Cold War Turns Hot, Scenario 2 - The Anvil

Shortly before 0930 radio contact with Colonel Marsh's HQ was lost.The Soviets' determined attack has finally overwhelmed 3rd Bn and its survivors have broken contact with the enemy and fallen back into the Harz forest to carry out stay-behind operations. Polish armoured units have been brought to the front and Colonel Rybakov begins his push to Blankenburg. Across swathes of West Germany thousands of Soviet paratroopers have been dropping behind NATO lines to disrupt supply and communications. But the brief period of PACT air supremacy is over and anti-aircraft positions are becoming operational again as NATO planes scramble to cover the advance of relief columns which are dashing to blunt the Soviet spearheads. One of these columns, led by the American 26th Mechanised, has met Rybakov's column on the outskirts of Blankenburg and now attempts to halt their advance.

Miller's Abrams heads to Blankenburg through the early morning fog¹.

1030 11/11/1983, Eastern suburbs of Blankenburg, Harz District, West Germany.

NATO situation:

Major Miller was woken up at 3am and has yet to have his morning coffee. Colonel Powell, his commanding officer, left late last night to receive an important briefing from General Pruitt at brigade headquarters and has not been seen since. Until he reappears Miller finds himself the acting commander of the 26th. It appears that last night General Pruitt gave orders for the unit to move immediately to Blankenburg and rendezvous with several other NATO units forming a QRF in the town in preparation for a counterattack against a suspected Soviet invasion. As his column of Bradleys and Abrams tanks rumbled towards Blankenburg in the dark many of his men found this scenario unlikely, another sign of high command’s paranoia, but when dawn broke the distant rumble of artillery fire in the East and the flights of Harriers and Tornados that passed overhead put paid to their disbelief. He has now met with an English colonel shouting orders from the back of his chieftain in Blankenburg town square and who, in light of Miller’s rank, has happily assumed command of the hastily assembled force. “Our boys up ahead just went silent. We’ve not heard from them for about thirty minutes and that means Ivan’s on his way and we’ve no time to be pissing about. My CO wants us down this road ASAP so my lads will lead us in. I’ve already got my recce troop out in front of us. You back me up. Watch our flanks and those Jerries will form our rearguard. We were promised some choppers from the French but I’ve heard no word from them so we’ll have to crack on regardless. Mount up!”

PACT situation:

Rybakov has reorganised his regiment and was met half an hour ago by his Polish reinforcements. With the dense forests clearing around him and the risk of further ambushes reducing his men have been able to advance several miles at an impressive pace singing patriotic tunes which the Poles don't seem to fully appreciate. A few minutes ago one of his officers spotted the church spire of Blankenburg on the horizon and he was momentarily relieved at the realisation that if resistance continued to be this light he was on course to take the town by midday and maybe even Brunswick by nightfall as planned. However, another radio message from his scouts has just put this plan in jeopardy - a small NATO reconnaissance tank has been spotted to the West. He must make contact with any enemy forces ahead, fight them off and follow through to Blankenburg.
The Game:

The initial plan was to play this game as a counter-attack scenario with NATO on the offensive to account for there being only 2 PACT players vs 3 from NATO. However (even with the train of one of the German players being delayed so that he had to come on as reinforcements halfway through the game) the scenario seemed horribly unbalanced against the Russians and Poles who only got 12,000 points to NATO's 18,000 and were tasked with destroying 6,000 points of the enemy's troops while NATO only had to destroy 4,000 points of theirs. So instead we decided that when the German player turned up both sides would bring on reinforcements and we'd play it as a good old fashioned meeting engagement with equal points on each side.

The terrifying PACT deployment.

The opening turn of the game saw two American Bradleys knocked out by long range missiles from across the board as Jason pushed up to deploy his infantry into a supermarket which could cover our left flank. Both sides also pushed infantry up into the hedgerows and woods that dominated the centre of the table. With large amounts of open ground on both flanks both sides were unwilling to push up too far but I tried to move my chieftains towards a small wood where they'd have some cover when the inevitable Soviet assault came.

Both sides tried to use artillery to suppress each other but not a single round managed to land on target. Apart from two critical occasions, this theme would continue for much of the game.

Welsh infantry push forward.

American infantry cover the NATO left flank as Abrams tanks push up.

In turn two the PACT players picked their poison and decided they'd rather push into my Chieftains on the right than Jason's Abrams tanks on the left. I felt offended. However Edd's Polish tanks started to come under artillery fire and while it wasn't enough to knock any of them out it did succeed in causing some of the Poor quality rated Poles to bail out (or maybe drive off, not sure bailing out of a tank into artillery fire is a good idea).

The Poles learn that artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.

In the centre a bloody infantry battle began with both sides lining up along the hedges to fire small arms and heavy weapons at each other. My wily Scimitar recce tank at one point found itself outflanked as the large building it was hiding behind was suddenly occupied by a unit of Soviet infantry that promptly popped an RPG into it.

British and Russian infantry trade fire in the centre of the table.

My Centurion AVRE fires an HE round at Soviet infantry occupying a building (note Edd treacherously enjoying the sweet fizzy nectar of capitalism in the background!).

While all this was going on a great tragedy occurred. I'd hidden my two tracked Rapier anti-aircraft vehicles behind the town confident that this would keep them safe from harm. No such luck as Russian artillery intended to suppress chieftains on the right flank landed way off target and knocked them both out.

But it was quickly forgotten as it was turn 3 and Idries' Germans had arrived! This came as a great surprise to all as he'd previously never owned or painted a miniature in his life and had only recently gotten into his first wargame - Star Wars Armada. To prove a point about how quickly you can put a 6mm army together we'd ordered everything from Heroics & Ros a month before and assembled and painted it in its entirety over the course of two Sunday afternoons.

We took the opportunity to rush the German panzergrenadiers up to reinforce my Welsh infantry in the centre while the Leopards were sent to the left flank to prepare a counter-charge if Sam and Edd threw everything at me on the right.

Then the fire nation attacked came the PACT turn...

Idries gets a warm welcome to the wonderful of hobby of wargaming.

Massed Russian and Polish rocket artillery smashed Idries' advancing infantry in the open and tore through my infantry further forward. The survivors continued on but he'd lost almost half his Marders. With our reinforcements bloodied and the Welsh starting to falter things looked bleak.

The Soviet hammer blow.

On the right flank things looked even worse. Even though I'd knocked out most of Sam's original tank force and Edd's Poles were bogged down on the left, their reinforcements had arrived. With several cheiftains already knocked out, missiles flying through their firing position and outnumbered more than two to one my dragoons had little hope of holding out and were completely destroyed. With the centre and right both almost gone NATO desperately needed to find a way to blunt the Soviets' attack.

The full might of NATO air power hits the Russians and Poles.

Having seen the British tanks destroyed in front of them Idries' German scouts called down everything they could on the Soviet attack. All German, American and British artillery groups were called in as well as 2 American A-10 Warthogs and a German F-4 Peace Rhine. Annoyingly a lot of the artillery units requested weren't available, one of the A-10s was hit by heavy Russian anti-aircraft fire and the same fire caused the Peace Rhine to wave off before reaching its target. But enough got through to make the Soviet attack a bit less terrifying.

With trains to catch and more food waiting to be eaten the final stages of the battle played out very quickly. In the centre a stalemate was declared to speed things along as both sides had almost mutually annihilated each other. On the left Idries' Leopards charged into Edd's surviving Polish units and mopped most of them up while taking losses from Polish infantry that boldly moved up to face him from the woods on his right.

The charge of the Rohirim Leopards.

Finally on the right Jason's Abrams tanks redeployed to counter the faultering Soviet push which was brought to a stop before promptly being hit by Soviet artillery in response which knocked most of them out. A very expensive final turn for NATO.

Jason's Abrams join the NATO graveyard on the right flank.

The final result was a very clear draw. With both sides bringing 18,000 points to the table and losing 12,000 each including almost every senior officer on both sides it had been horrendously bloody.

The view from NATO's left flank at the end of the game.

So, its that point in the battle-report where we ask ourselves: what went well?

• Overall I really love how FfoT plays. At no point in the game did I have one of those moments you might sometimes get where you find yourself finding things a bit implausible. I don't tend to enjoy games that try too hard to be a simulation but I do like them to have a feel of authenticity. There were surprises and fortune's favour swung from side to side over the course of the game but each play that was made felt like it ended with a believable result.

And what did we learn?

• The predominant issue facing PACT in this scenario was that the odds seemed stacked against them regardless of which avenue of attack they chose. The centre had no hope of being a viable route as it channelled their forces down one single road past dug-in NATO infantry. Both the left and the right were just far too open. I think there were 3 big things that contributed to this that I'm going to try to learn from when writing FfoT scenarios in the future. Firstly, in our post Cold War Commander search for a game that played well at 1:1 scale we'd taken the advice from the FfoT rules and halved the ground scale. This meant that most tanks could fire all the way across the board and my chieftains in particular could hit Sam from across the table and still consider it a close range shot. Secondly, I'd sprinkled areas of forest across the board as cover for units to defend from but hadn't really provided any to break up lines of sight which really compounded the first issue. Finally, in an attempt to get everyone involved and let everyone use all the 6mm miniatures they'd put a lot of effort into getting ready I definitely set the points limit too high. 36,000 points of units on a 6'x4' was just too much. If I had to play a similar size game again in the future I think I'd maybe try playing an attack scenario (I've never been a fan of meeting engagements) along the length of a longer table with the forces broken up into waves that come on as reinforcements as each side gets worn down. As I write this report a week after the game, Sam and Jason have already played another weekend of test games at the FfoT's intended ground scale and with 6,000 points a side and from what I can gather they're having a lot of fun.
• Another thing to note was that airpower proved to be a bit overhyped. While in theory it seemed to have a lot of potential, in reality neither side was able to eliminate the enemy's anti-aircraft units that really reduced their effectiveness and made them a bit underwhelming for their points cost.

Next time, Space Battles!

¹US Department of Defence:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DA-SD-06-06823.jpg