Team Yankee - Race for the Bridge

On Sunday the Wollongong Wargamers got together for a big Team Yankee game, running Colin’s 'Race for the Bridge' scenario. The idea was based on the Race for the Rhine in WW2 and inspired partially from the Bridge at Remagen and a scene from Kelly's Heroes. 

The setting is the early part of the war so the Warsaw Pact are attacking. The NATO defenders were predominantly BAOR, heavily supported by Aussie units. 

Each player had 100 points for his 1 or 2 formations, without our usual limits to air or aviation or AA units. The Warsaw Pact each also had 2 small platoons of ‘free’ motor rifle troops who were inserted by helo prior to the game into the sector opposite the final objective.

Bryan and Colin were defending, Colin with BAOR, Bryan with the Aussie Leopard 1 force. Peter was attacking with East Germans, and I was attacking with Soviets.

We set up a 12 x 6 foot table set up as per the map. We specified two types of woods/forest – Coniferous as per the rules, deciduous same except no bogging roll due to the regular spacing and regular underbrush management of the West German forestry commission. 

As this was a river valley there were no significant hills but it was assumed that both riverbanks would providing low terrain hull down cover.

As we had assumed this would be a major amphibious operation we specified Riverine environmentals thus:

The river is too deep to ford so amphibious vehicles only can cross it.
River flow will be determined prior to game start: roll d6 on an 1-3 river flows east to west, on an 4-6 the river flows west to east. And if a 1 or 6 is rolled river is fast flowing. 

When an amphibious vehicle enters roll a d6 that's how far down the river it flows whilst crossing, unless it is a fast river, in which case roll 2d6 and that's the distance it travels due to flow.

 

There were 3 objectives spaced down the length of the table, as shewn on the map, the first objective in the City had to be captured or contested within 3 turns, the second objective at the bridge within 6 turns, and the final objective deep in the NATO rear within 9 turns.

The mission objectives were for the Attacker – Warsaw Pact – to stop the defending forces from retreating over the bridge and capture the time sensitive objectives, including the bridge itself of course. The defender’s mission was to contest the objectives and withdraw 60% by points of the forces back across the bridge.

Victory Conditions:

 

With scenario design there are always a few tensions that have to be estimated and balanced: resolving relative force strengths; and forcing players to ‘get a move on’ so something actually happens! Real battles are seldom fought between equal forces as determined by well thought out points values! On the other hand we know that stalemate and standoffs are the main part of any campaign, if seldom chronicled: War as 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror!

No trained staff officer would plan an assault on a prepared defensive position without 3:1 superiority in forces. A rifle section is used to attack a lone sniper, a platoon is used to attack a section, and so on – 3:1 every time! Yet no wargamer wants to play a force doomed to failure - I do quite regularly, but only because I have to play the side that no-one else will, since wargames for me are about the history and visual impact rather than pitting my – rapidly diminishing – wits against an opponent in an equal game; that’s what chess is for! 

But otherwise on the wargames table, to make a game of it, attacking forces should generally have 2:1 or 1.5:1 superiority. Or, as per the well-crafted Flames of War and Team Yankee scenarios, the use of delayed reserves can give the attacker a temporary superiority, encouraging him to attack early to force the pace of the game, neatly solving both tensions.

However this scenario Colin designed clearly gave a lot of thought to these issues. We agreed that each side would have 200 points, but given the victory conditions, it was assumed that NATO would have to progressively pull the majority of these forces back across the bridge by turn 6. And the ‘get a move on’ motive for the Warsaw Pact players was addressed by the limited ‘sell by’ times of the objectives.

So all seemed set fair for an intriguing scenario – challenging for the attacking forces of Fraternal socialism, but by no means ‘mission impossible”!

In our pre game planning, Peter and I decided that our main effort, initially with my tank heavy force, would be right flanking, using the cover of the large 'Diamond' wood seen below on the left mid ground - remember that this would not require cross checks to traverse at terrain dash or tactical speed.



Peter's Motor Schutzen would enter the city, not with any real hope of clearing it, but at least with the idea of distracting the numerous ATGW teams we were certain would be infesting its edges...



However, as it turned out they had ignored the West German doctrine of 'Forward Defence' and deployed well back, with the city defenders holding a few central citadels around the objective, and the bulk of their forces lining the river banks or actually behind the river, ganging up on our two small platoons of air landing troops. Given such overwhelming odds, these airlanders did not last long, despite some token air support to salve our consciences!

They were even subject to cluster bomb attacks!

This should have meant that our intial advance to the river should have been fairly easy, but it doesn't take many Chieftains to make a mess of even the largest horde of BMPs!

Given that NATO was not actually required to pull any forces off the table, our attack, despite making much use of smoke and the convienient forests, soon petered out once it came time to emerge into the open in front of a squadron of Chieftains, supported by Swingfire batteries...I should record however that Peter's perseverence in fighting through the city to contest that objective by turn 3 won us a VP - and doesn't he looked pleased about it!

So an intriguing and challenging scenario, which just needs a bit of tweaking to address the force ratios, and perhaps discourage the use of horde armies, to become a favourite. But I am looking forward to returning to Bavaria for our regular Lariat Advance! series of games...