Lariat Advance! - Advance to Contact!

Tension mounts along the Inner German Border, with East German border guards ever more vigilant...

This Sunday sees the second of our annual Lariat Advance Team Yankee wargames at the Uni - a big, multiplayer all-day game that recreates the much anticipated, much rehearsed, but fortunately never initiated advance of the Soviet 8th Guards Army... 

through the Fulda Gap, defended by the US V Corps, the tripwire specifically from the 11th Armoured Cavalry Regiment, the Black Horse Regiment...

and the West German III Corps. You can read all about last year's inaugural game here: LARIAT ADVANCE

Last year we played down two 12 x 6 tables portraying two adjacent Fulda valleys, with over 400 points per side spread across the 2 tables. That was with 7 players, but this year there are only 5 of us, so we are reducing the scope somewhat!

Instead of physically playing up and down both tables, most of us won't know which table we will be playing on until Thursday night, with barely 72 hours remaining to prepare!

Bryan, as Soviet CinC, gets to nominate, secretly, to a trusted third party at the club, which table he will choose to attack across. Meanwhile Philip, the NATO commander, has to secretly allocate his 3 formations across both tables, not knowing which one he will have to defend! Each table must have at least one Formation allocated to it. Formations deployed to the 'wrong' table will only come on to the 'right' table as delayed reserves, with the exception of the US Army scout formation. 

We can assume the Black Horse troopers, stationed on the border since 'Nam, will know the area very well and will know all the back trails and short cuts, so will redeploy as immediate reserves if they get caught on the wrong table. If decisions go well for the Warsaw Pact, their 3 formations could initially only face 1 formation, at worst 2.

The tables have differing numbers of objectives, ambushes, and minefields allocated to them, depending on an objective view of which is easiest to attack or defend. Table 1, Rasdorf-Eiterfeld, on the left, has 2 NATO minefields allocated, and 1 ambush; Table 2, Grusselbach-Unterhausen, on the right, has 4 minefields and up to 2 ambushes allocated. Each table must have at least one NATO formation allocated to it. Obviously I think the right hand table is the hardest one to defend, but I could well be wrong!

This year, owing to the popularity of our 60 point, no AIR no AA, games, we will also be limiting the size of each formation in the same way, which should make things interesting....

Colin is deploying a Scout Formation, the famous Black Horse Regiment itself, Philip is deploying a USMC formation reassigned by SACEUR, and Stephen is deploying a Bundeswehr force. 

I will deploy either a NVA motor rifle or Tank formation, depending on the  terrain of the table chosen...

and also a Soviet motor rifle or Tank formation, whilst Bryan will take the other Soviet combo of motor rifles or tanks as he sees fit within the master plan! So, if the fragile peace of August '85 fails to hold, once again the Fulda Gap will hear the tramp of marching feet and the throb of hundreds of diesel engines....More to follow!