After Action Report: Divisional Assault CPX Played during late October-early November 1996 Report by: James Sterrett ========== Overview: This scenario pitted the Soviet 57th Guards Motorized Rifle Division against the US 1st Brigade, 3rd Mech Division in a hypothetical NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict. The scenario made use of three umpires, TacOps Map 1 and 15, and off-map boxes run under the rules for the boardgame _Air & Armor_, to create the largest CPX attempted so far. The game result was that the Soviet division, through a combination of luck and skill, shattered the US defense and plunged more than two regiments into the NATO rear. Overall, the game was a success, in that everyone had fun and the mechanics mostly worked; however, there were a few failures of these mechanics (discussed in the Lessons Learned section.) As usual, this divides into three parts: 1) Planning (orders and plans for both sides) 2) Execution (what happened) 3) Lessons Learned (about both playing the game and running CPXes) Note that the planning section contains only an overview of each side's plan. Every document I have pertaining to the CPX - orders, plans, IRC channel logs, ops graphics - is available via email to those who can handle MIME encoded, Zipped files. The zipped file is a bit over 3 megabytes in length. Some of the planning was a bit chaotic because of email failures during the week prior to the start of the game. Finally, note that this is not the most detailed of AARs in the "what happened" section. Partly this is due to the lag time in writing it (my RSI and a couple of high-priority projects caught up with me); partly it is due to the sheer complexity of the game. I encourage anyone interested in the "what really happened" to pore over the various files in the zipfile mentioned in the previous paragraph. ========== Planning: Orders to each side: ========== 57th Guards Orders Steve Althouse: Soviet Commander Del Shand (Map 01 - 170MRR (Motorized Rifle Regiment) Bart Gauvin Map 01 - 172MRR) Ian Barefoot (Map 15 - 174MRR(-) and 104th ITB) Mark Lushcher (Map 01 - 1st Recon, 1st Bn 174 MRR) Henk Pleggemars (Map 01 - 10th Recon) 1.0 Situation 1.1 Situation Yesterday our forces began a counteroffensive designed to crush the NATO threat and extend Socialism throughout the western world in order to ensure peace. The offensive has so far gone well; the enemy screening forces have been wiped out by the 79th Guards Tank Division, and NATO forces have been caught off-guard. If the 8th Guards Army can break through the positions held by the 3rd Mechanized Division we will have achieved favorable conditions for operational maneuver to outflank and dislocate the US VII Corps; this ought to result in a large-scale collapse of NATO forces in this sector. Failure to accomplish the mission will allow the enemy to reorient forces to oppose our drive and significantly lengthen the war. 1.2 Enemy Forces The enemy in this sector is the 3rd Mechanized Division. It is thought to have been thinly spread to cover a large gap in the enemy lines and intel believes we will only have to face 1 brigade of this formation. We will attack the northernmost positions of the division, along the boundary between 3rd Mech and the German 4th Corps to its north. The northern boundary of the enemy formation is the Frankischer Saale River. While thinly- spread, the enemy is expected to be well-supported by artillery and airpower. The enemy brigade is thought to have had at most one or two hours to prepare its current positions. 1.3 Friendly Forces Your command consists of the 57th Guards Motorized Rifle Division and supporting elements from the 8th Guards Army. 170th and 172nd Motor Rifle Regiments (BMP) 174th Motor Rifle Regiment (BTR) 57th Tank Regiment (T-80) 104th Independent Tank Battalion (T-80) 37th AT Battalion 1st and 10th Mech Recon Battalions (57th Guards and 8th Guards Army, respectively) [Note: In this game, Soviet forces were *not* equipped with Thermal Sights or Advanced ATGM warheads; smoke did *not* block Thermal Sights.] 9 152mm batteries with 45 loads of ammo 3 Rocket artillery battalions with 15 loads of ammo 4 Electronic Warfare Points on 2 Divisional HQs and 2 8th Guards Army HQs 8 air support points 1 artillery-delivered mine point 8 initial TRPs for the two maps These forces may be deployed anywhere east of the TacOps maps at start (in any of the holding boxes east of maps 01 and 15). Up to two battalions of forces may begin arriving onto the east edges of maps 01 and 15 at the beginning of the game. The 39th Guards Motorized Rifle Division will launch diversionary attacks to assist you. Please coordinate with Lt.Gen. Gromov on the nature and timings of these attacks. 2.0 Mission Your mission is to break the enemy front line and exit significant forces over maps 01 and 15, and thence into his 45 holding box and beyond. You will ensure the safe passage of follow-on forces throughout this route. Optimally, at least a regiment will pass the entire depth of the enemy defense to become the 8th Guards Army's Forward Detachment for further operations. 3.0 Ground /-30-----15-----Map 1----15-----30-\ 45--< >---45 \-30-----15-----Map 15---15-----30-/ ===== 1st Brigade, 3rd Mech Division Orders Chaim Krause (US Commander) Scott Davies Bill Jennings Norm Lunde (The US subordinate players shifted jobs during the game.) 1.0 SITUATION 1.1. Yesterday Warsaw Pact forces began a general offensive against a largely unprepared NATO. Over the course of the past 24 hours the 2/11th Armored Cavalry has bought us time to deploy; this has entailed the virtual annihilation of the 2/11th. The Warsaw Pact operations seem to be directed at achieving an operational breakthrough by means of a massed surprise attack. They have so far retained a high degree of operational mobility. It is believed that their axis of attack will come through the 3rd Mech's sector, but the exact route of the attack is unknown. This and the width of the sector, forced on us by our limited deployed forces, means each brigade will have to fend largely for itself although air & artillery assets will be shifted to those units threatened. We are the thin blue line; if we can hold, then forces in the rear will have time to deploy and the successful defense of western Europe is likely. If we fail, you might want to brush up on your Russian. 1.2. Enemy Forces The enemy has committed the 8th Guards Army to this sector. It is thought to contain at least the 20th, 39th, and 57th Guards Motorized Rifle Divisions, and the 79th Guards Tank Division, plus assorted air assault assets. The 79th Guards is thought to be the division which destroyed the 2/11th yesterday. Typical Soviet practice would suggest that a Motorized Rifle Division will spearhead any assault today. Enemy air and artillery support is expected to be massive. Due to our position on a Corps boundary it is thought we are more likely to be attacked than the other units in the division. 1.3 Friendly Forces We hold the left flank of the 3rd Mech Division line. To the north is the Frankischer Saale River and the Bundeswehr 4th Corps. To our right is the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Mech Division. Our brigade consists of the following forces: 8 companies of M-2 Bradleys 8 companies of M-1 Abrams Scout company (16 hummers (8 HMG, 8 AGS-19) plus infantry teams) Air Defense Platoon: 12x Stinger Hummers 4 batteries of M-106 mortars 2 batteries of 12 M-901 ITV (notional units) 1 company of engineers 5 155mm Batteries with 25 loads of ammo 2 MLRS batteries with 8 loads of ammo 1 Electronic Warfare point with 1 Brigade HQ 4 handlaid mine points - engineers need to lay them 2 artillery-delivered mine points 5 air support points 8 initial TRPs for the two maps Your forward defense line is to be easting 10 on maps 01 and 15. Your forces may be placed anywhere west of easting 10 on either Map 01 or map 15 at the beginning of the game. In addition, any or all of these forces may be placed in the western off-map holding boxes at the beginning of the game. Note that the artillery and air support listing are for what Brigade could possibly send assuming we are the main focus of the enemy attack. The engineers may complete 1 hour of work before the game begins (make 10 entrenchments or lay 10 TacOps minefields). 2.0. MISSION You are to prevent enemy penetration of your positions. No enemy units are to be permitted to move west of easting 00 on maps 01 or 15. Should they do so they are to be defeated before that can enter your "45" off-map holding box. 3.0 Ground /-30-----15-----Map 1----15-----30-\ 45--< >---45 \-30-----15-----Map 15---15-----30-/ ===== The US defense placed 3 companies of Bradleys and 3 companies of M-1s on each map, along with half the engineers each. The remaining Bradleys and M-1s (2 companies each) were held in the US 45 minute box as a reserve. 1 of the AT batteries was deployed forward and one was held in reserve in the US 45 minute box. The US tube arty batteries were split up, 1 per box, and the MLRS was held in the 45 minute box. On Map 01, the US set up a defense intended to contact OPFOR early and steadily pull back through a number of defense lines. Map 15's defense was based on a tough crust; it had two mixed companies and scouts forward, and a defense line roughly along the 06 easting, with a solid line of infantry, then Javelins, then Bradleys extending the entire N-S width of the map. A mixed company formed a reserve. The Soviet attack plan placed priority to a breakthrough on Map 01. The 174 MRR (BTR) was split up to provide one of its battalions to the forces on Map 01 to reinforce its scouting, and to provide some confusion to the US as to the direction of the main Soviet attack. Some artillery was based in the 30 minute boxes, but the bulk of Soviet forces of all types began the game in the 45 minute box. All the line forces were on a pre-set movement schedule, and some of the artillery was loaned to 39th Guards Motorized Rifle Division for its diversionary attack further south. (This was basically chrome.) The umpires: James Sterrett: head umpire, and Map 15 umpire Corinne Mahaffey: operational-level umpire (anything in the off- map boxes) John Crawford: Map 01 umpire (John and I took the maps we did because we knew the Soviets planned to make their main push on map 01, and we knew that I (James) would have to be dealing with transmitting messages between both sides and Corinne as well. I think we managed not to clue in the US that we'd decided on this basis!) ========== What Happened. The game began with a loud bang. The Soviet commander directed 1/4 of his available airpower at the US 45 minute box; since this was done before getting any intel reports on what US forces were where, he was permitted to have the airstrikes arrive at 07:00 - the start of the game. 6 Su-24 and 4 MiG-29 pilots earned their places amongst the ranks of the Heroes of the Soviet Union for a spectacular airstrike which destroyed 2 Bradley companies, 1 MLRS battery, 1 155mm battery, and the US electronic warfare equipment before any of them could fire a shot. This same strike also suppressed much of the other US forces in the 45 minute box. This strike wiped out half of the US reserve and significant parts of their firepower, and served notice to any who might have doubted that the off-map portions of the game could be of great importance to the outcome. The Soviet immediately followed this up with another strike of similar size. When it arrived at 07:25 it achieved less destruction, but disrupted the remainder of the US reserve force. In essence, in the first 25 minutes, half of the Soviet air power knocked out the US reserve. The US response destroyed 3 Soviet 152mm batteries with a bit over half of the US airpower. On the ground, things went deceptively well for the US at first. The Soviet scouting forces were very roughly handled, taking heavy losses to US hummers, Bradleys, and M-1s. Over the course of the first two hours, the Soviets essentially lost two battalions of BTRs and their various scouting assets without inflicting much apparent damage on the US forces. However, they had gained several key things. First, on both map 01 and 15, the Soviets had cleared lines of advance to the US main line of resistance. While these clear routes (up the valley in map 15, and along the southern valley in map 01) were not well-defended, US attempts to get units into place to see these routes were countered. The US was hindered in this by some very successful Soviet jamming which prevented indirect fire on map 01 for most of the first two hours of the game. As a result, the Soviets were able to move the next stage of their assault into place relatively unhindered. A diversionary attack was to be launched on map 15 by a BTR battalion and the 104th Independent Tank Battalion, closely followed by an assault across the southern portion of map 01 by the 170 and 172 Motorized Rifle Regiments; these were to be followed by the 57th Tank Regiment. The Soviets also drove a rocket launcher battalion onto Map 15 and used it to launch repeated fire strikes against the US 45 minute box. (Oddly, while the outgoing fire and its approximate source was reported, the US never got around to hunting down the launchers.) The Soviet main assault was slowed down by US interdiction fires in off-map boxes; these kept a bit over two battalions from the 170 and 172 MRRs slowed down for some time. The US commander was reasonably convinced that the main threat was on map 01, it seems, since the bulk of the reserves started off towards map 01. Because of the time it took them to get moving, interdiction, and Soviet jamming, the two M-1 companies never actually made it. The diversionary attack was underway by 09:00, with 3 mortar, 6 122mm, 3 152mm batteries and a rocket arty battalion firing in support, it made a lot of noise. The US responded with smoke, and, as tended to happen in these fights, dealt massive casualties to the Soviets. However, a mid-battle US decision to switch to HE from smoke gave the Soviet tanks targets, and this plus their artillery support enabled the Soviets to clear out a 2 kilometer section of the US line in the very north of map 15 (easting 05-06). In doing so, the Soviet units lost practically all of their vehicles; to keep the assault going at all, a scratch company of scout BTRs was kept moving forward. This made enough noise, however, and confused the US enough, that they proceeded to fire one of their artillery mine strike at it. When the scratch force - of company size - of BTRs appeared, the US fired their second mine strike; by the time it arrived, the BTR "company" had lost its BTRs.... and the Soviet diversionary attack had succeeded in drawing off one of the most powerful US assets - fog of war showing its teeth. On map 01, the main Soviet assault blew across the bottom of the map with heavy casualties to a series of US ambushes. However, none of the US ambushes were of very great size; given the volume of return fire, none of them lasted long either. The Soviets lost the equivalent of the better part of a BMP regiment in this attack to both direct fire and massed US artillery, leaving just over a regiment of BMPs to spearhead the way for the tank regiment following behind. When these forces exited the map heading west the game was ended at 10:56; it was pretty clear that they would have the power to completely overwhelm all US forces facing them to the west. It had been a near-run thing for them to get off the map before the arrival of the 2 companies of M-1s. Arguably, if the US had saved the mine strikes to slow down the main Soviet assault, they could have solidified their defense and made the Soviets pay much more dearly. All told the US needed just a bit more time to get a defense of the southern part of map 01 to jell. The US didn't get the time because the Soviet offensive was very fast and violent when it came, and because the US didn't have the mines to bring the Soviet's offensive to a grinding halt for a key 5-10 minutes. The US forces on both maps had been mauled in 4 hours of combat; occasional losses here and there added up to near complete destruction of all vehicles and heavy losses to the infantry. Because they took the losses slowly, the extent of the damage was not really apparent to the Soviets or to the umpires, all of whom were a bit surprised when they had a chance to look at the final statistics. The net result: a massive Soviet victory. The BMP and Tank regiments go storming off into the distance, wrecking NATO's operational rear while it tries to deploy, rendering much of the NATO defense irrelevant, and creating the conditions for the bulk of the 8th Guards Army, in the words of Marshal Ogarkov, "to carry success into the depths". 1st Brigade/3rd Mechanized Division, has been shattered and the 3rd Mech itself has been weakened by holding off both the 57th Guards (in the game) and a diversionary attack by the 39th Guards (to the south; primarily chrome). The war in Europe is going badly for NATO.... ========== Lessons Learned. This has two parts: lessons pertaining to setting up and running CPXes, and lessons learned about tactics or playing TacOps. Section 1) Lessons learned about running CPXes. -ORGANIZE!!! Around 75%+ of our major troubles were because of poor organization compounded by email failures at key times. A lot of this needs to be laid at my door. I ought to have drawn up, before starting, a hard and fast, detailed listing of the exact TO&E of *everything* in the game. I didn't, which left open the door to dissent over the composition of virtually every unit in the game. As a result, the other "map" umpire, John Crawford, was unsure of unit composition, which lead to lots and lots of confusion. Several people have commented that it was troublesome to have umpires at widely separated locations. I think this isn't true - but I think we could have coordinated better. I tend to think this was a validation of the workability of having umpires at separate locations, given that they have figured out what is going on beforehand. In fact, it would have made life easier if Corinne had had her own IRC access, and acted as head umpire, liaising with John, the players, and me without worrying about me as intermediary or trying to get her work done in and around my work with map 15. (Donations to the "get Corinne and James better equipment" fund are gratefully accepted. ) -The second biggest organizational problem came from the players, and was made a lot worse by the email failures. We wasted a lot of time on the first day getting organized - putting in orders, deploying troops for the start of the game, etc. This tended to happen again on the second and third days of play, although to a lesser degree. If at all possible - and in some cases this time around it was *not* possible despite much effort - players *must* get pre-game orders and deployments in to the umpires 24 hours or more before game-time. It's an utter waste of gaming time to do this pre-game stuff while everyone is waiting to start, and the pressure to get it done encourages both players and umpires to cut corners to declare it ready. In big games like this one, there are several stages to the player's team's planning process. First, the side commander gets the orders for a given side and a list of players (which may be subject to some change - a mostly unavoidable fact). The commander comes up with his orders for his forces, and sends these out. Then the commander and his subordinates hash out how each of them is to play a part in the master plan, and the subordinates submit their deployments and ops orders to the umpires. All of this can *easily* take well over two weeks. I encourage teams of players to get together on IRC or Powwow and hash out what they want to do, how to do it, exchange plans, etc., well in advance. -The mechanics of the off-map boxes were a bit of a kludge and didn't work as well as hoped. They probably restricted mobility a bit too much, and they skewed the damage done by fire strikes - although, oddly, they skewed the results both up and down. In addition, artillery ammunition was not handled up to spec; on- map artillery units are a pain in the ass to resupply when you have 6-12 of them, and no good system was ever devised to determine if they had more - the "drive trucks about with ammo" system was a flop since the competent way to do it would have been to set up a continuous chain of trucks carrying ammo forward, and we had no real restriction on the amount of ammo available at the Giant PX In The Rear. Also, ammo for off-map arty was a kludge; next time we'll likely simply allow for a set number of reloads for all on-map arty, and provide off-map arty with the sum total of its available ammo and track it that way instead of by basic load. This will save time by cutting down the constant traffic to ask for a reload for off-map arty; however, it has the down-side of alloting, potentially, overly vast amounts of ICM and smoke to each side at the beginning , which then tails off to merely a titanic quantity of HE available in the end. Comments on the loads of shell that ought to be available to batteries in World War III for a day's battle are welcome; we probably fired the equivalent of 15 155/152mm batteries (counting into this the mortars and 122mm batteries) on continuous fire plus 3 rocket battalions on near-continuous fire during the course of the 4-hour game. Next time I run one of these, the off-map boxes will be scrapped, and the _Air & Armor_ map will be used; when units enter the boundaries of the areas that the TacOps maps sit on, they'll enter the TacOps maps.... There's a couple of issues to iron out in regard to mating _A&A_ to TacOps, but I'll leave that for a separate report. None of them are terribly major and all are, I think, soluble. The only big issue is that this will require the side commanders to own copies of _Air & Armor_ or to get (at the least) a photocopy of the map and counters (_Air & Armor_ is out of print. 8( ) -There was apparently trouble with orders between John and the Soviet commanders on map 01. From what I can tell, this was a breakdown of communications from both sides. Both players and umpires need to work at maintaining clear comms when there are many players on one command channel. This includes having everyone in both parties indicate when they are done giving orders or reports. It also means the umpire must explicitly acknowledge the orders that have been processed, and that the players will need to organize themselves regarding who is going to give orders next (by agreeing on their chatter channel that A gives orders and gets them acknowledged by the umpire, then B goes, etc.) Not having been involved, I can't really comment on the exact nature of the problem and the two sides aren't in complete agreement as to its nature. -Players complained that recon was not handled properly - in small units (single vehicles or pairs of vehicles. I was under the impression that John was doing what I do, which is to make recon units the one exception to the "no units smaller than platoons" rule - because it is true that they need to move more carefully and in a more controlled fashion than normal units. Nonetheless, they still tend to die horribly, and when the recon force is big the umpire will get a wee bit leery of running it as single-vehicle markers! When you have several companies doing the recon, it starts to feel more like an Advanced Guard to the umpire, and the ump tends to start treating it accordingly. -Finally, a success story in all this. Everybody had fun, and I got comments from practically everyone that the "feel" of the game was very good - because nearly everybody was a part of a much larger effort, with things happening - in the game, between other players - that were beyond a given player's control or even view. This helped to produce a better atmosphere of being part of a "real" battle. Since one of the design objectives of this game was to produce a game big enough that the players would find the experience more immersive, I was quite pleased that this worked out. Another design objective was to ensure that the "operational level" of the game - the battle off of the TacOps maps - had impact. This it did, both directly (destroying reserves, jamming fire support nets) and indirectly by ensuring players knew that the world did not end with the edge of the TacOps map. Also, the umpire should not wait a month and a half before writing up the AAR. ===== Section 2) Lessons learned about playing TacOps & CPXes, and about tactics -Fog of War is powerful. Deception can be powerful. These two things went a long way to winning the game for the Soviets - a successful diversionary attack drew the US attention at a key moment, and it worked in part because the fog of war in a CPX is thicker than London's pea soup fog. In fact, the fog of war was thick enough, that I only learned what was happening on map 01 when John sent the save-game files at the end of each day! On Map 15, the US main defense was a solid crust of units, with two heavy companies and scouts forward to fight the recon battle, and a mech company in reserve. This chewed up the Soviet recon forces, but when the diversionary assault hit the main line, it broke.... and a heavier assault (by more than 2 battalions) would have cracked it with forces to spare. It did as well as it did because of extensive use of smoke to blind the Soviet tanks (since the Soviets could not see through smoke while the US could); when the smoke was not present the defense crumbled. While the reserve company was able to move into a blocking position, this would not have saved them from a full-scale attack. On Map 01, the US planned to run a defense that steadily withdrew to a final defense line at the western edge of the map; however, it appears that it took too many losses fighting in place, and the main line of defense seemed, to the Soviets, to have been in the middle of the map. How could the defense have been run better? Firstly, less bad luck - in the form of some very lucky Soviet die-rolls on their initial airstrikes on the US reserves. That would have left the US with a battalion in reserve to stop the Soviets. In addition, keeping more of their artillery out from under the Soviet fires would have helped them keep more fire support to the US units. Soviet jamming was very effective at first, and this helped the US lose the recon battle, which in turn helped the US lose the game. Tactically, I feel the US needed to have been a bit more aggressive - instead of committing most of its forces to a linear defense, the scouting needed to be used to keep the bulk of the force mobile - and moving to where it could mass fires to destroy the incoming Soviet forces. It is true this is easier said than done! But a more aggressive US posture might have caused real headaches for the Soviets, especially if it forced the Soviets to fight for the same patch of ground multiple times by killing off their recon, then retaking the ground lost in the recon battle. Ceding the ground lost in the recon battle hurt the US. (The counterargument to this, of course, is that the US had no idea what the Soviet attack schedule was - fog of war rears its head again - because an aggressive move timed wrong would cause the US losses it could not afford.) It's hard to say what the Soviets could have done better - they did a by-the-numbers assault and it worked. I'm not at all convinced that the game had to work that way - if, for example, the US jamming assets had not only survived, but also kept the Soviet fire support nets jammed, the Soviets would have been screwed. If the Soviets had failed to jam the US fire support nets, the Soviet casualties would have been a lot higher - and Soviet losses to artillery during the final stage of the game were over half a regiment. All these "what ifs" lead to interesting speculations as to what might have been.... and most of the possibilities are not pretty for the Soviets. They were often a bunched target for artillery or airstrikes, and this, combined with artillery delivered mines to stop them in place for a few minutes under a concentrated ICM barrage, combined with a well-set ambush by several US companies, might have slaughtered the main Soviet advance.... Lastly, the lack of thermal sights and advanced ATGMs left many US forces - especially when covered by smoke - as the hammer of god. Soviet ATGMs could not penetrate M-1 frontal armor *at all* which made much of their force useless when faced by them. The T-80s could kill the M-1s - but only when they could see them. On the other hand, the game did show that even with this massive handicap, the OPFOR forces in TacOps can give the US forces a rough ride - as much by calling in fire support as direct kills. ========== The following are AARs written up by players, which provide a player's eye-view of the action. From: "Stephen H. Althouse" I just wanted to say I had a great time working with all of you. If you liked playing this please stay involved, the smaller scenarios are less confused and faster. I will be putting on some scenarios later in the new year, when I figure out the cpx engine and IRC stuff. We had a good plan that was carried out by skilled people. We carried the day and I believe that we would have no matter what they would have done. What lessons did you guys bring away from this? Off the cuff I have these: The division sized battle is too big for two separated refs to handle without more controls and planning by all parties. The default units in Tac Ops are not correct in all cases...Check your unit composition with the ref b4 game day. recon units should have individual vehicle icons or section at the most Do not underestimate the effects of deception or diversions, not everything we did worked but the pucker factor for the blue went up each time they had to make a decision. Commanders look for indicators of the enemy's intent, if you can hide what you don't want them to see and show them what you do, you can control their decision process...Ian attacked on a wide frontage initially with most of his force..They thought it was more than 1 1/2 btr bns..When he attacked with the ITB they probably saw all the tanks and thought it was more than 1 btr and 1 Tank bn. It rattled them so much they fired 2 FASCAM minefields to stop the attack. By the time the first one landed nearly all of Ian's force was dead..The second minefield was based on ghosts. On map one the blue guys HAD NO IDEA there was 3 regiments on the southern axis. Engagement areas are Key to defending against Opfor, if we had faced a full company or two coordinating their fire in one big engagement in an area of their choice it would have been very ugly. Instead we ran into uncoordinated units with no overall fire co-ordnation. Only their M-1s caused us real problems. The strategic play was key to our success...their only MLRS was suppressed most of the game, we received very little Arty fire in the south..some because of the EW but later due to the fact he had no eyes in the south. I know there are more but I can't think of any more right now. Thanks again for your very professional conduct and for the fun of kicking Blue butt! ---------- From: Mark Luscher OPFOR COs - Err, this got kind of lengthy... sorry. :) That was my first CPX, and I enjoyed it completely and you will likely see me again in a future game! :) It is really a neat way to use TacOps, although I do miss seeing the battle play out. Not directly giving orders directly to your own pieces actually adds to the experience, IMHO, putting you one step closer to being in the Bn/Regmt COs shoes. The additional strategic/deep- battle elements are a very nice touch. Lessons learned: In OPORDS it would probably be a good idea to give the umpire general instructions about what dismounted stragglers should do. I had a lot of stragglers that never seemed to go anywhere, even when I did try to give John orders for them. Speed in the attack is essential for OPFOR. I think we did this pretty well. But I felt there were some times when I was guilty of some delays while getting forces positioned for my next advance (some of these were due to the disconnects I seemed to experience at the worst possible times). As the minutes passed by, I kept imagining all the additional blue units moving into position to set up new kill zones, not to mention the worry of MLRS airmail (fortunately, our deep battle kept the blue launchers quiet). After our main body crossed BOOT, the regiments moved like lightening though. In some instances I think we needed to disperse more quickly after concentrating on an objective. I think there were 1.5 to 2 battalions milling about in the woods north of BOOT for at least 15 minutes. Blue may not have been completely aware of the situation, but an MLRS strike there would have been a Bad Thing. ICM usage: During the Advanced Guard's ill-fated assault on the woods north of BOOT, we tried to pound most possible blue firing positions with artillery, but HE only. We seemed to be hitting most spots that I took fire from, but blue didn't seem too phased by it. :( I think one shoot of ICM on each location, just prior to the Guard reaching the slope may have improved their chances, even if there were no confirmed vehicle sightings. Blue ATGM vehicles would have been devastated, and M-1s very likely suppressed. In TacOps, I think any exploding vehicle suppresses anything within 30m. My main difficulty in this game was in getting my orders in to John. Although, I think John generally did a great job responding to and sorting out our barrages of orders. Once the main body came on, my humble force seemed to get less and less attention (my connection problems didn't help either). To improve things, I think some protocol should be put in place for the orders channel, so everyone has a chance to get orders in. The COs need to know when they are being listened to and when they have been heard. Furthermore, each players should always announce when done giving orders. Perhaps one idea is to make the orders channel "moderated." Applicable IRC commands (usable only by someone with Ops): mode #channel +m makes channel moderated mode #channel +v nick give nick voice mode #channel -v nick take away nick's voice My Mac IRC client has a handy point-and-click interface for doing this; I don't know about Windows clients, tho. Using a moderated channel, perhaps only the umpire should have Ops; or the other player should just refrain from using these commands. I think it might still be possible to send private messages to the umpire, even if you don't have a "voice," in case you really need to get his attention. But this should be kept to a minimum and shouldn't be used to send orders. Using a moderated channel, the umpire will have to ENSURE that everyone has a chance to speak. (This will also keep newbies like me from blabbing on the orders channel, before figuring out how things work! ) [Comment from James: This would work, but IMHO it is easier & more flexible for the players to agree who will talk next; giving people a voice is also a problem when there is much lag on transmissions. - JJS] Some comments on what Steve and Henk said: "Be good to get together before the battle to confirm forces, brainstorm on strategy/tactics and develop a working relationship with other team members before the big event...say the day before?" Ditto. We could probably have used some more email discussions before hand, or an IRC session. Discussions should probably be wrapped up two days in advance, so OPORDS can be finalized and sent to the umpire a day in advance (this was one concern of the umpires). "Do not underestimate the effects of deception or diversions, not everything we did worked but the pucker factor for the blue went up each time they had to make a decision." True, but the reverse is to never COUNT on a deception to work. i.e. don't EXPECT the enemy to get sucked into doing something stupid. (I'm not at all saying we did this; we didn't ). Personally, I think the US FASCAM on bd. 15 was a big blunder. But then again, I don't have a clue how things looked to the other side; but I sure thought it would be pretty obvious to them which way we were going (Ian must have been making a LOT of noise! ). Two FASCAM shoots along our route would have delayed us long enough for the US to deploy fully in the SW corner of map 1. As it turned out, I think US units repositioning from the north flank had JUST arrived at the 00 01 square town as our main body was rolling past. "Commanders look for indicators of the enemy's intent, if you can hide what you don't want them to see and show them what you do, you can control their decision process." I think we did a very good job of blinding blue in the low ground East of BOOT. This was one key to our success. IMHO, in any scenario on Map 1, if OPFOR can get halfway across the map like that, without blue knowing where the main body is, OPFOR will prevail, because blue won't be able to shift forces N- S fast enough once the jig is up. However, part of our success here can be attributed to a poor recon effort in this area by blue. I've found that south approach to BOOT to be kind of hard to keep eyes on, when defending. There aren't that many woods locations for OPs. The "toe" of BOOT is an artillery magnet, and more eastern woods will likely be overwhelmed by advance OPFOR elements (which we did). But stationary dismounted teams could hide almost anywhere, even in the open. I often put a few in the open on the east slope of BOOT. Because of the very long unobstructed LOS, even vehicles can "hide" and observe from there. With some eyes on that South approach, blue can cause considerable damage with ICM strikes, without ever revealing their positions. Tanks or ITVs can shoot and scoot from there and lay waste to any recon teams that get close. I would also have no qualms about using ICM on advance OPFOR elements to keep my OPs alive. Even if I run low on ICM later in the battle, if I can keep OPFOR under observation, I can set up more effective ATGM kill zones further west. Something to think about if you are ever on the US side on that map... I think the foot assault on Alamo also confused blue some. In the after action discussion, one of the US COs mentioned they weren't sure if we were coming up the middle or the south, thereby pinning them again with indecision. "Engagement areas are Key to defending against Opfor, if we had faced a full company or two coordinating their fire in one big engagement in an area of their choice it would have been very ugly. Instead we ran into uncoordinated units with no overall fire coordination." I think I ran into the only serious instance of concentrated fire (on Map 01 at least) trying to get into the woods north of BOOT. After that debacle, I was quite concerned about what else lay in wait to trash anything crossing BOOT; but once blue showed themselves, they must've been busy repositioning, because they never managed another fire sack like that. Apparently, the Bn COs of 172 MRR (or is that 170? ) seemed to recognize this and advanced on BOOT on their own initiative! :) Once the regiments were rolling past BOOT they easily eliminated the uncoordinated blue units that fired upon them, without even slowing. "Only their M-1s caused us real problems." The T-80s seemed to be able to handle them adequately. Unfortunately, our lead units kinda ran out of tanks! :( This CPX was great fun! I'm sure I'll see you all in another one in the future. But probably a smaller one - I don't know if I could handle a whole regiment yet! My hat's off to the rest of you COs, for handling your larger forces so well. Mark ---------- From: scanman (Ian Barefoot) I personally had a great time with this CPX - although there were times when I thought it would never end! Certainly the 'fog of war' effect was greater than any I'd experienced before. I agree with the comment of having umpires who are perhaps in greater proximity to each other - although how this could be arranged given our current disparate locations remains to be solved! My personal orders were to 'run around map 15 and look bigger than I was!' I'd played Chaim in an earlier scenario, and found then that he favoured a defence in depth. Dangerous assumption.... However, his forward units cost me the best part of my mobility (BTR's etc) before I hit what I thought was his MLR - and then I really got pasted! Would it have made much difference if 'Blue' had been limited to 'Dragon'??? I also found the Orbats (ToE's?) in the handbook somewhat misleading. Would it create too much work for Force Commanders to detail exactly what their sub units had to work with - particularly among the atts & dets? Mind you, that doesn't absolve me from making a total c..k-up of my first set of orders. I felt that James was *very* restrained that first day, and I'm sorry Mark never really got a clear reply from me. I agree with the comments regarding recce units - they really are best used in small packets , moving slowly and often dismounted. After all, we all know from real life that you *dont* go charging out from a woodland-edge, and cresting ridges is best done on the belly at about 5 miles per fortnight! Unfortunately, there are two limitations. the first is in the game engine - ie that units move at a uniform speed unless suppressed. there is no command to 'belly down and move sloooow'! Secondly, we have to take account of the umpires' ability to control multiple units at the same time. Effectively, although we are making the strategic decisions, the umpire is effectively micromanaging the battle - and we all know what happens when a commander gets that close.... Listening Colonel 'H'.....? (Para Regt sick humour creeps in). It might be interesting to run a purely recce scenario - ie actually practice against enemy positions. Although I would suggest that a lot of this work is carried out at night! I must admit to a slight sense of isolation, although Steve was always there with quiet encouragement. All in all 'though, I had a great time, and don't begrudge the telephone bill one bit. Actually our anniversary dinner was more expensive. IRC will always be a troublesome medium I think, given the restrictions on bandwidth, etc. from that aspect, midweek play might be better - but I'd hate to have to do a full day's work afterward! I personally have used voice-type systems (I've actually got a registered copy of 'Iphone' - but I dont think it's got conference facilities). Of course this would mean we'd all need the same program, and the necessary hardware. I'm glad we won (Obviously!, but I'm glad also that we never had to do it for real! Ironic I suppose that yesterday's finale was played out on our Remembrance Weekend... Hope to play with (or against) you all at a later date. Ian ---------- From: Chaim Krause I had fun. It was different. For the most part I let the map commanders run the show. I messed with the offboard units. It was a different perspective to have no real idea what was going on the individual maps. I always took what the said and multiplied by 2/3 to get the real numbers. 8) I felt like it was mostly the map commanders' game and that next time I won't put myself in that position. I would like to do this again sometime, although we do need to speed things up a bit in some areas. I think that it might have been different for you, as you seemed to have more work to do. I spent 80-90% of my time working on www.chaim.com :) I got TacOps + Exp kit in the mail friday. I love that game more and more every time I play it. I think the only game that has the potential to rival it is RTM. RTM has the potential of being the greatest wargame of all time. I would love to see it take on the likes of a Squad Leader. I would be in hog heaven. I am probably going to call on you when I add the Warsaw Pact pages to my www site. So start doing your research Chaim ---------- [Prelim comments by Steve Althouse] This is Del's. He hasn't read any of the logs so he is a little off on some things but still insightful. He and Bart are still a little miffed at John for his accidental switch-a-roo of the MRR designations...Not personally miffed...Kinda professionally miffed, one of those things they think is child's play is to track units and issue orders etc on a map...because they are trained for it and do it all the time. John did very well considering the volume of stuff he had to do. He just needed more direction per unit than you would IMHO. It was frustrating for Del and Bart because it was their first CPX and there was alot of confusion and mistakes on both sides (ref/player) that distracted in a small way to the rest of the sim. After reading the Logs and seeing why John went to the One order a turn method, I don't blame him for trying it. But we had 3 Regiments to give orders for and it wasn't working when it came down to the assault on ALAMO, I had orders for arty, Mark had orders for his unit, Bart was supporting the attack and Del was trying to shift his axis. They would try to put orders in long term...to find later that some units didn't move the entire time, very frustrating. I blame the barrage of orders on each side and the need to move it along for oversights. Overall they enjoyed it, and if you read the logs you will see that. Everyone likes to bitch, when "their perfect plan" is not receiving complete attention and they are nervous about it working. I know that John wanted written orders b4 the start of both days..but frankly he didn't seem to get them correct when he had them...kinda "whatever, tell me what you want to do" Atleast from my perception...The commanders intent for all the units was clear in all my opords, and for all the ones del,bart and Mark sent. It was my fault for thinking I could say general things for deployments like TR will come on in column with such and such order of march and move down recon rt one and then towards boot. I needed to spell out what was in the unit and where is started exactly on board. The recon batle snafu was again a kind of no brainer for me but, I could see why there was trouble now. I didn't see the message saying he hadn't been able to use the graphics I sent him. Plus he was in the dark as to what was actually in the units. I had assumed he knew and was being snotty because we were slow. The other snafu on the deploymnets was I also assumed he could place the units in march order on the edge of the board if we told him which route and the order of march..He wanted compositions of each unit and grids for placement which we hadn't "ginned up" so we had to do that during the game and that slowed us down. We were to blame for assuming in that case I guess. (good stuff for the FAQ's?? and AAR?) Oh well just some background for the AAR and for Del's and eventually Bart's comments. From: omni (Del Shand) Well done to all. I have read the after action reports for previous CPXs and I think our side avoided many of the pitfalls that seem to keep coming up. Here are some brief thoughts on the CPX. Proper use of artillery is decisive - we utilized our artillery far better than any other CPX played so far. While blue was hamstrung with firestrikes on his artillery and the effects of EW, I still think blue would have not used his artillery to full potential. A recurring theme in many previous AARs was the improper use of artillery resources - I think our artillery hurt blue by suppressing, disrupting and destroying his ability to react to us more than was readily apparent. Having two Artillery officers (Bart and myself) certainly insured we did it right. Deception - in this age of advanced sensors and other intelligence gathering methods, it is still possible to pull off "operational and tactical surprise", a fact that I think blue is painfully aware of now. This, IMHO, was key to our victory. Blue didn't have a clue as to where the main effort was until it was far too late for him to do anything about it - in short, his Covering Force utterly failed in their mission, which is to determine where our main effort was coming, what our intentions were, and when. Big Kudos to Ian and Mark - by poking out blue's eyes, they virtually insured our victory. Defence must be dynamic - In the defence, one must be carefully determine what the aim is of the defence and a sound plan implemented about the aim. Blue blew it big time - as there was no time limit established, blue's aim to trade time for ground by rolling his defences back in the face of our advance was the wrong aim and his whole plan fell apart as a result. Blue had numerous occasions to effectively counterattack, yet not a single one materialized. In many case, the speed of our advance caught blue in transition between positions and he paid a heavy price for his tactic of trading time for ground. Speed and Violence in the Attack - for the most part, we got this right. There were several occasions when we milled around try to get some forward momentum and had blue been able to capitalize on this with heavy artillery strikes and counterattacks, we would have paid dearly. Once we got the momentum going, blue was rolled over by the OPFOR juggernaut. AARs for other CPXs implied that the attackers were too cautious or attacked piecemeal, or launched without proper combined arms coordination. We got it "for the most part" right and blue's defence vaporized under our onslaught. My chief criticism was the umpiring - nothing against John, he did a good job considering the scale of the scenario, but he was not totally organized. He should have addressed each player based on our order of march or on the Div Commander's priority at certain phases of the battle. Orders have to be acknowledged - in many case, I gave up trying to move some units, even after I gave orders many times for them, they stayed where they were for the whole game. I'm sorry to say, but the messup concerning unit designations between what units were 170 and 172 MRR simply SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED! It occurred because John didn't stay on top of things. This confusion passes on to the players - I can't speak for other unit COs , but for a while there, I HAD NO CLUE where my units were or what they were doing!! The confusion between unit designations was the main reason that Bart's lead MRB prematurely launched on Obj BOOT before both MRRs were ready to go and that battalion got shot up. Had blue had more forces in place, that misunderstanding could have potentially cost us the game - we would have lost a MRB, lost tactical surprise, and had our hand tipped as to where the main effort was before we were ready to reveal our intentions. Had blue not been so disrupted and second guessing himself, the initiative could have easily swung over to them. Still, John did a good job under trying circumstances - its just he could have make it a lot easier on himself to be better organized. [John's disorganization was at least partly my fault; I should have made the organization of each side much more explicit. - James]