Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm - School Teacher Planning

I'm restarting the "School Teacher" campaign again with an eye toward more deliberate planning and applying the lessons I've learned in playing the past week.

The balloon went up yesterday. Warsaw Pact formations stormed across the inter-German border as surprised NATO units scrambled to meet them. Gunther Schmidt's 151st Panzer Battalion was spared the bloodletting of the first day. Today, they and their colleagues of the rest of the 15th Panzer Brigade, 5th Panzer Division are to take and hold the town of Sandberg, and stop the Pact advance.

Intel indicates Warsaw Pact forces advancing on the town from the east. The enemy will likely stick to the roads, but which roads?  There are a number of possible avenues of attack.

Our objective is to take and hold Sandberg.  Units in the town might be on top of the objectives, but because of limited Line of Sight will give up our range advantage.  Worse, we're unsure as of yet as to the actual route the WP troops will take to attack Sandberg. 



Brigade intends to move our scarce recon assets into positions where they can observe three primary areas of interest that cover the two most likely enemy courses of action.  The Pact division moving this way will likely stick to the roads to speed their advance. The most likely course of action is an attack along the road leading from Windshausen to Sandberg.  Alternately, though less likely due to the distance involved, the enemy could move through Shonau an der Brend, Wegfurt, and Unterweissenbrunn and attack Sandberg from the north.

I'm therefore going to move a scout section to a covered position south of the Windshausen -> Sandberg road to observe the area marked "TAI."  A strong recon vehicle presence here, particularly followed up by tanks will indicate this to be the enemy main effort.  This Targeted Area of Interest is covered by the indirect fire capability of a battery of the brigade 120mm Mortar company.

To the north I'm going to move another scout section to watch a choke point along the Shonau -> Wegfurt -> Unterweissen route. I don't have any spare line units to back up these scouts yet, but I think this the less likely course of action, it will probably take the enemy longer to get here due to the longer route, and I know I'll have another Panzer company and Panzergrenadier company arriving around Oberweissenbrun soon. Finally, I plan on a long, covered flanking move by a third scout section to try and observe Windshausen and the surrounding area.  I suspect this will be about where the enemy support assets will be once the attack starts.

I've designated the town itself as Engagement Area Sand.  By positioning the tanks of 2/151 on the covered rise southwest of the town and the Panzergrenadiers of 2/152 on a wooded rise to the west, I hope to be able to ambush any enemy troops that enter the engagement area with long-range tank and ATGM fire. By keeping my forces to the southwest and west of town I should be positioned to counter any threat from either of the anticipated enemy courses of action until my reinforcements arrive.  By then, I should have enough recon data to know which course of action is the main effort, and can plan a counter attack to seize the objectives accordingly.

No comments:

Post a Comment