The game we presented at Action 2005 featured a platoon of Mechanized Infantry from the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), that is 27 Infantry and 4 Warrior IFV´s, against a mixed force of Russians.
The Russians consisted of a section of Airborne, Motor rifles and Conscripts each, plus a squad of Spetznav plus a BMP-3, BTR-80, BRDM-2 and T-80UK. The game is meant to be part of a series of WWIII scenarios and this was it´s playtest. I had tried the forces out against one another last year where the had proven to be well matched.
But back then we had only tested the forces on different terrain and they proved to be uneven this time, so the T-80 will have to go in the
future. The terrain featured a large river with a steel girder bridge
over it in the middle. The Brits had to take the bridge from the
Russians and secure the other side of the river.
In the first game the Scots lost their LAW 80 AT weapons pretty early
(two of the three troopers carrying them were killed, the third missed
his shot) so they had to try to get their Warriors over the river to
catch the T-80 in the rear or flanks. This was hindered by the wreck of
the BTR that was blocking the bridge and had to be pushed by a Warrior.
That Warrior had almost reached the far ramp (with the other two
remaining ones close on it´s heels) when it was taken out. Now the
bridge was blocked for sure and they had no chance to take out the MBT.
So the game ended there even though it looked OK otherwise with all the
other Russian tanks and ~ 40 % of the Russian infantry gone.
The second game was mixed bag. The T-80 took a tough non-penetrating
punch early on that killed the Commander and destroyed the sensors. So
in this game it was virtually useless. But the British players decided
to play it save and go slow which cost them 3 Warriors to RPG fire. The
Russians mounted a determined counter attack early on (in which they
lost the BMP with the Motor rifles on board) that managed to get the BTR
and BRDM to the other side of the river. Those heavy machine guns
wrecked havoc on the infantry.
The third game did not go too well for the British either. The players
in this game decided to play it fast and aggressive with all Warriors
going in on one flank and all the infantry except for one section being
mounted. The two Russian wheeled tanks blew up when they again went on a
counter attack destroyed by the Warriors main guns. The T-80 took a high
volume of fire from the Warriors but only suffered minimal structural
damage. Unfortunately the T-80 destroyed 2 Warriors, one more fell to
the BMP and the 4th to an RPG and all during the first turn.
As I said the T-80 was the decisive factor in all games and will have to go.
In my previous test with the same forces the terrain did not feature the
bottleneck that the bridge was here. With more manoeuvring space the
forces were equal.
The first game where the British players used sound Mechanized Infantry
tactics brought the NATO side the closest to success though and the
scenario should work out that way (although further tests will show).
None the less all players agreed that it was great fun to play and
enjoyed themselves a lot.
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