Vortex CPX Red CO AAR

[John F Monahan]

CPX AAR from John Monahan, Red CO

First of all this was the best CPX ever. I have never participated in a CPX where the players wanted to quit before the game crashed. Jeff will explain what he did but the short answer is that using a normal PC behind a firewall is a recipe for failure. The Microsoft software is just too fragile. I am a geek and willing to discuss this with anyone but the proof is in the pudding!

The Red team chose me as the CO by default a looong time ago. We had about 300 emails in our planning. Two dry runs. Over 50+ hours by Rattles, my staff officer, in preparation. Multiple iterations of task organization, OPPLANs, overlays etc. Rattlers’ work really made it happen for us. My using my Vonage phone to call him free for long discussions helped too (he lives on Majorca)..

Out Brigade had two BTR Battalions, one BMP Battalion, one T-72 Battalion, one 122 self propelled Artillery Battalion reinforced with one each 122 and a 220 mm RL batteries, a

logistics Battalion, reconnaissance Company and the other assorted stuff. I organized into three combined arms battalions and a tank battalion. This gave us BMPs in the forward elements

to kill the 20mm armed Ratal APCs and tanks. The BTRs were infantry carrying targets with only a 14.5 MG. We attacked on a broad front. This was due to the traffic issues we

discovered in a dry run. We did not want to put more that one Battalion over each bridge. We brushed aside the platoon of infantry on the border and ambushed a platoon moving south

from the main SADF infantry company position with an airmobile dismounted BTR company with added engineers and ATGM. We failed to bypass this company and suffered about one

battalion of losses in city fighting with them. This was our greatest failure. The SADF artillery was very effective with ICMs on units stuck in minefields. Our central thrust was not able

to keep reconnaissance elements forward and repeatedly ran into problems head on. The southern axis, my main effort, was almost unopposed (due to the ambush of the SADF platoon

trying to block them) and covered half the map very quickly. It then fought to the loss of all vehicles while gutting the SADF reserve Battalion. Good work HENK!

The northern thrust was lightly opposed but very delayed by the bridge issue Jeff mentioned. Swimming APCs works great!!! Out tank battalion commander had to leave (shot by the DGI

while deserting under fire) and I added his units to our central axis. By this time the southern axis was shot out so the northern and central combined to finish off the SADF reserve and

were marching to Pretoria when we stopped for a cohiba and called it a game. We had about a battalion left, mainly tanks.

Rattler will address the artillery and logistics issues, as he handled them with such aplomb. The only thing I can add is using the helicopters to move a logpack forward for a FAARP is the

way to go.

SADF killed every helicopter we had. Mostly do to the helicopters being too close to airstrikes targeted on ground units. Keep you helicopters moving as airstrikes are the best SAMs. We

had a very successful turn one airmobile assault but after that the air defense was just too tough. SAMs in TacOps are just way too good. 500% better than the historical record.

The SADF reserve was scattered in squad sized infantry positions all over the map. Very gamey. Not done, especially in Indian Country! The vehicles fought in platoons mainly and were

defeated in detail. But Ratels gave a good account for themselves as the BTRs were way outgunned. The SADF infantry had panzerfausten as the infantry AT weapon and they were

extremely effective out to 500 meters. A change to something different would have had a major effect. The battle overall unfolded as we had anticipated from our dry runs. They killed the

BTRs and we killed them.

Our artillery counterbattery was very effective killing 10 of 12 SADF pieces. Their trucks were too small to move their artillery. They had two batteries to support four maneuver

companies. We had five to support 13. The battery of 122 RLs was worthless. The 220s were very effective.

The biggest problem we had was trying to cross multiple rivers. The lack of bridges (some were blown by BLUE), the excellent mining of the approaches and the mechanics of TacOps

combined to really slow us down. Opposed river crossings is not were TacOps shines.

We used IRC nicknames that reflected roles and it really helped.

Had a great time with a great team and that to Jeff for making it happen.

A shameless plug for my upcoming Red Onslaught CPX, a doctrinal Red assault on the US next month. Please sign up.

[Jeff Gilbert]

What follows is my Umpire AAR. I figured I would post here instead of a new Topic.

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SCENARIO. I read the book "Vortex" by Larry Bond years ago and was always curious about using TacOps to create a scenario loosly based on this. Basically, I wanted to use the older RED and BLUE equipment, shorter range engagements and I was also very intregued to incorporate some of the newer engineering equipment, bridging and mine/countermine.

The scenario itself has the 1st Cuban Tactical Brigade (a reinforced MRR) equipted with BTR-60, BMP-1 & T-72 invading from Mozambuqie into South Africa from what is beleived to be the sparcely defended NorthEast frontier. Pitted against this is initially a single company of border guards (truck mounted). As the planning continued, the SADF moved a Mechanized Battalion (the 20th Cape Rifles) into this sector for refit. All SADF companies and platoons were tied to specific locations (within 750 meters) to begin the scenario, this was to simulate the "suprise" of the initial Cuban invasion and to force the SADF to start very spread out over a battlefield that was 30 kilometers deep and only 6 kilometers wide. In short, the Cubans needed to attack and secure a far Western riverline for follow-on forces while the SADF needed to identify the threat ... and stop it.

We used the below preference settings to remove any advantage that thermal sights might offer. To keep the fight at short range, visibility gradually increased over the game to a maximum of 2900 meters.

Scenario Length. 180 Minutes.

Preferences:

1. User Choice.

2. User Choice.

3. Checked Arty smoke defeats thermal sights.

4. Checked Vehicle smoke grenades defeats thermal sights.

5. Un-checked All OPFOR tanks have thermal sights.

6. Un-checked All OPFOR ATGMs have thermal sights.

7. Un-checked Improved OPFOR ATGM warheads.

8. Checked Firing Units Are Always Spotted.

9. Checked No Enemy OOB Reports.

10. 1200 Max Normal Visibility In Meters

11. 1200 Max Thermal Visibility In Meters

NOTE. Visibility will increase as the day sun rises.

UNIT SUBSTITUTIONS. There were quite a few people who aided me greatly in devising the SADF force. As I can not remember all the names, I will mention none here so I wont offend anyone who assisted and I forgot. Here is what we came up with:

SADF SUBSTITUTE

Ratel C2 OP BTR-80

Cmd Section AU/NZ Inf Subunit HQ P10

SAM Team AU/NZ SAM Mistral Team P4

LUV AU/NZ LUV LR 4x4 HMG

OH Helo CA Helo CH146 Griffon

Truck Truck cargo U1700L +LMG

Inf Dismount Tm GM Inf PzGren P6

Inf ATGM CA ATGM Eryx

HQ Elelment (P4) US HQ Element (P4)

Ratel Mort CA Bison Mort

Rooikat 76 CA FSV Cougar 76

Light Wheel Recon Veh AU/NZ LUZ LR 4x4 +LMG

Scout Team GM Inf PzGrenTrp (P4)

Olifant 1A CA Leo C1 Note: should be Centurian w/105mm

Ratel 20mm OP BTR-80A

36 Zulmac OP AAA ZU-23-2

Truck +HMG US Truck Cargo 5t HMG

Rooikat-105 US XLAV-AG 105mm AG

G5 Towed Arty AU/NZ Howtz 155mm FH2000

INITIAL ORDERS.

SADF.

2 Company, 31st Veldt Commando Battalion (-). Defend our border with Mozambique repelling any Mozambique Army incursions. Do not pursue east of our border but trap and destroy any enemy forces within our territory. Keep one platoon of troops at the border checkpoints, rotating weekly.

20th Cape Rifles Battalion. Reconstitute, rest and train your battalion in or near the designated lager locations. All minor border incursions fall to the 31st Veldt Commando with you providing support if requested. Any major border incursions (battalion sized or greater) and you will take command of the sector and use all your resources to stop the enemyís advance. You are the only forces between our border and Pretoria.

CUBAN.

You will take command of Cuba's 1st Tactical Brigade in Mozambique. It is poised to attack westward into the Transvaal at dawn from Beit Bridge, Mozambique into South Africa along Highway N1 heading toward Pretoria to destroy SADF forces and create a bridgehead across your sectorís the far western river. Once in-place across the western river your forces will receive priority of replacements and supplies for the following offensive toward Pretoria.

PRE-GAME/INTREPS. Although I had quite a few Intelligence Reports "canned" for delivery to each force on a time schedule, I mostly awaited message traffic from the force commanders and fed them the intel and updates based on this. Examples being the Cuban force received information on rthe SADF build up with the introduction of a SFAD mechanized battalion being refit intheir sector and the SADF received ominous "unconfirmed" reports of Cuabn forces in Mozambique.

I have a very hard time telling the commander onthe scene "no" so I would entertain almost any request that came forward after I checked to see if it would unballance the game or enhance it. Mostly, I said yes.

NETWORK SET-UP. My biggest fear was here especially as I was expecting anywhere from 10 to 15 connections, I think we ended up with 11 most of the time. The last few CPXs I played in has spotty reliability at best and insurmountable at worst. The most recent was the one that I beleive may have driven John O to drink. He has a tremendous scenario for us to play but we encountered so may connectivity issues that the game became unteniable in fairly short order. I reviewd a bunch of notes I had taken in from others who had run CPXs and made my setup to attempt to lessen some of these. First and foremost, I decided to run my IRC client on one of my Mac OSX boxes and the actual TacOps on a Windows box. Each machine running on a different public IP address.

1. IRC. Only issue here was PualC (?) had trouble with us not seeing his messages for about the first 20 minutes ... when he re-conneced a couple times ... all worked fine the rest of the day. Ran on a Mac OSX using Ircle 3.1.2 hardware firewalled (NAT) with port forwarding to that specific mahcine.

2. TacOps. Burned down and completely reloaded a P4 2.4GHz box with Windows 2000 Pro and 1 GB RAM. Fully patched and the only thing loaded other than TacOps v4 was Norton Anti-Virus. As I am luck enough to own 5 public IP address, I hung this box out on its own for the world to see. The only connection issue I ran into was after using the "PAUSE" game. If I left the game paused for more than 7 to 10 minutes, I would occasionally have one or two players not get the un-pause or their connection would drop. No one ever had difficulty re-connecting. I beleive this problem was due to a "network inactivity" timeout that was not TacOps related ... otherwise, I would have dropped all the players.

GAME-PLAY. Red & Blue plans. I will let the individual force commanders share this part and I will confine my remarks to things I learned about TacOps and the scenario itself. NOTE. There are NO coded bridges on Map783c, prior to game start I had placed 70T bridges on every road that crossed a bridge.

1. River Corssings. Swimming across the ford sites did not prove to be any real obsticle for the Cubans with few exceptions. One being their far North-East crossing where their Mozambiquan allies had placed a 50t bridge across the river. This was only made aware to the Cuban players right before the game start as, I hoped, would give them a quick jump off. This really screwed up the Cuban forces in this area as they had their initial moves pre-planned to swim and then hit the bridge with a 50t limit and clogged up their movement. The only wa to un-f**k this was for me to use the Umpire Magic Move. Being as I created this problem for them it was only fair "game wise" for me to fix it.

2. Engineering. I beleive I gave each side sufficient engineering assets to accomplish their respecitve messions. In the Cuban case, their Commander (and whole team) disagreed and requested additinal assets which was granted and in reflection ... I have to admit they were correct.

3. Bridges. Reoccuring issue with the Cubans crossing these 70T bridges which I beleive was overcrowding. When encountering a 70T bridge with one unit market containing 3 vehicles at 35T each, the unit will apear to pause at the beginning of the bridge and in about 2 turns finish it's moivement across. However, if a second unit of similar size was following closely enough to reachand try crossing the bridge prior to the first unit completing it crossing ... traffic jam! In some cases, unit markers were reporting 300 hours to move 100 meteres. Even cancelling the unit orders and trying to move away would not work. Magic Move assistance was required. I have run a few tests where I can recreate this however, if I stop any other unit marker from trying to cross until the unit at/on the bridge is finnished, I did not have this issue.

4. All Artillery On-Map. I hate off-map artillery ... especially over a map 30 kilometers wide. I wanted the players to have to move their artillery forward as one would have to do. The only issue I have with on-map artillery is that there is currently no way to limit the types of ammunition a player could use without an "Administrative" ruling. To this end, I informed the SADF player that they were running low on ICM and then ran out, administratively preventing them from firing any ICM for the rest of the scenario. Effecient, but clunky.

5. Supply Depots. Another thing I dislike is the Automatic Resupply. So, to this end, I gave each side enough Subbly Depots to sustain their forces. They, of course, would have to move them with their respecitive Supply & Transportation units. We did find that the Cuban attackers did not have much issue here as they used their helos to ferry supplies when needed but mostly the supply markers stayed with the artillery. Side Note - Seems that the attacking forces would mostly die prior to needing too much resupply.

LESSONS LEARNED. To follow in another email.

MINE VISIBILITY. I had set to 0. Big error as the Cubans literally had to roll on top of the mine to see it. Even worst, once in the minefield they still could not see it in some instances. The almost invisible minefield at 422-400 bunched the Cuban center into an Airstrike & artillery kill zone that all but decimated this force between 07:21 and 07:30. Future CPX (or games in general) I will have the mine visibility to either 100 or 200 meters, terrain dependant.

FORD SITES. My fords on Map783c are all coded to R3. My initial reasoning was to simulate the slippery and muddy terrain near African rivers. What I did not take into account was the probability of the SADF mining the fords! So, R3, mined and mive visibility at 0 meters made these location an absolute quagmire for any force to cross. The worst example of this would be the Cuban force trying to exit the ford at 431-376 at the 07:15 time hack and was not corrected untitl xx:xx by magic move. I will be re-coding the fords on this map to no more than R2 in its next version.

BRIDGE CROSSING. In replaying the game, I changed the "Unit Symbol Size" (F2) to the smallest so I could watch where and how the bunching occured. It can be seen very clearly this way. Early in the sceanrio, in the center, the Cubans had a very strict 1 platoon on the bridge at a time. Result, no traffic jams. In the north (where I had placed some last minute bridges) Cuban forces were ordered to swim and then bunched up on the bridges thay did not know were there. At 07:11 you can clearly see eleven (11) platoons of vehicles all on the same 50t bridge. When this was brought to my attention, I used the "Magic Move" as remedy during the the game break at 07:20. The two major lessons learned here are (1) don't f**k up a players plan with last minute "helpful" addtitions and (2) a solid crossing plan willnot overload a bridge.

NOTE: I think it is fair to say that had the Umpire goofs exampled in Ford Site & Bridging not taken place, the norther Cuban advance would not have lagged 5 to 7 minutes behind the rest of the Cuban advance, giving the SADF more than they could handle across the board. Likewise, the cluster at the ford in the south put this force 10 minutes behind. Had this not happened it is doubtful that the SADF would have been in the position they were in to blunt the southern attack.

ANTI-AIR. I continually under-estimate the lethality of anti-air weapons in TacOps, the consiquence of this is that I end up giveing too much. If anti-air SAM & AAA worked as well as the manufactures (and TacOps) says, there would not be a single aircraft flying over any battlefield 20 minutes into any conflict. The solution is fairly obvious here, I need to re-evaluate the amount of AAA & SAM I allocate for each scenario far below the doctrinal levels.

INFANTRY ANTI-TANK. Big goof on my part here. In my zeel to replicate the SADF I used german infantry ... well, I forgot to change their PanzerFaust to something much less lethal like an older M72A2 LAW. As it stood, these dismounted troops we regularly hitting and destroying armored vehicles at 400-500 meters.

NETWORK. It would appear that I have stumbled upon a fairly optimal solution when hosting. Additionally, I do beleive that all players had hi-speed internet access so we encountered almost no issues. I had also set the time-out for exchanging with players from 15 seconds to 45 seconds just in case of any delays. (Rattler's sound advice here). I will continue to do this in futrue hostings even though I could watch all orders flash out to all players in (usually) less than 10-12 seconds. Like I said, we had a good gaming experience.

FINAL THOUGHTS. By design, the SADF was handed a bag of s**t for a situation and the Cubans were pressed for time. The SADF players, in choosing to fight between the 2nd and 3rd river made for heavier combat earlier than I had expected and Paul & Fredrik did a great job in blunting the initial Cuban thrusts however, it did wreck their force. The Cubans on the other hand, handicapped by "umpire" errors at certain river crossings penetrated 20 kilometers and by 139 turns into the scenario had eliminated all significant SADF units that could oppose their reaching the 4th river in the 180 turns for the scenario.

[Rattler]

This is the RED S2 and RED Arty Commander AAR for the VORTEX CPX, run by Jeff Gilbert DEC 16th, 2006.

It will be fairly detailed and long as we have had newbies on the

team as well as on the list recently and as this CPX was a great

example for how to work the details might help.

Scenario: Cuban BDE Intrusion into South Africa on Map 783 (30x6km; dl at http://www.tacopshq.com/Maproom/index.html#anchor4836993 ), if you only want to take a look at http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/cuba_map_overlay.html

Replay files:

http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html (2nd below my special section)

BLUE (SADF) team:

Frederik Scheuer (DE?)

Paul Czsokay (AT)

RED (Cuba) team:

John F. Monahan (US), CO + Reserve BN

Matt "Rattler" Ohlmer (DE), S2+Arty

Henk Stoffers (NL), YELLOW Axis BN

Dennis Huff (?), BLUE Axis BN

Tim A (?), RED Axis BN

George (?), TANKS BN

Bernard Cousin (FR), Planning Aide and much missed in actual game

Ken (?), dropped due to taking a suicide pill after a DGI visit :->

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CONTENTS:

1. Planning

2. How it Went

3, Lessons Learned

4. Stuff for Discussion with respect to the TacOps engine

5. Personal remarks

1. PLANNING

I came in a bit late into the team, but nevertheless we had 5 weeks planning left before STARTEX.

CO was already decided, and was given the job of S2 Staff Officer. The material I received was a bit desorganized and ambiguous, so my first job was to parse all what we had got and pester High Command with some clarification requests that were eventually answered.

What we had on our hands was to penetrate with a Cuban BDE ( 2 BTR60 BNs, 1 BMP1 BN, 1 M72 BN) into SouthAfrican territory from EAST to WEST over various rivers (that could be bridged and forded at some places where the rest was not crossable due to impassible terrain) to a depth of around 27 km within 3 hours.

We had some INTEL about enemy force composition courtesy to our Mozambiquian Brothers (basically we were facing a BN+ in the rear of the map, a hastily composed militia type force in the middle and some border posts close to our Assembly Areas), and Bernie Cousin had molded those into some on-map potential OOBs. We knew that visibility at STARTEX was to be 1200 mtrs only, and that only BLUE had limited thermal sights. Furthermore both arty and vehicle smoke would defeat

any thermals.

We had a lot of arty that was supposed to be supplied by log packs, so one of my first jobs after we knew our setout forces was to calc how long we could sustain fires with different mission and tubes combinations. As a result we realized that the 122MRL rockets we were given were quite useless while consuming lots of ammo, and that only by leaving this one out of our plans we could sustain fires (initially we had planned to use mainly smoke) over a large part of the three hour scenario (for anybody interested on how I calculated this,see: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/121606_arty_analysis.html )

Next job almost equally important was to provide a terrain analysis (never managed to finish that and Bernie contributed all essentials in this respect so this moved to backburner), an enemy OOB threat analysis

( http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/121606_enemy_oob.html ),

and both enemy and friendly team commander profiles (censored) which I threw out as fast as possible despite heavy spousal unit CB fires at the time consumption... :->

Another thingy we were worried about initially was the fact that

umpire wanted to run the CPX with the "Firing Units Always Spotted" preference turned ON and that enemy could simply by disabling scrolling spot our arty and send out airstrikes after them, which in turn meant we would have to be on the move all the time with the majority of our assetts.

About half of our team was quite participative in this planning stage with lots of comments and ideas crossed, but from Ken (later dropped), Tim, Dennis and George we heard nothing (Tim and Dennis got more active later as game day got closer).

SIDENOTE from soapbox and the heart: This is an important issue, I was quite frustrated about not hearing anything from so many team members until game day, you dont know where you stand (and it had a lot of influx on the actual game as I will comment on later), many of the actual maneuver commanders didnt participate at all in dry runs and only a few in planning to a certain stage, this attitude resulting in the majority of our hickups during game.

In general over 10 years CPXing I have realized that for some reason the more time for planning is availiable the less participative ppl become, probably because they think "Bah, there is still sooooo much time left, I will catch up later...."

MY ADVICE TO UMPIRES:

1. Facilitate decision for players whether to participate and on which side by advising on the degree of planning involved, e.g. SKETCHY, DETAILED or EXTENSIVE, so that players can make up their mind whether they will be able to cope.

2. Dont give more than 2 weeks for planning, the effect will be surprising as you are to get better results due to the time pressure.

MY ADVICE TO PLAYERS: SPEAK UP about what you expect and what you can contribute, drop put if you see you cannot handle what is thrown at your team. CPXes are a team effort and by joining you assume some degree of responsibilty in making this an enjoyable event for everybody. In case of asymetrical missions or attackers usually heavy planning is involved, and if you are too lazy too get organized or even read your emails for a week or so it will be hard for you to follow and stay in the picture just by the sheer load of information dropping onto you that the others already have evolutioned into understanding.

Not acknowledging receipt of OPORDS, OOBs or direct requests within reasonable time (36 hours) is treason to your team members because it introduces a lot of friction, even more so if/when you dont have a clue of what the team effort is about on STARTEX.

MY ADVICE TO COs: If a player starts out or becomes irresponsive and is not contributing or reacting to acknowledgement requests, drop him (as Rikki told me once its more diplomatical to move him "to reserve" :-> ). You spoil your own teams planning effort and the actual game fun if you find yourself with players that are not willing or able to implement commanders intent on game day, better to run with a few

dedicated than with a bunch of lazies.

END SIDENOTE, stepping off soapbox.

Our CO had a plan ready: We would concentrate forces on a two axis advance and smash right through the enemy under smoke cover, wherever possible bypassing anything we would find for sake of speed.

This formed into an initial OPPLAN

(see our map overlay at

http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/cuba_map_overlay.html):

2. MISSION:

We will attack westward into the Transvaal at dawn from Beit Bridge,

Mozambique into South Africa along Highway N1 heading toward Pretoria

to destroy SADF forces and create a bridgehead across the far western

river.

3. Commanders Intent:

Advance on two axis ( YELLOW and BLUE) to the west with one Combined

Arms battalion in each column. Lead Battalions will establish Route

Opening Detachments (ROD), one for each axis of advance. ROD to

consist of Reconnaissance, Engineer and Mounted (BTR) Infantry

assets. Helicopter to drop FOs and ATGM teams squads as they recon.

Helicopter will be used for reconnaissance, not fire support. They

will fire in self defense only. Columns will not delay to wait for

tanks. Advance at the fastest possible rate until we secure a

bridgehead over the river vicinity Wambad.

and we decided to run a first test game where our CO would host and

run BLUE and Bernie, Henk and myself would run the BNs to test our

initial plan.

We discussed whether to centralize arty under one command (myself)

but on COs insistance left the mortars with the BNs in direct fire

support for the first test game.

This first test turned out to be a disaster from our Cuban POV: We

got congested on our advance on only two axis, stuck in minefields or

on bridges, got hammered by arty and took way too long to even cross

the first river. Arty wasnt responsive enough.

As a result, the TF composition was changed, the BNs broken up and

recombined and the plan for an airmobile part of ops developed.

In one more dryrun we proved the idea valid while still needing a few

refinements and our CO came up with the FINAL OPORD.

I post it here in full length as its a great example of what you

expect from a team CO in a CPX:

Cuban 1st Tactical Brigade OPORD 1-06

1. SITUATION:

The war between South Africa and Namibia has ground to a halt only 10

kilometers south of Windhoek as massive Cuban reinforcements take

over the fight for the overmatched Namibian Army. The SADF has

committed the bulk of its army in Namibia fighting the Cubans or

scattered throughout South Africa quelling internal unrest. This has

left South Africa's Northern and North-Eastern frontiers almost bare

allowing our Cuban High Command to secretly move three brigades to

take advantage of this opening.

a. Enemy Forces. Overview. The SADF border defense in this sector

is under the command of the 31st Veldt Commando Battalion

headquartered in Wambad vicinity 225399. Despite its auspicious

name, the 31st Veldt Cdo is a reserve formation of second class

troops and equipment. The battalion's main supply depot is located

in a wooded area North of a small town vic 202419 and is guarded by a

platoon of light infantry and light AAA. There are two other minor

supply depots near Neboomspruit and Thorndale. Our operatives are

still attempting to locate them. Your avenue of attack only contains

the 2nd Company, 31st Veldt Cdo, a motorized-infantry unit (truck &

LUV borne) headquartered in Thorndale vicinity 394400. The company

has three infantry platoons, a weapons platoon of light mortar and

minimal AAA. Only one infantry platoon mans the border checkpoints

at a time and rotates out weekly.

b. Border Forces. Approximately a reinforced platoon dismounted

ground troops of reserve quality only armed with small arms and a few

light to medium machine guns and a scattering of infantry anti-tank

rockets. There are three (3) identified border outposts posts and

are located at 453396, 455391 and 444412. Additional border

strong-points are believed to be under construction but no further

information is available at this time. Each post has one or two

infantry teams with their trucks/LUVs within 500 meters. There are

unconfirmed reports that the SADF has been deploying mixed minefields

near the border.

c. Crossing Points.

(1) Bridges. All bridges in this sector are fairly weak with no

more than 70t max load. It is not believed any bridges within 15 km

of the boarder has been set for demolition.

(2) Fords/Crossings. Although mostly shallow, the identified ford

crossings would require vehicles that are amphibious. These fords

could will provide excellent bridging locations for alternate

crossing locations for your heavier vehicles.

(3) The SADF has limited bridge destruction capability. There are

mines but not within 300 meters of the border.

2. MISSION:

We will attack westward into the Transvaal at dawn from Beit Bridge,

Mozambique into South Africa along Highway N1 heading toward Pretoria

to destroy SADF forces and create a bridgehead across the far western

river.

SETUP:

We will deploy east of the far east river in covered positions.

Task Organization:

Cuban 1st Tactical Brigade:

1 x Bde HQ (PIN 21) Assembly Area grid 4739

First Combined Arms Battalion (Call sign YELLOW) COMMANDER Henk (PIN

22)- Axis YELLOW. 2 BTR Company, 1 BMP Company, two engineer squads

in BTRs, one MTK2 Mine clearing vehicle, 1 reconnaissance Platoon, 1

BMP Battalion support Company(-) 1 AT Platoon, two Truck Cargo _ M

ton, 1 infantry command and observation post. Assembly Area east GRID

4737

Second Combined Arms Battalion (Call sign BLUE) COMMANDER Dennis (PIN

23)- Axis BLUE. 2 BTR Company, 1 BMP Company, two engineer squads in

BTRs, one MTK2 Mine clearing vehicle, 1 reconnaissance Platoon, two

Truck Cargo _ M ton, 1 BTR Battalion support Company(-), 1 AT

Platoon, 1 infantry command and observation post. Assembly Area east

of OBJ C

Third Combined Arms Battalion (Call sign RED) COMMANDER TimA (PIN

24)- Axis RED 1 BTR Company, 1 BMP Company, two engineer squads in

BTRs, one MTK2 Mine clearing vehicle,1 reconnaissance Platoon, two

Truck Cargo _ M ton, 1 BTR Battalion support Company, 1 AT Platoon, 1

infantry command and observation post, Assembly Area east of OBJ A

Tank Battalion (Call sign Tank) , COmmander George (PIN 25) three

tank Companies, one engineer squad in BTRs, two MCV IMR2M Obstacle

clearing vehicle, four empty BTRs, four VLB MTU72 AVLB Bridging

vehicles one infantry command and observation post Assembly Area GRID

4739.

Reserve Battalion (Call sign Reserve) COMMANDER REDCO (PIN 21)- Axis

BLUE 1 BTR Companies, one Engineer PLT, 4 FOs, 1 Anti aircraft

Battery, four VLB MTU72 AVLB Bridging vehicles. 5 helicopters.

Assembly Area GRID 4839

Artillery Battalion (Call sign ARTY) COMMANDER RATTLER (PIN 26)- All

Airstrikes, 1 122 self propelled Battalion, 1 122 MRL Battery, 1 220

MRL Battery 3 Mortar Companies, one truck Battalion with logpacks,

four VLB MTU72 AVLB Bridging vehicles. Assembly Area vicinity GRID

4738

Commanders Intent:

Advance on three axis (YELLOW, RED and BLUE) to the west with one

Combined Arms battalion in each column. Lead Battalions will lead

with Recon and BTR units. Airmobile Assault at 07:00 on IRIS by

Reserve battalion. Hinds will be used primarily for reconnaissance,

not fire support. Columns will not delay to wait for tanks.

Advance at the fastest possible rate until we secure a bridgehead

over the river vicinity Wambad. SPEED IS OF THE ESSENCE. Do not stop

to clear town or other defended points except OBJ C. Use little

smoke, it blocks our vastly superior firepower. I anticipate a

decisive battle with the enemy reserve between phase line RED and

phase line YELLOW. It may be mobile or a river defense. Counter

battery efforts are my single highest priority. I will reinforce

success!!! Not failure.

Execution:

The three Combined Arms Battalions will advance along their

respective axis at maximum speed. Swim across as needed, do not wait

to throw bridges. Axis YELLOW is the main effort and will receive

priority of support. Reserve Battalion will follow on Axis Blue,

Artillery on Axis Yellow. Bypass dismounted infantry after

destroying their vehicles. DO NOT STOP TO ENGAGE DISMOUNTED INFANTRY

except at OBJ C, BYPASS THEM. Avoid engaging infantry at ranges under

700m (Eryx range 600M). Reserve Battalion will conduct a Company

sized airmobile assault Vicinity OBJ IRIS starting 0700. All

Battalions will detach 2 ATGM teams to the reserve BATTALION,

vicinity GRID 4839 (done in OOB). Artillery will fire heavy rockets

on SADF artillery location at 07:00 (done by umpire). Artillery will

fire heavy prep on OBJ C at 07:00.

Specific instructions:

Bridges will be recovered as the last vehicle crosses. Bridges will

normally need to be deployed in pairs to fill the 200 meter rivers.

Bypass dismounted SADF infantry whenever possible. Try to stay 800

meters away from possible enemy positions (ERYX range 600 Meters).

Maximize combined Arms overwatch. Overwhelm the piecemeal enemy with

fire, each Combined Arms battalion is equivalent to his entire

reserve. Tank Battalion will pick up infantry with tanks as we lose

armored personnel carriers. Reserve company BTRs are allocated to

all Battalions. Deploy into platoons before river crossing. Cross

bridges with only one platoon per turn. Combined Arms battalions

keep type companies together as possible. Push hard, "Even a

victorious army has casualties".

Signal - Channels #tacopsred, All Commanders will set their nickname

to their Call sign. Report passing phase lines and capturing

objectives.

Issues:

How many players will we have?

- If 7 then 1 BRIGADE Commander, 3 Combined Arms Battalion Commander,

1 artillery battalion Commander, 1 S-2, 1 Reserve Battalion

Commander.

- If 6 then no S-2. Artillery officer assumes S-2 duties)

- If 5 then no Reserve Battalion Commander. Brigade Commander assumes

Reserve Battalion Commander duties.

With the plans and the jobs decided (Bernie had let us know that he

was not availiable on game day) CO handed out the OOBs to the players

so that everybody could split them down and deploy in his AA, but

apart from Dennis nobody did so within 48 hours (Tim at least let us

know he had no time but the others didnt even ack receipt). CO had

ordered me to do the work as a backup in the background, so when the

time was up we had them ready.

With permission from CO I requested umpire to accept a pre-setup .tac

file from us on the reason that with such a large force and the

problems at crossing points we would not lose too much time at

STARTEX for everyone to give orders and set target priorities (BTRs

targeting vehicles instead of inf, ATGMs targeting tanks) which would

have been impossible to do with exported OOBs (export would also have

set our log packs to zero again to be filled up manually by ump

before STARTEX).

Permission was granted so I set to work it out and after a few tries

and uncounted hours had a setup ready that would not have us clog up

in the initial river crossings and guarantee a smooth CPX start even

if ppl came in late.

Once having this out the only things to finish were the .names file

for the map (for OPSEC reasons and to faciliate inter-team comms and

calls for fires we had assigned 170 BPs all over the map, basically

one in each square), finish our final overlay and pack a briefing

package for eventual reserves that would have to get to speed

fastest, then we were set to go.

2. HOW IT WENT

At STARTEX most everybody was present except Henk who had announced

he would arrive late, so CO took Axis YELLOW forces.

I had a checklist prepared on final issues and reminders which I

posted to a separate IRC channel for everybody to read and soon we

were underway.

First, from a tech POV this was smooth as can be, great job umpire!

Unlike others I have seen other CPXes run smoothly as well (incl some

of mine), but this one was nearly perfect and we were instantly

submerged in a strainous 1 min turn exchange that I think ran at a

1:3 relation to RL incl all pauses, one of the best ratios I have

ever seen.

Initially things went as planned: We crossed in the center and south

and had the known enemy forces under control there rapidly, but our

first round Rockets on enemy arty failed in turn 1 as it had been set

with accuracy zero. I could compensate a bit with my own 220 rockets

2 minutes later and a rec on airstrike but then botched it in turn 7

when I had forgotten to correct the targets for our 3 follow up

airstrikes that went for the logpacks instead for the battery, still

it was quite successful as we took out 4 of the 6 tubes.

After about turn 10 I realized that we were saving ammo in a much

bigger way than I had anticipated and so could use the Rockets again

after resupplying them, this time targeting the 2nd battery at around

minute 25, another success in combination with some airstrikes.

As I had all hands full as arty commander to coordinate fires and get

my units on the move to follow our advance I cannot comment on the

overall aspects of the game as I only focused on my stuff mainly, but

apart from that we followed the plan successfully basically I still

recall some hickups of interest:

- At STARTEX umpire granted us some bridges in the north which was

counterproductive in a way that neither Commander RED (northern) Axis

nor I as S2 had anticipated: The units had initital orders to swim

the ford in our .tac file (which took them 7 minutes in our tests),

but as they now found the bridges in the way, arriving all more or

less at the same time, they got stuck and it was not until minute 30

that umpire magic-moved them, so we basically lost our thrust

coordination between axis as they were 20 minutes lagging behind our

other forces.

- TANKS commander had not understood that we needed to bridge the

fords below BLUE (center) axis in two lanes and that his bridgelayers

were required for that, didnt happen until ENDEX despite alerting him

various times to the fact.

- BLUE axis commander got stuck in a minefield and allowed the better

part of 2 coys bunching up there and got hammered, also he - contrary

to commanders intent that was to bypass where possible - later

engaged in a town fight in HOTEL and cleared it out losing units big

time.

- CO was overwhelmed with running his air assaults plus the YELLOW

axis forces and so got way stretched out leaving the recon teams

behind that could have spotted way ahead the ambushes that YELLOW

later ran into. Also he didnt have time to clear the minefields at

ford E on his axis (2nd river) which lead to arty getting stuck down

there later when I attempted to close in on the lead units with the

low range mortars.

- Myself had big problems getting my supply train to follow once over

the first river: Because of the fact that my focus lay in the front

where the fires fell 10 km away form my actual units I didnt realize

until too late that I got stuck several times on minefields or

bridges and had to get magic moved as units wouldnt accept orders

anymore.

Partially this is due to an umpires mistake who set the minefields

basically to invisible which had the effect that we couldnt see them

despite being on top of them and had no clue why our units wouldnt

move until maybe two or three turns later when they suddenly appeared

on the screen (this happened various time and probably also was the

reason for BLUEs mishap)

2nd, as arty commander your view is far away from your units and you

only control them every 5 turns or so to see how they follow and to

correct orders, and usually in the heat of battle it might take two

times this to realize they dont move by which time of cause the

situation has developed in something unsolvable by player (units

report 170 hours e.g. to leave a bridge) after getting stuck e.g. on

bridges for reasons I still dont understand: My mortar or support

platoons always had 3 minutes spacing advancing to bridges, still

they would clog up within the 10 or 12 minutes I needed to realize

something was wrong.

Also the bridgelayers didnt work as anticipated, when I had to bridge

ford E (300 mtrs) there was no way to get the third bridge layer off

the bridge and all my units couldnt cross for 30 minutes.

Towards the end of game this really had me go mad and frustrated to

the point that I was about to throw it, as it was simply not possible

anymore to provide arty coverage for the front or to resupply my

tubes (all the magic moving eventually disrupted all my supply train

organization and I could not find the supply depots anymore in the 1

minute turns and 10 km behind the front, and when I finally found

them empty ones had mixed with full ones and there was no way to tell

without clicking at all of them). I sincerely apologize for my acid

remarks during this period to my teammates, I sincerely was at the

point of losing it (which resulted in umpire reporting to the other

side that "RED becomes unglued" as I could see from the transcripts).

Luckily this only took about 7 game minutes only or so and towards

game end we had caught track again of our plan and opted for speed in

smoke tunnels which would have allowed us to finish the job rapidly

with the decimated enemy as ammo was there plenty to smoke him until

ENDEX.

Overall a fascinating and interresting game that had me fully

consumed and was great tun, we figured in hindsight that with all the

hickups we were lucky to have won.

3. LESSONS LEARNED

- good planning and a pre-setup .tac file help a lot for a smooth

CPX. Just imagining the time it would have cost us to give the orders

before STARTEX makes my skin crawl, we would have got stuck all the

way right from start

- during planning phase insist on players acknowledging that they

have read and understood the plan, as basic and gross mistakes are

hard to correct while the battle unfolds. In our case I think that

not every player was at the hight of things at STARTEX.

- a final checklist helps, the idea to post one to a separate IRC

channel I think was a good one

- BDE or REG+ size is too big to run as attacker with only 5 players.

E.g. we never used our many engineer assetts to clear mines, neither

for the leading nor for the following units, and we paid a big prize

for that during the clog-ups and massacres that resulted from them.

Had Bernie been present we should have separated all engineer assets

under his command (he did great in all tests with respect to mine

clearing and bridgelaying and may well be called a specialist in this

respect) like we did with arty to liberate maneuver commanders from

this task and to assure that ways would have been cleared for the

follow up units and bridges laid and recovered. Also CO should be

free to look at the big picture and not run any units whenever

possible, in our case this would have probably prevented the BLUE

axis disaster in the mines and the town.

- Minefields if used should be visible at least 100 mtrs, the way

they were set they were not visible under the markers as units would

only stop right on top of them.

- More than 2 forced river crossings is too much IMHO for a TacOps

scenario of only a few hours. To cross a river under fire takes a

long time and to do so several times on a distance of 27 kms is out

of scale for just one CPX

- use the names files and overlays: I received the majority of calls

for fires by coordinates, which takes a long time to resolve in the

short turn times. Had we addressed them with reference to our BPs

("Smoke north of BP 67") this would have been much easier as I would

not have had to look up the digits in IRC every few seconds

(memorizing 4x 6-digit coordinates at one glance you tend to forget

whether it was 435412 or 453421 that was called for, and the constant

changes between TacOps and IRC take a lot of your precious time,

especially when the coordinates have long scrolled out of sight in

IRC)

- Dont voluntarily play S2 more than once a year: You will suffer

from burn-out syndrome faster than you might believe and the damage

due to friction with spousal or attached units might take some time

to fix... :->

4. STUFF FOR DISCUSSION WITH RESPECT TO THE TACOPS ENGINE

Here some things that I think should be addressed in a discussion on

the list or by the Major:

- It would be great to have a way to discern empty from full log

packs without having to open them, either by symbol or by mouseover

or by right-clicking

- I think it might be about time to advance the import/export feature

to a new level: I know it has never been intended to be used to set

up CPXes, but as far as I see this has become its main use as every

CPX I can recall over the last years relied on it at least partially.

In a first step one column more would carry ammo of logpacks on map

when transferred, currently the logs are reset to zero every time and

the umpire has to set them to the desired levels manually before

STARTEX (in our case I think there were over 70 in total, quite a

tedious work). Alternatively the default for log packs should be 5000

instead of zero as this already would save a lot of work in the

majority of cases. Last a feature to maybe set all seleceted logpacks

to a copied load (like SOPs) would solve this problem.

In a 2nd step it would be really desirable to have exported OOBs

export the target priorities and SOPs set of every unit, again to

shift work from just before startex and connected to host to the

planning stage of a CPX

Optimally an exported OOB would also include any orders given, but I

can imagine that is a lot to ask for...

- From what I have now experienced during the dry run testing and the

game, I think the engineering part of TacOps doesnt follow the basic

conceptual layout (I suspect the reasons are in the specific wishes

the major had to address for his mil contracts, but I still want to

mention it):

A lot of micromanaging is asked for bridging, e.g., and I dont see

the reason why it cannot be addressed like all the other units: In

order to bridge a 300 mtr river I have to not only run the layers to

the ford, but also to withdraw after the 2nd one deployed in order to

allow the third one to deploy....? This is not intuitive and I would

expect that if I sent a platoon of 3 bridgelayers in one marker there

and order deployment it would simply span the river after a given

time. I do not understand why three bridgelayers cannot operate from

one terrain cell without removing one first, as I think in the

conceptual 100x100 mtrs there would be enough space for one to

conceptually get out of the way of the others.

Same with getting stuck on bridges: While I understand the idea

behind it (too many vehicles overload or block themselves) I have the

feeling there should be better solutions to unsolve such a situation:

Either the bridge could simply break (in case of overload) and the

non-amphibs lost, but the rest at least would be able to be addressed

again, which currently is not the case. Or maybe units should be

allowed to be removed from the bridge by orders (maybe just go

backwards?) or sticking times should not be so long (hours to cross a

bridge is not realistical even under the described situation). Best

would be to have units ***automatically*** stop before crossing a

bridge and a button that would specifically order them to "Cross

Bridge", as this would leave the responsibility to order this in a

common sense way instead of leading to the unresolvable clog-ups.

Just some thoughts to start a discussion...

5. PERSONAL REMARKS

Thanks everybody for a great CPX, it has been fun and maybe we should

attempt to replay it with us as SADF, I think Cuba would miserably

fail in the same setup (of cause, replaying as Cubans we would win

again... :->).

Special thanks to Jeff who did a great job as first-time umpire, to

our CO who excelled in planning and motivation, to Bernie who we

really missed during game for engineers ops, to Henk who did a great

jobs w/o recon teams to destroy the major forces of enemy, to Dennis

who took his disasters as a man and made me stay on when they hit

me, to George who reminded me its just a game - two-lane-bridges or

not... :-> . And of cause many thanks to our esteemed opponents for

letting us win...:->

Rattler

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

> Opposed river crossings is not were TacOps shines.

Hey ... you were the guys who chose to push too many markers across single lane bridges.

[Rattler]

while this may be true in some cases (not ina all as seen in the replay files), the delays caused by this mistake just are out of scope for tactical scenarios:

700 hours I think was the longest delay reported by a unit (others reported 100 and 170 respectively), and I think even a whole BN (and we never had this amount on a bridge) should have made a river crossing by then under worst circumstances

[Rattler]

oh, forgot a possible solution: Limit the max delay time to something sensible like an hour or so, this, while punishing the planner for his mistake, makes it playable without umpire input.

[John Kettler]

Given my former threat analyst career and having read VORTEX (later got to meet Larry Bond through my brother and play Harpoon with them), this thread was most interesting. The air defense lethality issue is one that boggled my mind professionally, too. Could never understand why Red kill probability was ~3% and Blue was ~80! Oh yeah, forgot--"performance degrades'!

People forget that the early days of the SA-2 in North Vietnam saw one plane shot down for every two SA-2s launched--50%. Fewer still know that under HABRINK, targeted on export models supplied to Indonesia, which had the same gear as North Vietnam, the CIA obtained full particulars on the export model SA-2s, to include command link frequencies. This hugely helped not just jamming, but Shrike and Standard ARM attacks against missile tracking radars. Without this info, how long could we have taken aircraft attrition at the rate we were before?

Likewise, the revolutionary integral rocket ramjet SA-6, which first saw combat during the Yom Kippur War, was an airplane eater of the first order and combined with the ZSU-23/4, and the weak warhead SA-7, itself a copy of our Redeye, gutted the IAF's CAS capability so completely that it wasn't until tanks literally rampaged through the emplacements on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal and outlying SA-6 batteries were destroyed by a variety of means that the IAF dared take to the skies again for CAS missions. Even so, that was only possible because of massive U.S. resupply of things like A-4 rear fuselage assemblies via giant C-5s. Bluntly put, the rate of major system destruction was so incredible as to be all but mind paralyzing.

Judging from what I'm reading here, TacOps air defense lethality favors the Blue school from my aerospace days. What most people seem to be blissfully ignorant of is how technically advanced

some of the Red systems were and also, how much Soviet/Warsaw Pact intel knew about our systems.

SA-2 countermeasures were completely useless against the SA-6, which used semiactive homing, as oppsed to the SA-2's radio command guidance.

Redeye became SA-7, early Sidewinder became AA-2 ATOLL (later Sidewinder was smuggled out of the weapon storage, rolled up in carpet, and driven across the border with part of the carpet sticking out the smashed back window of a station wagon).

A compromised American sergeant provided samples of Nike Hercules rocket fuel and later, was instrumental in penetrating the NATO Document Center at Orly Airport, which was the central clearing house for all NATO classified documents in transit, to include full dispositions of nuclear units and their inventories. They "read our mail" for years--and then came Walker-Whitworth!

Do I think that the Red systems were weapon for weapon as good as the Blue ones? No! But I sure as heck don't buy anything like the disparity I encountered professionally. A strange world in which our jammers worked, but theirs didn't, likewise their missiles. Hmm. VADS with range only radar or a fully enclosed ZSU-23/4 with integrated fire control and able to fire on the move? Would you rather protect a few strike aircraft against limited attack or blind an entire air defense network. Czechoslovakia, anyone?

I digress, though. Were the Cuban Mi-24s given any kind of air-to-air capability? The gun alone would be nasty vs. the light helos used by the SADF, never mind ATGMs or even proper IR dogfight missiles such as the AA-8. What intel assets, if any, were devoted to locating and supppressing SADF air defenses? How about deep recon and strike using Spetsnaz type forces? Eyes in the SADF rear tied to 220mm MRLs and tacair could really ruin someone's day! What about bomb deliveries by Mi-24s? Were the Cuban columns attacked directly by SADF helos or tacair?

All the talk of RODs and such really takes me back, and it would simply be wrong for me to fail to note that the standard U.S. ribbon bridge today is a copy of the Soviet PMP used to such stunning effect in 1973. 700 hours for a bridge crossing?

Now, that's a traffic jam!

A Soviet style solution would've been swift and draconian. See Suvorov's THE LIBERATORS for full details on how extreme the measures were when rushing units to seize Czechoslovakia. Basically, anything that broke down was pushed off the road, sometimes falling hundreds of feet, and missile transporters, commo vans and all sorts of ancillary stuff was, though perfectly functional, dealt with likewise when the advance depended on one route, a nice analogy to your bridge problem.

Did the battle take into account the extreme pragmatism of Soviet style military thinking in which only units making headway, however bloody, have a prayer of reinforcements, but may well get resources from clear up to Brigade, in this case, chopped to them if successful, and others may well find themselves stripped to the bone to widen the one penetration achieved?

Regards,

John Kettler

[ January 22, 2007, 06:18 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Rattler]

Sorry, hadnt seen this replay earlier:

- Personally i concur with the AA threat analysis that you gave and have no problem with TacOps appearing a bit lethal sometimes (as I think this counts in all the aborts of guys that wouldnt want to go into a SAM-hot zone for starters)

- In the case, yes we had units in the rear trying to identify enemy AA and when found arty went to length to supress it

- We had no spetznatz in the deep rear (only behind enemy first lines), but had thought about it and planned to insert, just ran out of helos too early after having forgotten (due to players change) to activate our recon guys.

Rattler

[John Kettler]

Rattler,

Very much appreciate your responding to me on my questions regarding what seemed to me to be a most interesting set of combat situations.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Rattler]

oops, forgot to add earlier:

We alerted higher (umpire ) to the bomb capability (and Apache different doctrine) of the Hinds but were negated the use.

Rattler

[John Kettler]

Rattler,

Are you saying you told the umpire, but the umpire didn't let you do what actually was done in places like Afghanistan? Just want to make sure I understand what you're telling me.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Jeff Gilbert]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Are you saying you told the umpire, but the umpire didn't let you do what actually was done in places like Afghanistan?

Yes, exactly. These were Cubans not Soviets. This was South Africa not Afganistan.

I could be taking this wrong but you seem to find it somewhat incredulous that I would not alter the force ratio to suport everyone's "Pet Rock."

Also, Cuban deep recon was provided by Mozambiqan irregulars ... not Soviet Spetsnaz. Red could rquest all they wanted ... not happening.

I did my best to provide a "balanced" scenario where both sides could have a shot at victory.

Give in to all of one sides requests and desires and it would throw the play balance off so bad that NO one would be interested in any scenario you came up with in the future.

As it turned out ... I do believe that all the players involved had a reqarding and fun experience.

[Rattler]

Originally posted by Jeff Gilbert:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by John Kettler:

Are you saying you told the umpire, but the umpire didn't let you do what actually was done in places like Afghanistan?

Yes, exactly. These were Cubans not Soviets. This was South Africa not Afganistan.

I could be taking this wrong but you seem to find it somewhat incredulous that I would not alter the force ratio to suport everyone's "Pet Rock."

Also, Cuban deep recon was provided by Mozambiqan irregulars ... not Soviet Spetsnaz. Red could rquest all they wanted ... not happening.

I did my best to provide a "balanced" scenario where both sides could have a shot at victory.

Give in to all of one sides requests and desires and it would throw the play balance off so bad that NO one would be interested in any scenario you came up with in the future.

As it turned out ... I do believe that all the players involved had a reqarding and fun experience. </font>

[John Kettler]

Rattler and Jeff Gilbert,

I'm not attacking anyone, merely trying to understand what was/was not permitted and why. Despite my having been a professional military analyst many moons ago, neither do I claim any particular expertise regarding how the Cuban actually do things, let alone outside their own country. Never had to address this issue during the just over eleven years I spent in military aerospace. The extent of my professional interest in Africa was Soviet naval and air bases in places like Aden and what to do about them. I did, though, regularly read quite a bit on what was going on in Africa in the pages of SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

Deep recon via Mozambiqan irregulars is fine with me and a nice bit of game chrome. Do the Cubans operate a Spetsnaz equivalent? You've piqued

my curiosity.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JeffR]

Any thoughts on running this again? It sounded pretty fun, and it seems the majority of the work for a CPX is setting up the scenario. Reusing one might be easier.

[Coyote]

This was really an interesting CPX to read about and I'm truly sorry I missed it.

There does seem to be a problem with the bridge loading abstraction. I'd guess that 40 vehicles can't get stuck on a bridge if it isn't possible for them all to even get on the bridge in the first place.

Ideally it would be nice if a unit simply stopped short of a clogged bridge the way the "don't cross minefields SOP" stops them at a spotted minefield. Does that make any sense?

[Jeff Gilbert]

A couple of quick answers.

1.Yes, I do intend to run a "variation" of this CPX. I learned quite a bit in setting this up and running it.

a. I will change the map used to decrease the number of river crossings. Still be 6 x 30 km in size.

b. I will reduce even more the SAM/MANPADS available to each force.

c. I will re-work the initial orders to (hopefully) reduce the ammount of pre-game work required by the force commanders and their S2.

2. I think that issues with the river crossings and bridge overloading have been known for some time now and, while we may currently be waiting for some "fix" that may or may not happen, we can still use bridging but this will be more of a training and command issue. Very strict movement control will solve most of the issues encountered. Of course, I will not make the same map and mine errors that only compounded the problems the guys encountered.

3. No offense taken ... In fact, hopefully, JohnK will jump into one of the upcoming CPX events. I think you would find it very fun & frustrating.

[Jeff Gilbert]

One more thing ...

To more fully answer John's post.

Part of my design criteria for this scenario was to use more and more of the the lower-tech items and still accurately model the Cuban and SADF organizations. We have been so used to gaming with the latest and greatest equipment that I wanted to give the players something quite different than they were used to.

Baiscally, force them to fight with only the equipment that "client" states would possess or what they could produce on their own.