Dawn's Early Light: Red Hammer - Setup

Beginning a game of Dawn's Early Light: Red Hammer:

Overall view of the map at setup

Sticks and Stones from Tiny Battle Publishing

Today I had a chance to try a game of Sticks and Stones from Tiny Battle Publishing. Tiny Battle is a new wargame publisher specializing in print-on-demand and print and play games. They're a sister company to Flying Pig Games, and one of the benefits of this is that Tiny Battle publishes games from designer (and owner of Flying Pig Games) Mark H. Walker.

A US Company Team sets up to defend Gersbach

Tal Division at Rafah - June 5, 1967

Continuing my study of the Arab-Israeli conflicts of the last half of the 20th century, I picked up Middle East '67 from John Tiller Software. I've actually had this title for my Android tablet for awhile, but hadn't played it much. I think the PC versions are superior in any case.

For a first try, I decided to play scenario 67_05: Gaza and Beyond. This scenario depicts the attack of the Tal Division on the fortified area of Gaza around Rafah Junction on June 5th, 1967. This attack was a necessary prelude to the attack into the Sinai.

Jump-off positions of Tal Division. All of the 202 Parachute Brigade is fixed at the start, as is Baron Force (blue symbol backgrounds) 

Battle Lab - Mission Planning

A combined and (slightly) condensed version of my series of posts using Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm to illustrate OACOK style mission planning is up as part of the Battle Lab section at Grogheads.

Many thanks to Brant and crew for allowing me to write for them!

Hunting Bears - The Battle for Buchholz

This is a continuation of a series of posts using Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm to illustrate the use of the Military Decision Making Process in planning and conducting a battle in a wargame. At no time should anyone be under the illusion that I claim to have sufficient grasp of this that I could lead actual troops in so much as a barbecue. This is how I use these tools for gaming. The first post in this series is here. The second post is here.

In my first two post I examined terrain analysis via OCOKA and an abbreviated process for identifying enemy Courses of Action (COAs). This led to the development of a plan for the deployment of the forces I would have on hand at the beginning of the battle. As we saw in my second post, taking the time to do this planning upfront allow the elements of an US infantry battalion to render a Soviet Tank Regiment combat ineffective in about 30 minutes of fighting.

Remnants of a Soviet Tank Regiment at Holm-Seppensen

Hunting for Bears - The First Hour

This is a continuation of a series of posts using Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm to illustrate the use of the Military Decision Making Process in planning and conducting a battle in a wargame. At no time should anyone be under the illusion that I claim to have sufficient grasp of this that I could lead actual troops in so much as a barbecue. This is how I use these tools for gaming. The first post in this series is here.

At the end of my last post things were just about to kick off in the battle for Buccholz. Before we crank the track engines though, let's take a quick look at a couple more concepts useful for planning: Engagement Areas and Future Ops.

Planning map with Engagement Areas and future plans marked.

Planning for Hunting Bears

It's been a very busy few weeks this month! Today is the first day since returning from Origins that have had the time and energy to blog. When I can, I'll blog some about the fantastic time I had at Origins. Today, though, I want to apply some of what I learned at Origins, specifically from the wonderful Staff Wargaming sessions run by Dr. James Sterrett and Mark Graves (USA Retired).

Specifically, I'm going to apply the planning approach we used during these sessions to the first US campaign scenario from Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. I'm partial to doing this with Flashpoint Campaigns because it's really perfect for this sort of planning. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Jim Snyder and Rob Crandall of On Target Simulations at Origins and discussing the game with them as well as using it during the Staff Wargaming sessions. I'm going to run through the process of terrain analysis using OCOKA, develop several potential enemy Courses of Action (COAs) and then plan my defense based on those COAs. To begin with, lets get an overview of the battlefield.

An overview of the battlefield in Google Earth. The Soviets will be advancing from east of Buchholz toward the western edge of the map on the route to Bremen. Note that the game map stops on an east-west line just south of Schierhorn-Tostedt.

A Light Infantry Assault

Yesterday I felt the need for a change of pace away from WW2 East Front gaming. Deciding it was high time I became more familiar with the ARMA III editor, I decided to attempt to create a simple mission reflecting an assault by a Light Infantry squad against a prepared position.

An overview of the map and the mission. This is my first run through of the mission outside the editor and at Regular difficulty.

I like the new editor. It is familiar to me from Arma II and Iron Front, but overall seems less clunky. There are a number of features to really help streamline mission creation. I suspect that after I've had a chance to practice a bit more with it, I could knock out a pretty complete simple mission in under an hour.

Chong Ju: Firepower Demo

I found this cool video today of an Australian firepower demo.

Very impressive! This makes me want to go play Steel Beasts!

Video: Combat Engineers I - Arma 3

This weekend I finally managed to carve out some time to start playing Arma III. The upside is that this is a fantastic sim. The downside is that it's been so long since I played Arma II that I've forgotten almost everything.

What drew me in was JC's latest mission. I gave it a try last night. Note that this is my first time commanding any other troops in the game.

WinSPMBT On Sale & Patched

After a few years of waffling over this game I grabbed WinSPMBT during Shrapnel Games current sale. It isn't a huge sale, but every little bit helps.

The tutorial is not quite 73 Easting, but pretty close

Death of a T-80 Platoon

Tonight's screenshot brought to you by Camp Hornfelt. A T-80 platoon advancing across a valley destroyed in seconds by an overwatching section of my M1A1 HA platoon. Note the smoke in the background from one of many artillery missions I used to support my successful completion of this mission.

Video: Steel Beasts - Camp Hornfelt Mission 4

I'm continuing to work through the Camp Hornfelt scenarios. The next one in the series, mission 4, concerns the tank platoon in a support by fire/overwatch role.

In this mission I must lead 1st platoon of CT Anvil as we first move to our forming up point, then move into a support by fire position. From there we need to suppress or destroy the enemy vehicles as other platoons in the CT move to assault the objective. Finally, I need to move my platoon through the objective and take up a position on the far side, once opposition in the objective has been eliminated.

Steel Beasts Pro PE: Camp Hornfelt - Destroy an Inferior Force

I'm still learning how to be semi-effective with tanks in Steel Beasts Pro PE. Fortunately there are some great training missions out there, not the least of which are "Gary Owen's" Camp Hornfelt missions. Tonight I did a run through of mission 2, Destroy an Inferior Force.

Video: A Little Taste of Combat

I went easy on myself tonight and played a very easy SBPro PE mission called "A little taste of combat." The last video seems to have been popular so here's another one documenting my charge through a small desert village and subsequent shooting up of an unsuspecting armored column.

I'll probably start narrating these soon, when I get to the point of having something intelligent to say!

Video: Between a River and a Hard Place

As great as AARs and blog posts are, sometimes I really just want a video to help me understand a game, or decide if its something I'd like to play. Here's my first attempt then at posting a video of one of my gaming sessions.

Dreaming of Tanks

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Things have been so busy at work I find myself falling asleep when I sit still for more than a few minutes. That turns out not to be a state good for serious wargaming.

However, after resting a bit yesterday I found myself in the mood for some tank action. I ended up playing Steel Beasts Pro PE during what gaming time I managed (between naps!). It must have mad an impression on me, since I ended up dreaming about tank battles.

Taking that as a sign I should play some more SBPro PE, I downloaded and played JC's new scenario, Between a River and a Hard Place. He's blogged about it here; this is my go at it.

Plan for movement to battle positions

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...

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.