More Operation Husky

I'm really enjoying Battles in Italy. Enough so that I'm pretty sure I'll be picking up a number of the other SSG games using this engine. After playing enough to grasp the mechanics I started a new game to play all the way through the Operation Husky scenario.

Here are a few scenes from the first days of the invasion.

Book & Games: Operation Husky

It is, and has been stupidly cold here. Like Russian Winter cold. So cold that the thought of launching a game and looking at the snow covered steppes of the Ukraine makes me shiver. I need a vacation someplace warm!

Since work is far, far to busy for me to actually go anywhere, I've decided to take a virtual vacation to sunny Sicily, in July 1943. I've always wanted a chance to learn more about the Italian campaign so I picked up the very well regarded Bitter Victory by Carlo D'Este.

New Command Ops Scenarios

Chris from Sharp End Gaming has released the second in his trilogy of Stalingrad scenarios, Race for the Volga. Like Operation Hubertus I was fortunate to help play test this scenario and I can tell you, it's a great one. A definite change of pace from the attrition-heavy fighting of Hubertus, Race really is a race from both side to build up sufficient combat power in the right places to take/hold the high value objectives before the enemy does.

Meanwhile, Tim Williams has released a set of four scenarios called the Tactical Battles Series. These scenarios have a common map and set of objectives and are illustrative of different types of operations, e.g. Airborne, Armor, Line and Combined Ops. I haven't had a chance to play these yet but the idea looks great. I'll be downloading them tonight.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I got smoked again in the "Platoon Recon" mission in SBPro PE 3.0 again tonight. Twice!

SBPro PE 3.0 - Platoon Recon

I've become a great fan of the German Leopard 2 tank, particularly the Leopard 2A4 and 2A5. I decided to take a platoon of them out today for a spin. This mission is one of the stock single player missions called "Platoon Recon."

Misson FRAGO

Our job is to conduct a reconnaissance in force to Objective DACHS, destroying weak OPFOR forces and bypassing strong points. The truth is I'm better at commanding a virtual brigade or division than I am commanding a tank, but I'm hoping to play enough to get better.  Let's see how it goes...

Conflict of Heroes

I'm finding that years of computer wargaming have left me with a bit of a bias. I tend to think that for a wargame to be "serious" it has to look like something from 20 years ago and have the user interface of a hand-dug well. Anything that looks good and is easy to understand and play must be "light" and I tend not to buy the game.

Like Unity of Command, Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear proves how wrong that assumption is.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm - School Teacher Replay 1

The day is hot, humid and hazy as the tankers of 151st Panzer Battalion, 15th Panzer Brigade, 5th Panzer Division finish their briefing and crank their tanks to begin taking up positions. Somewhere to the east, Warsaw Pact forces in unknown strength are advancing toward them. The job of the 151st and their comrades in the rest of the brigade is to stop them at the village of Sandberg...

This is my second entry in my replay of the first scenario of the Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm West German campaign.  The first entry, which covered my planning for conducting recon and gathering intelligence on the enemy, is covered here.

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. 

The Importance of Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB)

One of my major failings as a virtual commander is that I'm so eager to get maneuvering and comes to grips with the enemy that I often fail to sufficiently plan and prepare for the engagement. In my younger days of primarily playing RTS style games this was fine. As I graduated to playing more serious conflict simulations though the cost of this recklessness was more and more lost games and failed scenarios.  The more I gravitated toward simulations actually used for training people responsible for fighting real wars, the more obvious it became that a "jump in and charge" approach wouldn't work.

Over the past few years I've tried to learn through reading and observation.  Recently, I've been fortunate enough not just to benefit from the experience of fellow bloggers, but to read Bil Hardenberger's excellent Battle Drill blog.  Bil has done a series of posts recently about recon, which culminated in a guest post from his friend Lieutenant Colonel Scott Coulsen, a serving armor officer in the US Army.  I should also mention the excellent advice of LTC Mark Gibson, also a serving officer in the Royal Australian Armored Corps.

Perhaps the most important thing I've learned from reading what these gentlemen have written is the importance of taking the time before the engagement to prepare by closely examining the terrain and developing an idea of the various courses of action that the enemy might use to reach his objectives.  Then, develop plans to discover and validate which plan he is executing, and only then develop a plan to counter his moves.  Unlike my standard approach of charging in, guns blazing, this means taking plenty of time up front to think things through, and then conducting thorough reconnaissance aimed at developing as full a picture of the enemy's movements and positions as possible prior to committing one's main effort.

Units from KG von Bassler conduct recon and screening for 14 Panzer near Taganrog

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm - School Teacher

This weekend I've felt the need for some 1980's NATO-Pact gaming.  I turned to Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, which is the current reigning champion for grand tactical simulation of this era. I really like the game engine in this sim, which features an innovative asymmetrical turn-based WEGO approach to simulate OODA loops.  I haven't been playing it as much as I'd like, and I mean to remedy that.

On Target Simulations have been great about issuing game updates, participating in forum discussions, and particularly in providing new scenario and campaign content.  Around US Thanksgiving, they made available a new West German campaign called "School Teacher."  Here's my AAR of the first mission of the campaign.

Three Views of Fall Blau: Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue - 2nd Kharkov Beginning

It was a long, bitterly cold Monday, and I need to get testing on Chris' Race to the Volga scenario for Command Ops, but I wanted to take a few minutes and get things introduced for the next entry in the "Three Views of Fall Blau" series.  In our second go around with 2nd Kharkov, I'll be playing Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue from VR Designs, published by Matrix.

DC:CB is a very different game than Unity of Command.  It is almost board game like in it's presentation, and definitely an old school wargame in most of it's approach.  There are some really unique things about it though that make it a real joy to play, assuming you're okay with moving lots and lots of counters.

Three Views of Fall Blau: Unity of Command - 2nd Kharkov

All of this playtesting Stalingrad scenarios for Command Ops has me interested in the entire campaign leading up to the massive battle itself.  Beyond reading Moscow to Stalingrad - Decision in the East I wanted to game the campaign to get an overall sense of events.  It seems I've been collecting games that allow me to do just that.  I have three different games that either have Case Blue as a scenario or are specifically focused on the German offensive of 1942.  Specifically, I have Unity of Command, Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue, and War in the East.

Each of these games is at a different scale and different level of abstraction.  Unity of Command is scaled at 20km per hex with four day turns; units are German divisions and Soviet Corps.  DC: Case Blue uses 10km hexes with two day turns, units are regiments and divisions.  War in the East has 10 mile hexes with weekly turns.  Units are divisions and corps.  Unity of Command is the most highly abstracted of the three, War in the East the most detailed and complex, and DC: Case Blue is also generally complex, though in ways different from WitE.

I then thought that it might be interesting, over the coming weeks and months, to play through the various scenarios and campaigns of these games covering the German offensive of 1942 and the Battle of Stalingrad/Operation Uranus itself and compare them.  All are great games with an eye toward historical accuracy.  I hope that playing through these campaigns will hone my skills with all three game engines the same way playing a lot of Command Ops has over the past few weeks.

While not part of the actual offensive itself, the prelude to Fall Blau is the Battle of 2nd Kharkov.  Let's start our series with this battle as depicted in Unity of Command's "Stalingrad Campaign."

Operation Hubertus - German AAR

For the past several days I've been mercilessly playtesting Chris' Command Ops East Front scenario Operation Hubertus from the German side.  I'm pleased to say that this is one of the most interesting and challenging Command Ops scenarios I've played.  This is not an easy scenario for the Germans; indeed I've yet to do better than a draw.  The complexity of the attacks, the need for excellent timing to allow the divisions to be mutually supportive, and the challenge of having to rotate units in and out of reserve to rest them while always feeling that you don't have enough troops to take that critical objective - well, I've learned more about both Command Ops and commanding multiple divisions in an attack than in just about anything else I've played.

Here then, is a complete AAR of the German side of Operation Hubertus.