A Fistful of T-80s

Lockdown, combined with now having a semi-permanent war-games table, is prompting me to have a go (usually solo) at some rules I haven't tried for ages. This morning it was A Fistful of TOWs: 2000. 

I've only tried these modern micro-tank rules once before - my records say it was December 2003(!) when I ran an Iran-Iraq War scenario for Simon Beaver, Graham Spearing, and the late Bill Hoad. I remember being somewhat underwhelmed at the time. The rules, as far as I recall, worked OK but failed to engage our enthusiasm.

I've just run through a very small scenario - "Bezarin's Attack" from Russell Philips's The Bear Marches West. This features British a squadron of Challenger II main battle tanks supported by an infantry company in Warriors defending a ridge against an attacking Russian battalion in T-80BVs.

The early phases of the action went pretty much as I think I'd have expected if I'd used Cold War Commander. The Challengers started picking off T-80s before the latter were in range to return fire. However, once the Russians closed the range, one or two lucky shots were all it took to cause casualties the Challengers could ill afford. 

Eventually I decided the British would pull back to a reverse slope defence. Three platoons of infantry waited behind the ridge while their Warriors manoeuvred to defend against any flanking move around the ridge and the one remaining Challenger troop waited in the rear.

At this point I thought - should the Russian commander (Bezarin presumably) pause to bring up his company of BMP-2s and assault over the ridge with infantry or should he rely on momentum and charge blindly forward with his tanks? The dice decided that Bezarin's regimental commander wanted speed of advance at all costs.

This gave me the chance to try out the close combat rules as the leading T-80 platoons ploughed straight into waiting British infantry. This required a Quality check for each British platoon to see if they got to fire first. Rated as Veteran (3+), they all passed and we got to see the lethality of Carl Gustavs against side armour (infantry in close combat with tanks are always deemed able to get a flank shot). Two of the three T-80 platoons were destroyed.

At this point I made a Quality check for the Russian tank unit as it had taken 2/3rds casualties. They failed and I decided to call it a day at that point.

All in all it was an OK experience. The only command and control restrictions in the rules are that you must keep elements within a certain cohesion distance of the rest of their unit. This seems a bit bland compared to the tension of CWC's "Do I risk trying to activate this unit one more time?"

I think I'll have another go with a more involved scenario. I might dust off the smaller scenario from my First Clash article in Wargames Illustrated half a lifetime ago.