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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Some More SBPro PE 3.0

I'm trying one of the "Camp Hornfelt" training scenarios authored by SteelBeasts.com forum member "Gary Owen."  This mission is designed to teach the principles of tactical movement.  It's a great scenario if a touch unforgiving if you make a mistake, which I make plenty of!

I wanted to show off some of the more (to me) interesting features of this great simulator.  So, not an AAR really in this post, but a few screenshots that illustrate why this thing is so great.

Click to view large enough to read this

Mission briefing.  These can be quite detailed, and take the form of actual Op Orders.  In this one Gary Owen has described the principles of effective tactical movement, and the kinds of movement you'll want to employ between each phase of the mission.

Yeah, click this one too

The next step before just jumping in your tank and tearing off to find the enemy is to develop your tactical plan.  In this mission I need to get at least one vehicle into Objective Kermit while not losing more than one tank.  I've planned march movement from my starting point to Phase Line (PL) Ernie, then traveling overwatch from PL Ernie to PL Bert, since there's a possibility of contact.  From PL Bert to Objective Kermit I've planned for bounding overwatch.  There's a certainty of contact past PL Bert, and bounding overwatch is a safer but slower movement technique.  Also notice that there are several Target Reference Point (TRP) markers.  I'll use these to rapidly plot artillery fire missions, mostly for smoke to screen my movement.

Here I'm checking Line-of-Sight (LOS) from each battle position I've planned.  White means cleat LOS, pink partial LOS, and gray, not so much.

Finally, we're rolling!  I have a platoon of 4 M1A1 HA tanks for the mission, split into two sections.

View inside the turret from the tank commander's position.  His Thermal Imaging extension is the closest scope.  The further scope is the gunner's actual Thermal Imaging Sight (TIS).  Most of those controls are clickable and do something.  You can occupy the commander, gunner, and driver positions in the M1A1 and several other US, NATO, and Russian AFVs.

View from the unbuttoned tank commander's position.  You can look around and yes, fire the machine gun.

View from the TCs binoculars.  That's my second section of tanks, pulling up to PL Ernie where I'm already waiting for them.

As we advance on PL Bert, we see heat sources through the TIS.  These are OPFOR APCs and infantry. I order the gunner to open fire.  In this case I want him to use HEAT, since these are PCs.  The M1A1 HA also commonly carries armor-piercing SABOT rounds for use against tanks.

View of the engagement from the map. First section easily took out the closer platoon of three PCs.  Second section, in traveling overwatch, engages the two vehicles to the southwest and quickly neutralizes them, as well.

Tomorrow I'll try and capture some artillery action and my sections moving in bounding overwatch.  Things get much more difficult past PL Bert!

Hunting Bears: A FPC:RS Campaign Scenario - Setup and first turns

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm has grabbed me in a way few other games have for quite awhile.  The time period covered by the game (and forward) has long been my favorite to play, but there haven't been many games of this scale depicting the a NATO-Warsaw Pact war for a long time.  Combine that with a great game system and you have the recipe for a game I haven't stopped playing since I downloaded it.

After playing some stand-alone scenarios, I've decided to give the NATO campaign a try.  Here's the setup and first couple of turns of the first scenario in the campaign, called "Hunting Bears."

In this scenario I'll be commanding the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Armored Division (Hell on Wheels), on the North German Plain.  It is 0400 the morning of July 22, 1989.  Two days ago the Soviets crossed the Inter-German Boundary at the West German town of Bad Neustadt after months of diplomatic maneuvering designed to convince the world that they were pulling their forces out of Germany and promoting re-unification.  The attack through the Fulda Gap is a diversion, however.  The Soviet main effort will be here, on the North German Plain.

My brigade on this foggy morning is in the vicinity of the West German town of Bucholz in der Nordheide.  The 3-41 Mechanized Infantry is online and in defensive positions.  Of the 4-41 Mech Infantry, Companies C and D are available, with the rest of the battalion expected later.  I also have two cavalry scout squadrons, and the 552nd Military Intelligence Company is in place, watching the border.

In the south of my AO, I've placed B Company 3-41 to defend Holm-Seppensen and overwatch the southern-most stream crossing on the map. C Company is place three or four kilometers to the rear as a reserve where it can defend the battalion HQ and shift south to support B Company or north to support A company.  I've also located a scout platoon in the area.  I'm hoping to be able to dash out and blow the bridge.  That will significantly delay any Soviet force trying to cross the stream, and force them to conduct engineering activities under the guns of B Company.

I've place A Company in the center behind a stream.  2nd and 3rd Platoons have orders to blow the bridges in front of them immediately, leaving only the bridge in front of 1st Platoon intact for the forward deployed scouts to use when they retreat.  About three kilometers east of the stream is a belt of mines and obstacles.  I've positioned cavalry scouts to overwatch the minefields and hopefully blow some bridges, slowing the attack.  As soon as I see a significant force of attackers, I plan to pull these scouts back and across the stream at the remaining bridge.

Recon is absolutely essential in this game.  Its rare to find a game that treats recon this well, and makes it so central to success.

To my rear I've positioned D Team of the 4-41 Infantry in the village of Wenzendorf.  This  armor-heavy team is tasked to move to the northeast and take up defensive positions at a crossroads objective to the west of some heavy forest.

Finally, in the north, C Company 4-41 Infantry is in the village of Eversen-Heide.  They'll move east to defend another crossroads objective.  More scouts are located on the east side of the forested ridge overwatching the border minefields.

The balloon goes up at 0400 and Soviet units are seen moving through the border.

In the northern sector, the scouts have yet to observe much movement, though a Pact recon unit tried the mine belt and was destroyed.  A Kiowa scout helicopter has moved closer to the mine belt in the hopes of getting eyes on any advancing Soviet column.  C and D Companies of the 4-41 Infantry are moving into their defensive positions.  It is dawn, with haze/fog.  Visibility is 1500m.

In the center, bridges are blown and  recon unit try and cross the border.  Between mines and the TOW missile and cannon of the cavalry M-3's, nothing makes it across the stream. A cavalry troop manages to blow one of the forward bridges, but pulls back after sighting what looks like a Soviet Tank company and recon troops. Red and blue crosses on the map denote WP and NATO losses, respectively.  Towards the extreme southeastern corner of the map in the screenshot above you can see a number of wrecked Soviet AFVs taken out by the cavalry.

Things have not gone as well in the south around Holm-Seppensen.  The Soviets started the first turn right on the stream, and I had no time to blow the bridge.  Recce and armor poured across, supported by significant artillery.  1st and 2nd Platoons of B Company 3-41 gave a good account of themselves as can be seen by the cluster of wrecked red AFVs to the east of the bridge.  The two platoons are quickly taken under fire by the advancing tanks and pummeled by artillery, leaving them collectively reduced to a couple of squads.

I've ordered the remnants of the two broken platoons and the company HQ to retreat to the ridge line to the west, under the cover of fire from 3rd Platoon and a cavalry troop.  As quickly as I can, I'll move all of B Company across the stream to the west and on to the high ground overlooking the bridge objective to reorganize and resupply.  It looks like C Company will be coming out of reserve sooner than I expected.

Here's my orders for the center sector.  I'm pushing scouts forward to find out where the enemy is, while moving A Company south to cover the vulnerable space between the river and the woods now that Pact forces are across the stream to the south, and behind the blown bridges.

That's the first 31 minutes of a ten hour scenario!  Going into the next turn, the American command cycle is 27 minutes, compared to the Soviet command cycle of an (estimated) 32 minutes.  This means that I'll be able to give orders again after 27 minutes more have elapsed, but the Soviet commander can't issue orders again for 32 minutes.  As the game plays out, we'll check back to see what happens to these order cycles.

Flaspoint Campaigns: Red Storm

A quick screenshot before signing off for the night.  Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm was released today, and all I can say is that this game is fun.  If you played the original Flashpoint: Germany, the basic game system here is very similar, but refined.  Beyond that, the maps are more functional and there are a lot more maps and scenarios.  FPC:RS feels like a very polished, very playable simulation of modern warfare.

Recon elements of 2nd Squadron, 11th ACR scout for the enemy in the scenario "Black Horse"

The game gets very high marks from me for designing the entire game engine around command and control.  The variable turn-length system is incredibly innovative and models the OODA decision loop concept very well. I've found the interface very easy to pick up - no doubt helped by my time spent playing its predecessor - and the game very, very playable.  Like Command Ops, this is a game that let's you focus on being a commander and not a micro-manager.

More later.  So far I've only played the tutorial and one scenario, but I'm really, really enjoying it!