a morale check too. This way, one whimpy battalion, could cause an entire Brigade to run from the battlefield. It is realistic. I've seen it happen in historical readings. But yes, Napoleonic or USCW would be good venues to play on, but it would be fictional. It is like a Roleplay Landain was in earlier this year: Battle of the Nations.

We can use the FATE Core system to resolve combats with this. I have a few hexagonal maps from other games that I could use for this or we could agree to use Google Maps. We would need to establish the footprint of a regiment and/or a brigade as well as a battery of artillery, just to know how much space is taken up by friendly and enemy units.

You know I have units already cretaed that I could use to play the bad guys. Maybe do this the way TJByrum did and have an NPC bad guy fignting against our player created units. @Landain could use his Friedrich Brigade of hte Halldorian Empire.