Wargames Weekend: Flight to the West

Our first game on the day after Salute was another outing for Force on Force this time using the Cold War Gone Hot supplement. The scenario was a follow up to a game we played just over a year ago (it's scary how quickly time passes) which was played using a tweaked version of Nuts! Lenin has painted some more Mongrel BAOR for me and this was a good chance to get that larger force onto the table.

19th August 1986
Nr. Hessen, West Germany
Having failed to retake the bridge at Arlosen, the remnants of the British 5th (Volunteer) Battalion of The Queen's Regiment, are ordered to withdraw to a new defensive line.
BAOR Mission: Break through any Soviet blocking forces and exit to the west.

Replicating our previous roles I took command of the BAOR platoon and Lenin the Soviets. The terrain was woods and low hills with the road running away to the west over a small river. There were a couple of buildings, a barn ahead to the left of the road beyond a small wood and a house just over the bridge.

I decided on a relatively cautious approach. I had the men dismount from the vehicles and sent a section forward to each flank, advancing by bounds to clear the woods on either side of the road. These cleared the sections then advanced from the woods to the barn, on the left, and to some more woods on the right. I then had the Saxon advance up the road accompanied by the third section on foot.

Things were going well, if a little slowly, as the section on the right was held up advancing through the thick underbrush. At this point the centre section came under sniper fire from the house ahead. They returned fire but in an attempt to put more fire down I, rather rashly in hindsight, had a fire team and the Saxon advance to give fire support. This moved it forward ahead of the wood line to the right and into the line of sight of a Soviet unit on some high ground across the river.

An RPG round came winging its way toward us and the Saxon was disabled (fortunately the crew were able to bale out unharmed). Fortunately a drainage ditch provided some good cover for the fire team from the accompanying small arms fire. I had the section on the right advance through the woods and engage the Soviets on the hill.

The section to the left, having cleared the barn, advanced to the next wooded area between them and the river. Meanwhile firefights were going on between the Soviet sniper team and my fire team from the centre section and between the right section and the Soviets on the hill.

The section on the left cleared the woods but on emerging from the far side were engaged by another Soviet group in some more woodland over the river.

Eventually my greater weight of fire on both the left and the right began to take its toll but the sniper team were proving rather too resilient for my liking. I decided to advance the other fire team from the centre section but, in doing so, revealed a third Soviet group in some woods farther to the right. Fortunately the fire team made it to some cover only sustaining a single casualty and began to return fire. That team didn't have either a GPMG or a bren so they decided to use the only heavy weapon available to them - a Carl Gustav. This extra weight of fire made all the difference and we were slowly making headway.

At this point the turn limit for the game came up and, when we totted up the victory points, it was a Soviet win by two points. I had been let down by only using ranged fire to engage the enemy rather than pinning them and advancing to close combat. Lenin kindly pointed me to some training videos on YouTube which are handily from just the right era!

Force on Force provided a fun game and once you have a feel for the mechanisms and numbers of dice to roll it moves along very easily.