Broadside Batrep
Last Saturday Flank March was at Broadside Games Show in Kent to preview the upcoming REFORGER American infantry platoon and run some more Cold War themed participation games using the excellent skirmish rules BattlegroundHD.
I had a tonne of fun running games non-stop from 10am til 4pm and managed to fit in five of them - all of which were fought from start to finish with a decisive conclusion.
As the games were intended to be an introduction to BattlegroundHD I opted for a pretty simple scenario…
DATE - 15th June 1984.
LOCATION - 20km East of Fulda, West Germany.
SITUATION - 11th ACR’s Cavalry Screen has ground down the Soviet assault in this sector. 27th Guards Motor Rifle Division has been exhausted and CENTAG has identified an opportunity to regain the initiative by striking at the flank of the Soviet spearhead pushing towards Fulda. 8th Infantry Division has been ordered to counterattack, their assault to be led by Team Zulu.
ENEMY FORCES - The survivors of a badly mauled Soviet infantry platoon, now reduced down to a single squad. Initially only a forward outpost was in play with the rest of the force becoming active once that first position became ineffective. For most of the games I played the Soviets as the GM.
FRIENDLY FORCES - The player was given control of Zulu 3-1, a mechanized infantry squad mounted in an M113. The rest of 3rd platoon was on the table but not in-play (unless things went very badly wrong).
OBJECTIVE - Sweep aside the enemy’s initial outpost before pushing on to clear out the remainder of the enemy force dug in around a house dominating an important road your CO intends to utilise for 8th Div.’s counterattack.
I’m still getting to grips with BattlegroundHD as a ruleset and, not having personally created many scenarios for it before Broadside, I assumed that such a simple setup would probably result in a series of games that would play out fairly predictably - doing the job of introducing some new players to the game but not necessarily leaving me exceptionally entertained by the fifth time watching it all unfold.
I’m glad to say I was very wrong!
The nuanced complexity under the hood of BattlegroundHD creates unpredictability from the very first activation and it resulted in five assaults by Zulu 3-1 all of which were completely different. To be clear, the outcomes of the firing and maneuvering rules are by no means chaotic or random - everything that happened was very much plausible and believable. Unpredictable was definitely the right word for it and it meant that players were kept constantly on their toes and forced to make the kind of decisions that small unit leaders are confronted with. I’ve turned into even more of a BattlegroundHD evangelist in the last 24 hours watching players wrestling with indecision over whether to focus on getting their M60 in position and firing, directing their M203 grenadier onto target, or running to sort out their assault group which had been pinned down.
Here’s a very quick summary of how Zulu 3-1 fared in the games I remembered to snap some photos for:
GAME 1
An RPG flying towards the squad’s M113 caused an early dismount. The errant round passed clear over the APC but was enough to encourage it to keep its distance, spraying inaccurate machine gun fire into the assumed enemy position while the infantry pushed up. Things looked to be going well at first - even if the .50 cal wasn’t hitting anything the shear weight of its fire was enough to start pinning the Soviets while an assault group pushed up.
Then, at the moment of decision, disaster struck! It’s unclear whether Zulu 3-1 was just unlucky or had been neglecting their weapon cleaning duties. Either way as the assault group prepared to close with the Soviets two of their weapons jammed, the third man was wounded by a stray round fired wildly through a hedge, and the M60 covering them also jammed! Sensing an opportunity, the Soviets rallied and tossed handgrenades over the hedge.
With Soviet reinforcements dashing forwards the American player decided to throw in the towel and accept that Zulu 3-2 would need to try an attack from the flank.
GAME 2
With some much luckier shooting rolls from the M113’s .50 cal gunner, this game’s Zulu 3-1 made very quick work of the initial Soviet outpust.
But pride came before a fall - the emboldened vehicle sped forwards, lurched over the hedge and sprayed deadly fire into the second enemy position but had it’s fun cut short by an RPG-7 round that slammed into its exposed belly, knocking out the engine, wounding the driver and killing the gunner.
The dismounted infantry finished off the last of the Soviet defenders but they’d be footslogging it from now on.
GAME 3
Some very professional fire and maneuver saw ZULU 3-1 bounding up using their grenadiers and M60 gunner to neutralise the Soviet outpost before displaying immense discipline by patiently waiting until the entire squad had reformed behind the hedge before popping up to lay down a devastating fire onto the enemy held house. The Soviets fled, the Americans suffered one man lightly wounded and the M113 remained intact - it even managed to survive a hit from an RPG-18 which miraculously bounced off armour that should have folded like tissue paper.
GAME 4
Absolute chaos. An intro to wargaming as much as BattlegroundHD. The Soviets gained a BMP-1. Much mindless property damage and ignoring of the Geneva Convention occured.
Big thanks to Milton Hundred Wargames Club for organising the show, to everyone who tried out BattlegroundHD, and to Ade and Simon for the lift - I don’t go to the gym anywhere near enough to have carried everything the half mile from the train station to Medway sports centre!
If you’d like to recreate 8th Division’s heroice counterattack on your own tabletop make sure to sign-up for a launch notification when REFORGER goes live on Kickstarter this 4th of July:
And if you’d like to learn more about the 11th ACR screening battle that preceded this scenario, follow BattlegroundHD who are soon to release a brand new scenario pack Fulda Firestorm covering just that:
