Bavaria 1964

Having a few days off work, I decided it would be fun to play a small, solo game of Cold War Commander.  Somewhat to my surprise, it's over a year since I last played.

I settled on a 1964 timescale in which Kruschchev has launched a surprise attack into West Germany as an attempt to recover international prestige and Politburo support lost during the previous year's Cuban Missile Crisis

For this purpose I cobbled together a couple of 1000 point forces, American and Soviet.  The Americans had a CO, six M48A1 tanks, three infantry (with M20 Bazookas) and three M113s.  The Soviets had four T-62s, three infantry (with RPG-7s) in BTR-60P, and a battalion of three 122mm howitzer batteries in support.

The table was small (the top of my map chest) and cluttered with woods and hills.

The scenario was the standard CWC "Encirclement" in which one side (in this case the Yanks) tries to escape up the length of the table (from the near edge in the above pic) whilst the other side moves in from either or both flanks to cut them off.

In terms of the above picture the BTR-60s moved to occupy the last (small, green) hill crossed by the road before it leaves the board (far end) whilst the tanks and the artillery's FAO were to come on from the right hand side.

I put one of the two M48 companies onto the biggest hill as an over-watching force to shoot at any Russkies who showed up (not that this would be easy given the wooded terrain).

The remaining Americans were to make a dash down the road, relying on the fact that the distance-from-the-command-unit modifier to command rolls doesn't apply if your whole move is along a road.

The game was fun with a couple of command bonuses (one each) and a couple of blunders.  Both of the blunders were by the Soviet FAO.  The 122s never managed to fire at the Americans but they did destroy one of their own infantry platoons (the perils of open-topped APCs) before losing two thirds of their own strength to enemy counter-battery fire!

The T-62s didn't arrive until game turn 4 thanks to lousy die rolling.  However, they did then manage to overrun the American CO!

In the end (after 6 turns) I called it a day as I had to make dinner.  I called it a marginal American victory as they got a tank and two loaded M113s off the board but lost 25% casualties in doing so.