RAMADI (Iraq): Mother of All MOUT Maps

[LongLeftFlank]

No campaign, just scenarios (mainly historical). But in general they will show how tactics for both sides evolved over time. I will have some RED scenarios too, although they'll either be 2 player or vs the Iraqi Army (which didn't often counterattack aggressively, unlike Americans).

But my timetable for doing these may be lengthy.

[Aragorn2002]

Stunning map. Well done.

[LongLeftFlank]

Thanks for the kind words, all, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. I am taking a break for a couple of months to play Normandy but will then get back to Ramadi.

[Sgt Joch]

very nice scenario, nice map.

[Piecekeeper]

Cant get this to work. I save the file in scenarios....doesnt show up in game though

[LongLeftFlank]

My guess is you either aren't patched to 1.31 or don't own the Marines module. You don't need any other modules to play.

[Piecekeeper]

Marines+patched. Any other ideas?

[LongLeftFlank]

Nope, that's all I can think of. Shorten the file title maybe? PM me with an email address and I'll send you the game file, although it hasn't changed since I uploaded....

[Mastiff]

thank you cant wait for this one especially with the Marines, and Brits for this one.

[War RaVeN]

Heee LongLeftFlank,

Where can I find your great map?

Its real amazing :eek: such map... Like to game it;)

[vincere]

It's on the repositry.

Get your Eastwood Gunny head on, it's tough.

[War RaVeN]

Thx mate!

[LongLeftFlank]

My sigline below has a direct link to GreeAsJade's site, but it's also in the Repository under the CMSF scenarios. If you're talking about the full size map, I haven't released that.

[Erwin]

Am really curious how your full-size map will run on my system. But, having played JOKER 3 threee or four times, I can recommend it unreservedly as a great scenario.

It taught me a lot of new lessons (and why some of my old successful default tactics did not work and had to be changed).

Hope someone does somehing similar for CMBN.

[LongLeftFlank]

Self-bumping this old thread for a reason that will become known shortly.

And wow, at the risk of sounding self-patronising, I just reread the entire thread and am astonished how much military history I've been able to deep dive into over the past 5 years (2008-2012) in such a unique way using this game engine (Ramadi, Baba Amr, La Meauffe, Makin Atoll, Dien Bien Phu).

Regretfully though, I don't think my new job is going to allow me to continue.

Your Humble Narrator, LLF

[LongLeftFlank]

Been silent on this for a while (worked 60 hours in the past 4 days, and not on CMSF....), but here are the briefing maps for RELIEF OF JOKER THREE.

For those who don't know anything about the Battle of Ramadi, they tell a concise story of what went down and why. It is the capital, agricultural and industrial hub and largest city in Sunni Anbar Province, a hotbed of Ba'athist support, and sits along the main highway / smuggling / infilitration route from Syria to Baghdad. Main US bases lay largely outside the urban core, but especially after Falluja they had to prop up an official presence at the Government Center for symbolic reasons. To do this, they needed to use a road (Michigan) and traffic along that road got attacked, constantly. So the Marines began setting up smaller OPs to protect the road. THEY got attacked. And so on, in a lethal game of cat-and-mouse for 3 years.

This post is buried back a ways in the thread, but it should answer the newb question "What's Ramadi?" for anyone needing to know....

[snake_eye]

@LLF

I wish you all the good in your activities. I hope you will be able to get some spare times to offer us as good a scenario as the one you made us accustomed, even if it is a short one due to your work

Cheer

[Erwin]

Enjoyed your work LLF. Hope you have time eventually to come back to us.

Coincidentally, am playtesting a similar very good dense urban map scenario for Dennis (Umlaut) for CMBN - "Ciembienne".

[agusto]

I always planned to play that scenario after taking a look at it once but unfortunately i havent had the time yet. There are just soooooo many scenarios available for CMSF, it is impossible to play all of them. The map looks really great though.

[Buzz]

It is very tough.

"The primary criterion for victory or defeat in the scenario is BLUE casualties. .....you must tread a fine line between being too aggressive and too methodical, and make decisive use of your superior firepower to silence enemy threats while negotiating the maze of streets."

This is a tough MOUT assignment. I have never finished the scenario after @ 3 attempts. It is doable but it will take time as it should

LLF did a great job on the research & design.

Thanks. I will attempt Ramadi again and I hope it will be "upgraded" to CMSF-2 if such a utility is created by BF.

As Agusto note..."There are just soooooo many scenario available for CMSF, it is [almost] impossible to play [all] of them...." Not bad for an "old game".

[LongLeftFlank]

Hmm, it's taking a while for BFC to review it, but I uploaded my full sized Ramadi map to the Repository. At some point it should show up....

Just in case someone wants to try and push the Ramadi series forward, here is the background briefing I wrote a while back for my next scenario in the sequence, WICKED WEDNESDAY.

In any case, it may make interesting historical reading. I am hoping that at some point Bing West or one of the other quality mil historians (and not some pinko journalist) will write a full history of the Ramadi battles (2003-2009). Or at least someone will update the Wikipedia entry to provide the big picture.

Props to those who served, those who died, and those who still carry the scars.

*****

WICKED WEDNESDAY. Ramadi, Anbar Province, IRAQ, July 14, 2004.

The first two weeks of April 2004 had been a watershed moment in the fortunes of the American-led occupation of Iraq. To the ill-disguised glee of opponents of the invasion, the ferocious Sunni insurgent attacks across Anbar Province, and the simultaneous eruptions by Shia followers of cleric Muktada al-Sadr, seemed to have at last laid bare the Bush-Blair lies of "Mission Accomplished", as well as the fiction that transition from occupation to a civilian Iraqi authority was either imminent or popularly supported. In short, Iraq policy had become a plaything of election year politics.

With the siege of rebel-held Fallujah now called off under intense political pressure, the Marine First Division hastily rethought its strategy in Anbar. The Marine-led "community policing" approach (No Better Friend: No Worse Enemy) of deploying light infantry patrols into restive urban areas had ended in near-disaster. Allied forces now reverted to the Army's post-Mogadishu approach of (fortified) camps, checkpoints and cordons, with carefully planned forays into insurgent areas conducted only by company-scale-plus forces, supported by armor and air power.

The insurgents too, had paid a terrible price for their propaganda victories. Hundreds of eager but poorly trained jihadis now lay in mosques awaiting burial, stacked like cordwood in bloodstained sheets. Even when surprised and outnumbered, the despised Americans had quickly regained initiative and massive fire superiority. The key to final victory, insurgent leaders knew, was in killing white men; few other metrics mattered. But it was now clear that this would not be accomplished through sustained infantry attacks, but rather by hit-and-run ambush, sniping, mortar attacks and above all, mine warfare.

Yet with transition back to Iraqi rule inevitable, ready or not, Coalition troops were not to be allowed to abandon the seething cities altogether -- Fallujah aside, where a farcical "truce" was in place. 1st Marine Division CO, MJG Mattis tersely laid out the political imperatives during a visit to the weary 2/4 Marines at Combat Outpost at the eastern edge of Ramadi. “If we don’t hold the Government Center and the provincial capital, the rest of the province goes to hell in a handbasket.” Victory could be achieved “if we can get the Iraqis to work with us. They don’t have to love us."

Thus, Allied forces -- Iraqi police and hastily trained National Guardsmen "supported" by Marines -- had no choice but to fortify largely symbolic government "offices" in the center of hostile cities like Ramadi. These isolated garrisons needed supply of course, and it was the supply routes that were most vulnerable to attack, a fact not lost on the enemy.

The remainder of April was fairly quiet as both sides regrouped, but in May a spate of IED attacks struck at the "Boxcar" and "Dagger" convoys and the mobile Marine patrols protecting them, killing a number of personnel. The uparmoring of the Humvees and trucks that were the Marines' primary transport, long overdue, was ongoing, in spite of a press and Congressional outcry, plus heroic improvization by maintenance crews.

In June, with the transition imminent, 2/4 Marines discontinued most of its patrols inside Ramadi and instead set up static OPs to prevent IEDs being planted along main highway Route Michigan. Now it was the insurgents who took the initiative; on June 21 four Marine snipers were killed in their OP by Iraqi "allies". Three days later, two Iraqi police stations were overrun and blown up, possibly with the connivance of the policemen. An assault on the Anbar Governor's mansion was foiled by Marines.

Nonetheless, the transition went ahead as scheduled and by the end of June, a new "normal" had settled into place again in the battered center of Ramadi. The fortified OPs were keeping the supply routes under nonstop surveillance. Also, Marine / SEAL sniper units moving unpredictably from spot to spot, taking a heavy toll of trained insurgent snipers and IED minelayers. Potent Marine quick response forces (QRFs) in uparmored vehicles, backed by Army Bradleys and M1A1 tanks, were becoming well versed in responding to any attack on the OPs.

Therefore, in July the Saddam loyalist officers who directed the dominant insurgent factions in Ramadi changed tactics yet again.

At 1230 hours on July 14, 2004, COL Connor (DEVIL SIX), CO of US Army 1st Brigade Combat Team responsible for the entire sector from Ramadi to Fallujah, was driving west along Route Michigan when his security column was struck by an IED near the Saddam Mosque. This was followed by a fusilade of RPG shots and small arms fire. At the same instant, the nearby Marine squad (Engineers of JOKER 4/1, 2/4 Golf) at the "Ag Center" OP (really an Islamic law library) also came under fire. Within minutes, the day's QRF -- the battered Marine veterans of JOKER TWO, 2/4 Golf -- was rolling out of Combat Outpost in platoon strength, followed by Army Bradleys of 1/16 Mech ("Iron Rangers") from Camp Corregidor, farther east.

Meanwhile, a kilometer north, 2/4 CO LTC Kennedy (BASTARD SIX) was visiting Ramadi Hospital. Upon hearing the firefight, he and his escort, the 27 Marines of Mobile Assault Platoon 1 (MOBILE ONE, 2/4 Weapons Co.) under SSGT Drake, instantly mounted up and rode to the sound of the guns. As the gigantic Saddam Mosque loomed into sight ahead, the streets of Ramadi's normally bustling industrial area, the Marines noted tensely, were utterly deserted.

[Buzz]

Thanks LLF. A full factual history of the Ramadi battles (2003-2009) would be important and interesting. Your description of WICKED WEDNESDAY. Ramadi, Anbar Province, IRAQ, July 14, 2004.... sounds intense. Way over my ability to push forward but I too hope it will appear.

[LongLeftFlank]

Thanks Buzz.

Btw, the fact that its taken BFC so long to review my upload tells me they're in hardcore production mode.... Good stuff imminent!

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Very rarely have I seen so much awesome stuff in one thread.....Truly inspiring! 

[LongLeftFlank]

On 2/11/2011 at 0:12 PM, LongLeftFlank said:

Oh, and no fear of the maps going to waste. There's plenty of Ramadi goodness to go around. JOKER THREE uses only about half the total map. This is the full map from the same angle as above -- 1650 x 600m.

 

 

And that shot is a fitting one to accompany my 1,000th forum post!!!!!

Thanks very much - I just reread this thread for the first time in years!  Quite a time I had doing this project!

I just had to step away from gaming and game design for work reasons - (living the dream though, developing power plants here in the exotic Orient). I hope I'll be back someday.