I am not dead... yet

Well it was weeks if not months that this blog was silent, if you were worried for me fear not, I am alive and reasonably well. I was just "deployed" and busy in a gaming way. I had the pleasure to work for around two months back in my rightful position of CONSIM teaching assistant and also do another batch of military related simulation work... including an historical test  involving the Falklands War and none less than General Julian Thompson and Commodore Michael Clapp... no it is not a joke... as you can see...

The eagle eyed between my reader maybe will also identify the location based on big boxed games in the background...

I have also delivered a couple of interesting seminars... including one on inter-war Chinese navy...

 

Also do not tell me that military historians are all boring and ugly (I am not referring to me!)

Anyway I have also been busy painting and gaming. So without further ado I will move to meatier and wargaming related posts...

 

Are we approaching censorship?

Well, another non eye-candy post. Today I am non plussed by some of my fellow wargamers and by the German law... As some of you, my dear readers know, I am regular lurker and occasional poster on the honorable Lead Adventure Forum. I have decided it is a much better place than some silly ethereal locales like the frothers or the miniatures page. The only downside of LAF is that,  being hosted in Germany , there are some strict rules on symbols to follow. I have always followed them (slipping once, not realizing on of the picture  posted contained a view of the tail of a German WW2 plane...) but, frankly I think that the law:

1) is stupid, not displaying the symbol has not prevented the resurgence of extreme right movement there.

2) that smacks of gestapo... (ok controlling the thought of people...)

3)  it is a law enacted by an hypocrite government... at least one of the officers of the honour guard at Adenauer funeral was an SS battalion commander involved in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising. 

Said that it is the law of an European Country where the forum is hosted and I have no qualm in following it as disgusting in principle and application is. Yet... now something else happened. ISIS/ISIL/Those Pesky Mass Murderer has been declared illegal in Germany (great thing). Nothing bad, they are terrorist and declaring them an illegal organization was overdue (and not a terrorist bastard is not someone else Freedom Fighter, he is still a terrorist bastard). But the law seems also to imply that displaying images related to them is illegal so, to avoid problems the moderators of LAF have decided to...

completely close any discussion on wargaming of the whole contemporary (after the fall of the Berlin's Wall to... well to the future) period. This has been done both to safeguard the forum agaisnt possible legal trouble (unpleasant but understandble move) and to appease people that were claiming 

Well, I think the decision has been unwise, unsound, and hypocrite. Historical wargaming is about real warfare. Too close too home my ass, it is war. WW2, Afghanistan, Punic Wars... what have they different? People died everywhere. Warfare has been always here. To the moderator of LAF I can only say honestly... cut the crap... war is not getting closer to home right now, it has been for the last 13 years if not more, all this thing was just caving in to some people that were just trying to impose their own view on the whole community. I have friends and acquaintance who fought in Vietnam, they knows I am gaming and writing about Vietnam. I have gamed middle east with people who fought there, and they had no problem. In January I will game Falklands with the British commanders... close to home? Close to home my ass. We are treated to countless SS on the WW2 board... but discussing contemporary warfare is close to home and thus forbidden. 

As much I can understand the legal issue in the decision (but they could have solved in a much less nazist way) I think LAF has lost a battle about  freedom of speech and also has set an extremely bad precedent, both in democracy and in wargaming.

As parting shot I have a thought to these people who were bothered about contemporary wars... well you bunch of idiotic, hypocrite jerks, not only this world has been at war for at least three millenniums, but I do not care one inch if you are offended by my wargaming, I just hope that you bastards will soon rot in hell... I will not stop to play my games just because you feel offended, as I will not stop to study and teach military history. Also wars will not stop just because you think they are too close to home.

I would says that the moderators have acted in a manner to, in principle, different from the bastard terrorists. Well... I would suggest that they qualify for the same answer:

Joint Direct Attack Munition.

A general update

Well no eye candy (you already got it) but a lot of talking. 

Recently I was trying to rationalize my miniature holdings and looking at my projects. I have too many, but this is common, I have some that probably are dead... but also this is sadly common. Certainly I need to better link rules, troops, and scales.  So I decide to rationalize what I am doing both to avoid duplication, and its associated wastage, and to focus my effort in finishing some thing for once. 

The first thing I need is to have a rough list of the things I am working on on the miniature side of the Forward HQ.

At the moment the active projects are:

15mm   Europe 1944-45. Well this is almost completed.  The soviets are done, I only need to retouch on the new standard some mortar bases, and paint two 45mm guns. Germans are as done as they can be. I have to bring myself to paint some Normandy fortifications to empty the last bits. Said that I do not see what I can add to them, I have everything. Well I have some primed dismounted tank crews to finish in the spare moments. The British are almost done. 2 more infantry sections to do. Then they are done. Done.  DONE! The US troops are a mess but more orl ess I have only to fill gaps and finishing some painting. Sot his is good and covered. The rules linked to them are IASBM and Chain Of Command.

28mm Autumn-winter 1944-45. Boys... done. I finished the last infantry squad of my German platoon three days ago.  I have a German platoon, an US platoon (you saw the pictures here), one British para platoon. I am satisfied. Only thing I would like to put are a US 57mm and a german 75mm anti tank guns, and probably a Panzer IV (plastic). Burt more importantly I want to break them out for some gaming. The rules I plan to use for them are Chain of Command of course but also NUTS if I want some squad size action.I have also Rules of Engagement and Disposable Heroes and they both look useful and convenient for some small games.

Lion Rampant. I have got the rules recently, after some chart on BGG with Dan Mersey. They are excellent. More to the point they allow me to do what I like to do with 28mm, namely a relaxed games with plausible outcomes and not too many troops on the table so I can have a certain feel. 15mm os smaller scale are for long battle lines, 28mm has to have characters. I have plenty of stuff that only wait to be completed. I am almost done with my first War of the Roses Retinue (usable also for the WOTR variant of Sharp Practice, well probably that will be its main use, but Lion Rampant gave me a quick way to throw together a sensible retinue).

Modern 28/15mm. I love contemporary forces, I have a big collection in both scales. My problem is rules. I started with Ambush Alley/Force on Force for 28mm ( I settled on them after having tried other sets) and I like them. Yet I realized that if the original scenarios in the original edition were all squad sized nowadays the scenarios always end up being more or less on the platoon side. Nothing wrong, the rules perfectly works... but let's face it with the prices and my budgets it is a bit unwieldy. To that there are two other issues. One is cramming of of the table. Yes you can have a reinforced platoon supported by several AFVs but in 28mm it looks weird. The second issues is that I am not really happy to paint so many troops on the table in 28mm. The current sculpts are wonderful, but if you simply fill the table with them you do lose their character. They also require you to paint hordes in camouflaged uniforms. The answer is to use 15mm for  the larger scenarios (I just painted a T-72BA platoon in 15mm!)  and keep the outings in 28mm at squad level. And, if you use few miniatures why not simply using Skirmish Sangin? Well this has been a quite effective way to do things. It saved me a lot of headaches and, even better, gave me strength to push forward and to rationalize two overlapping collections. I have dubbed the 28mm effort project Sangin and and the 15mm one... Project Force!

Cold War Contemporary 6mm (and 3mm). Another long term project (started at the turn of the century more or less...). I have now sizable forces for several nations in several variations (as you have seen here last week).  When I started I was focused on platoon scale sets (mainly Modern Spearhead), recently I got interested in company scaled actions. The advantage of the latter is that you really have the supporting assets (artillery for example) on table and you can easily maneuver a division.  I have reworked my 1987 US Forces for that and I am quite satisfied. One advantage is that battalion and regiment/brigade actions are still doable. One issue is that... I fallen in love with 3mm models from Oddyzal Osmy. Probably they are better suited for this level of gaming. Especially you can reduce the discrepancy between troops and ground scale and one of my pet peeve, road width! I enjoy painting them and they are quite affordable. The main doubt i have now is basing, going for singles or having 2 or 3 tanks per base?  I was thinking the latter, but I have seen wonderful single bases around the blogs. Here I need to experiment more.

Well this is just a preview of where I will focus my painting efforts in the next months, so you can expect more details soon. 

Can we have realism in Wargames?

Well ladies and gentlemen,

Today prize for the most imbecile poster in a forum has to go to mr. Mike D. Mc Brice from the Lead Adventures forum, closely followed by Miss (?) Queen Catherine  from the dreaded TMP/PMT (The iMbeciles Page?). As usual we are down to the end of the line. It is just a game and a game cannot be realistic. from the LEad Adventure we have the usual utterance  "there is no realism in wargames" while from TMP we have the "If someone wants realism join the army". Well as usual the lowliest forms of life that populate the wargame community have roared. As usual I felt honourbound to call them imbeciles.

What is Realism? How we can define it?

There are realistic wargames. There are bad and inaccurate wargames. But realism =can be obtained in wargames. Sadly it seems that for the imbeciles anything realistic has to be bloody, noisy, sweaty. Realism in not in how a given wargame reflects real life tactics and problems rather than how it reflects the fact of being shot at or being sneaking in a muddy field.  The more arguing of the imbeciles (the ones that just avoid the silly statement about joining or digging trenches) often accuse wargame to be unrealistic because there is no fog of war. On the other hand several people who strive for realism in wargames look at fog of war has an holy grail. In the end for them realism seems to linked to some kind of hidden movement or umpiring. Fine, hidden movement and umpiring are time honored mechanics  that have followed us for almost a couple of centuries now.  Yet too often that holy grail reveals itself has a chimera heralding the advent of bad design.

Fog of War is bad? Are you an heretic? I can hear you screaming. Well, first of all we need to define it in a meaningful way. For the simpletons around here it is often the fact that enemy units are hidden. You cannot see them. Thus you cannot react to their movement and actions as you have a good like view of the land. On the surface this is a commendable goal, but hiding the units is the only way to achieve this? Well, in real world enemy units are not hidden. There is a thing called reconnaissance.  Both commanders strive to increase the amount of information they have on the enemy to divine its intentions. This means that often, before doing anything they wait until they have informations. In a student's game about naval warfare in the North Sea I worked on last year fog of war was total. The Germans and the British had (except is some special event happened) no idea of what the enemy was about to do and they had to commit their formations in advance to areas in the north sea blindly. Well it was not what they were doing. Usually both sides had reconiassance force at sea trying to find the enemy, once information was available their main forces would, eventually, sortie. The time lag between these activity was sufficiently short to make the long turns of the game a moot point. As much there was a strategic fog of war at operational and tactical level there were several way to react to enemy operations. As simple the design was its focus on a mythic fog of war was displaced.

What is fog of war in tactical or skirmish games? Do we need umpires and hidden plots there to have some bit of realism? Well, I would say that there is a lot of fog of war even if every unit or model soldier is on the table if the rules are realistic. First of all let me make a point; the player just get a snapshot of the enemy position not a continually updated report. Except in awful games like the recent Bolt Action or Flames of War were realism is purposefully thrown out of the window for different design goals  the game itself creates an integrated Fog of War. If we are playing an 1 to 1 scale game or a platoon sized skirmish or a company level games the chances are that we are  already at the point of contact or just about to reach it. This means that we have decent information on where the enemy is and, roughly, in what strength.  Of course these informations are incomplete, but they are much greater than completely hidden units.  Let's move to some real table example.

Blinds that bind... I Ain't Been Shot Mum

I Ain't Been Shot Mum, (IABSM for shorts) is a company level game at the same level of Flames of Vomit but with a much more accurate engine. Here confusion an the limited ability of reaction to enemy moves are modeled in two ways. First there are the blinds. Blinds are just generic counters that represent real forces or nothing. A good commander will use them to hide is real positions. As in real war forces do not simply materialize from thin air. They produce some signs that could be interpreted (or misinterepted) like noises, flashes, and, in defensive positions, alterations of the landscape. Furthermore the game does not give full control on forces. Units, usually platoons, are activated by drawing their cards. Even if you know exactly where the enemy is, this is no a guarantee you know what he is doing or that you will react in time. IABSM has a small element of hidden units and a large element of command friction. You runits will send you reports on enemy actions, but when and in what sequence (and when an d in what sequence your orders will reach them back) is not a given element. I would argue that the combination of officers, cards and blinds of IABSM offers a very good and realistic representation of the information' flow at a company command post. It is realistic and you do not have to join the army to get it.

Jumping off into the dark... Chain of Command

Chain of Command uses a different approach. It places you on the point of contact, but also makes sure something is happening around you all the time. Having opted for realistic ranges means that even a large 4x6' table is cramped. Even a puny bolt action rifle will cover it pretty well (no... it is impossible you can have only 6" effective range... you cannot cover a whole table... you will not have maneuver those ranges are... right you idiot? just beacuse you shiny bolter is hardwired by a lazy designer to not fire further away than a pebble this does not mean that it is real...) . In Chain of Command the solution is to have forces entering the table from specified jump off points that represents areas you can approach concealed. You know those people are bound to enter the contact are and from which general directions, but not the exact point. You have also a patrol game where both sides attempt to push their own Forward Edge of Battle Area as forward as possible to limit the enemy freedom of maneuver. Chain of command has thus hidden units, but no umpires or plots.


Conclusions

Thus I hope to have clearly demonstrated again the fallacy of the imbecile's straw man. The fact that we are seeing the enemy models or, in boardgames, counters on the table does not mean that tyhe game is unrealistic. As far realism is concerned is more important to understand how this observation influence our own actions and if we

Of course this is not a concern for our imbeciles. For them realistic ranges, scale, friction will never have a place in their universe where only rolling dices and pushing badly painted model in empty flatlands adorned with randomly placed houses and hills is the thing.  They will always use the excuse no wargame can be realistic to defend their favorite poor rules or to tell us that we are just playing with toy soldiers and not doing anything interesting as the latter argument somewhat make them standing out of the crowd.
To them  I can only suggest to go on a toilet jump into  and flush it, as usual their utterance have only demonstrated how stupid they are and certianly not added anything to wargaming. If they are happy playing their own games why they feel always the need to tell serious wargamers that our own games are no better that their junk? 

An d sorry for a post without pictures, we are working on it do not worry and stay tuned!

Awful Dawn…

A review of the VPG/GMT solitaire disaster called Soviet Dawn

In January I received  my C3I issue 27. Beside some good contents and an a big boring piece on the next COIN game (well as much I like Volko and Mark, that one was a big hot air balloon that eat space)  there was also a little solitaire game called Soviet Dawn. It was a VPG product now published by GMT. I like solitaire games and I do not dislike the Russian Civil War (even if I do not like the Bolos). In the game you take the role of that murdering bastard of Lenin and his closest accomplices murdering your way to control the whole Russia against a plethora of people trying to stop you. The game is quite small: a deck of small cards, an handful of counters, a small map.  Well despite my aversion for the bolos I decide to give it a try to understand more about States of Siege, the solitaire games series from VPG that seems so popular. What follow is the result of my misguided attempts (I played it several times)  to make this endeavor worthy of my time…

The game is simple, actually simplistic but it is better I save the comments for later. The map is an image of European and transcaucasian Russia with some track placed over it. Each game turn has four phases. First you turn up the top card of the deck. Then you apply the event or event described, often moving enemy pieces and maybve getting some DRM here and there. Then you launch our actions, rolling against enemy unit to force it to withdraw or rolling on the political tracks to push it upward or rolling a die, to get a si and roll again on the Red Army table to get some special bonus. Then you do some special activity on the political front if mandated by the card and then rinse and repeat. 

This is the package, snake and ladders with pasted history

Well the game play is pretty straightforward, read the card, move the enemy fronts, decide how to spend your action points, do the eventual end turn political roll, rinse, repeat nothing complicated. You can complete a game in 40-45 minutes even less. But  what is the purpose? Your decisions are a bare minimum. You have on average two action per turn. If the good guys are advancing you spend them as offensives to force them back. If you have some breathing space you try to reform the Red Army and get the powerful bonuses that this activity grants you (if you are lucky and roll the initial 6). If you need you roll on the political index. But what this die rolling gives to you? In my opinion nothing. The history text on the card is just text, without any real connection to the game. Your activities appear to be random in the end. There is no shifting of resources, movement of elite formations, search for decent commanders. Yes you can argue that these are abstractions but this time the abstractions are ludicrous. It is not a simulation, it is not even a game. A lot of idiots… ahem BGG posters  (or Bolt Action and flames of War players it seems) live in a world where there is a dichotomy between a good simulation and a good game. Well ladies and gentlemen Soviet Dawn proves you can have a stupid game and a silly simulation in the same package.

One of the infamous cards.

The main issue I have is that you have no control on your army. Yes you can decide against which track to roll (I refuse to call them areas, fronts, or any other term, the blandness of the system stops me to associate these things to any real concept) and if you want to employ some of your reserve offensive, but after that you have no control. Modifiers are given by the cards. The presence of these modifiers creates also another problem. Use them or lose them. Well, if I got a good general why I am forced to use him in a specific area? How I know that in the next turn I will not have his services again? Stockpiling troops and supplies for an offensive? Forget it. There is no way to plan in advance. You get a random number of actions and a fixed number of reserve actions. Everything else is outside your control span. Diplomacy? Politics? Force planning? Sorry kid, even if you are the murderous dictator you do not control anything in your country… 

Plain graphic, clean but uninspiring on the counters, ok Rodger did a good job on the period posters but this is all

Forget about military details. There are no armies to control. There are no resources to allocate. Decisions like concentrating the best units here, and fighting an holding action there are outside your grasp. Actually the game system does not even know what an holding action is. The enemy pieces will advance automatically. I know, you can said No the reserve offensive provides you some control... but what the heck are the reserve offensives? Central reserve forces? well if they are my central reserve why I cannot reconstitute it over time?

Soviet Dawn is the classical case of taking the design for effect to the point where it has no more relation with the process. Yes the front will stabilize, advance, retreat, but not for the right reason. Seriously, I understand that solitaire games need to have a strong random event and constraints on the player’s actions, but in that case these elements outweighs anything else.  I do not even understand how that game can be called a game. You are not playing, you are just rolling dices. Let’s stay away from the simulation part of wargaming, because here the designer had just skipped that lessons from the manual.

Of course this sense of disgust was not helped by the fact I was forcing to play the bolos. But it is not a problem of Soviet Dawn and its design’s decision to put me in Lenin’s filthy boots. The disgust stems from the system.  In the end the entire engine rest on the cards. Get good cards and you will win, get bad ones and you will lose. In States of Siege in general and in Soviet Dawn in particular the player is here just for a free ride. He is not really implementing any strategy or discovering a narrative, but simply doing almost robotic actions and rolling dices.  To a certain extent it reminds me of another thing that should never have appeared on this earth, Twilight Struggle. As vomit Struggle also Awful Dawn give you events with no relation with what is happening in your game world. Of course I admit that certain events does not depend from on map actions, but sometime the randomness of the events simply destroy any 

For someone like me that has spent the last 6 years hearing about how good are simple games at school this is just further evidence that I knew better than my teacher. Ok, maybe not, but certainly  Soviet Dawn is the clear example of what I do not like in a wargame.  Abstracting everything until it loses any kind of relationship with the subject matter. I know that a Luftwaffe Colonel uses games from this series for teaching purposes. I can understand why and how. Managing the chaotic part could be a challenge for a leadership class.  Having been told how the games are used also make me understanding the process, yet it  is natural to think that if a game from this series is considered an historical simulation maybe there was a strong reason why the Germans lost both world war… of course I respect Uwe and that was just a snide comment (more for the benefit of the Heer fanatics that plague the wargaming world). I understand the purpose of Uwe’s efforts and I will not speak ill of someone who once called me on my mobile telling me ‘It is the Luftwaffe!’ (actually the exact words were: ‘Hello, here is Colonel Heilmann from the Luftwaffe’ but the thrill was there…). Anyway the basic idea is that Soviet Dawn fail in every aspect. It fails to provide cause and effect relationships (except the: Germany lose WW1, German army disappear from the Civil War, the Reds are happy).  Simplicity is not an answer and removing detail will not produce better games by default. Yes simplicity is working, the game could produce plausible results at times, the playing time is short but… but the price for this is a plain game without any real insight on the period and whit history being just a placard pasted upon it. The plausible results reads more as an accident rather than a design. The majority of time you look at your victories or defeats and you cannot really understand what happened, how history had been reproduced or changed. It gives also a strong biased and doctored version of history. It also looks ugly. If my purpose is just to roll dice and playing on a ladder awf… ahem Soviet Dawn is the perfect game. If I play to learn something… well I will not play this excuse of a wargame.

Summing up while States of Siege maybe contain some good ideas the implementation of these ideas is so awkward and incompetent that you need to ask yourself how VPG can still be alive. As much people on BGG bash Avalanche Press and Decision Games Victory Point Games is a fine purveyor of trash. I will play Panzergrenadier or D-Day at Omaha Beach every day over this little shitty game. It is a disservice to the wargaming community. Hopefully sooner or later VPG games will disappear. That day the wargame community will score a victory.

Going Chinese!

No sadly, I have not charmed a PLA beauty (not yet…) but it is time to unveil the big 2013 project!

Red Dragon Struggling

The year is 2025.< play music from Ghost Recon!>

10 years before a Russian conventional invasion of China coupled with a limited nuclear exchange had left the once powerful People Republic of China weakened and in need of international assistance. A multinational force came to the rescue but accepted only a stalemate as result and a temporary cease fire leaving the Russians in control of the industrialized northern China and some of its restless western regions .  Now in a land beset by local warlords, bandits, occupation forces, and squabbling and rapacious  allies the fate of the world hinges again on the balance. Accompanied by a failed nuclear strike the Russian Army and its proxies, the Uighur National Army, the Korean People Army, and the newly established Chinese Party of Peasant and Workers are again on the offensive.

Facing them is a shaky coalition made of the People Republic of China, the United States and its Nato allies, Australian, Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea, former enemies turned allies of convenience. With a political leadership in far away countries in denial of the crisis it is one shoulders of the soldiers on the grounds, leftover of an unfinished war to held the tide at bay. Undermanned units with outdated equipment, heirs of budgets cuts and botched programs are thrown in the fire in an arrogant display of strength to hide their real weaknesses.

Will the Allies held the line? Will the Russian Army remove the Chinese threat once for all and restore the dreams of the Czars and the Soviets?

The Setting:

Well it looks far fetched… but what hypothetical campaign does not look this way? Well, the recent PLA releases from GHQ, Heroic&Ros, Rebel Miniatures and the announcement of the new Kick starter from Empress  had made me thinking. I like East Asia, in my day ‘job’ I pretend to be an East Asia specialist. Still I am becoming a bit uneasy with the idea of PRC being the source of all evil… well, I have friends in the PLA, friends in China at large, it made me uneasy casting the stunning young woman with whom I had the pleasure to have a lunch in the part of the villain of my games. It would also meant that I have to cast a lot of people in that part, some of my old students, some of the people I have helped in revising essays and even writing doctoral proposal. People who have been guest at my home too… let’s face it I am not overly anti-PRC. Despite what the US Navy and some other people are saying the PRC has shown a large amount of strategic (but not operational or tactical sadly) restraint in the past decades. One of the thing wargamers (especially the bunch of idiotic pundits that often frequent TMP…)  and policy makers forget is that Russia and China have their own spats for centuries. I am also willing to cast the Russian government in a more villainous roles (Georgia anyone?). There is also an historical titbit that had always puzzled me. Russia often has regarded areas we now associate with China has its own. As recently as 1945 Josif Stalin had forced a Sino-Soviet friendship treaty (what a name) on Jiang Shie-ji (Chiang Kai-Scheck) giving Sinkiang and Manchuria to Soviet Union and retaking Port Arthur, these areas stayed Russians more or less until the Stalin’s death and the end of the Korean War. I am not overly persuaded Russia  Two superpowers sharing a land borders are quite interesting and create a quite volatile situation.

Thus I have a good background for a campaign setting. Now… I wanted to distance it a bit more from today because… because I do not want to be too pessimist.  I wanted also to accommodate two kind of warfare, high speed high intensity armoured clashes (smaller scales involved) and more infantry actions (28mm). This for two reasons. First, if you will ever read my academic flights of fancy you will realize I am quite enthralled by the idea of hybrid warfare were you shift between full conventional and small scale patrols. It is much more common than we thinks. Second I like 28mm miniatures but I am not so rich to deploy full tank supported mechanized companies and have a table to give them the proper combat space, I also think 28mm battles, at least contemporary ones, are better if kept small, because you can then put more effort in the miniatures.  So my setting has to have place for both tank clashes and small patrols. I am also interested in the interwar period in China. I watched the Sand Pebbles, read books and did serious research. Thus is created a setting were Foreign forces are in china, formally doing ‘peacekeeping’ or ‘supporting’ roles but, until the campaign starts, also doing what their historical counterparts did in the interwar period, supporting their countries interests in China.  

Is this situation possible? Why not? We have seen a rise on conventional and semi-conventional warfare despite what the outspoken prophets of COIN tell us. We have also seen assertive Russia and the fact that the US conventional and nuclear deterrence is taken less seriously than before (Korea). We have also a quite instructive example of what this could lead us in the form of 1950’s invasion of South Korea. And if people want to debate that US and Russia have never fought head to head… non one has ever heard of the Black Tuesday over Nam-si?  Well I find my scenario possible, not highly probable now, and not even auspicable (even if I think that if we have a global war I will prefer to side with the PRC than with the Russians).  As far the nuclear element goes… well I ma not so sure about deterrence as I was five years ago. Hopefully I am wrong, but if deterrence fails nuclear weapons become just an additional part of an arsenal.

One last word is required on the Japanese… I like Japan, I have Japanese friends, I like the Self Defense Force, I had also meet some JSDF officers, including a former Chief of the Fleet. I have also studied the Imperial Japanese Army, read Chang’s Rape of Nanking and Drea’s Japan Imperial Army. I know what they did in China, but the idea of having them uneasy allies with the Chinese (albeit with some less than pleasant traits in the background stories) is interesting. I am also a bit uneasy with the continued awful portrayal of the Japanese in Chinese Media (varying from utterly evil bloodthirsty people, to utterly evil bunch of incompetent extras ready to be butchered by the hero… it is interesting that they always complain on anything Tokyo’s government said  and then continually bashing the Japanese). Having them side by side it is my answer.

A Project is Born

The Plan

Well I love telling stories, but first of all you need to get the basics done. In our fields basics means, miniatures, terrain, and rules.  How I plan to proceed? Well this is my big 2013 project so I will devote a lot of my spare time to it. Also a lot of my meagre financial resources will go into it… It will also be an hybrid project, combining different scales and different medium. Rest assured that this will not be a metagaming experience, tried it in the past did not work, just I want to tackle several different aspects of the problem. I have several map based games involving the belligerent, including the very good Red Dragon Rising from Bruce Costello. Yet they are cast in the usual PLA versus the Blue team. Recently I scored an old used copy of S&T China War. It is a little nifty game that has a very nice map of china with population and resources and cover… well a Soviet invasion in the late seventies early eighties. I think that with minimal addition (like the one Brian Train did in his 2008 civil war scenario) it will be perfect.  It will be a quick way to test the strategic and operational setting. This is phase one. 

Phase two will involve my extensive 6mm collection. I have sizable forces for every nation involved in my plot except the PLA but GHQ and H&R will cover this void (incidentally I also need some additional French). We need Koreans, but I have been told something is moving on this area. I will use mainly Strike Legion: Planetary Ops taking material from their WW3 supplement. It is a battalion level game. Units are battalions composed by companies, 1inch to the kilometer. Why this approach? Well it allow me to have all the elements on the table, combat force, logistic and artillery, air-power. I also like the idea to be able to field a full division in a playable manner. I will have to add some PLA brigades to my force mix, but it will be reasonably easy. I will play the action along the ‘Corridor’ the thin line connecting  The ‘safe area’ of the Yangtze basin to Beijing. Here the bulk of the Russian offensive will unfold. There will be scenario covering large tank battles.

Farther south the 25^th Infantry Division, the Marines,  and some allied units will push north from Shanghai to reinforce the Corridor, Phase 2. Strykers in action…  well the Stryker is cool, maybe not the best thing you want in a real war but despite its shortcoming it is here to stay.  Khurasan miniatures is releasing some nice new US Army troops and vehicles in 15mm and also a T-90. I have already a good collection of PP ones with some QRF and loads of vehicles, I have also French and British troops and Soviet/Russians. I can add some PLA from Rebel, but they will be simple leg infantry, there are no modern Chinese vehicle in 15mm… sadly. Some scenario here will scale down from massed action to smaller stuff in 15mm, using Cold War Commander. I plan to have company actions where one stand is a squad or weapons team and Vehicles represent 2 or three (as in Battlefront WW2) real vehicles. I have found this is a great way to use combined arms companies in 15mm. It will not only be a full conventional war. Troops will have also to keep the Line of Communication open… here the invention of the CPPW will become useful to have some nice convoy actions. 

Phase three will 28mm… It will not follow large units or companies, but squads and reduced platoons fighting to keep Shanghai secure and the so called ‘Blue Line’ of the Yangtze clear. The PLA and the multinational allies will be fighting their daily battles in rice paddies, canals, and small villages. Force on Force and Crossfire (with some little tweaks) will be used, I am also eyeing the new Chain of Command from TFL… it could be easily adapted. Some of the battles will overlap actions from Phase Two, but in smaller tactical scale, heroic and not so heroic character will made their appearance.  To support Phase three I have my Empress modern british that will play the part of the Royal Marines of the shanghai garrison and the Infantry Brigade from Hong Kong (I mentioned the help was not completely free). I am drooling for an Imprint Challenger but this time I will refrain (maybe next serious job). As much I love the Charlie 2 I want some gritty infantry focus. Also because I am afraid (more on that on another post) the British Army has, like some other European armies, embraced a twisted approach to lightness and flexibility.  The heavy force will be in a different area of China, defending Xian (and the house of one of my best friends) from the Uighur National Army.  Well I hace Charlie 2 in 6mm and 15mm I can re-role for a while. Next allied force will be the US Army. I have a decent Empress force, 1 M1A2, 2 Bradleys, plenty of hummers in 28mm, A Stryker would be nice… or not, again this year expense are to be controlled. I already have Strykers in 6mm, Acheson has a nice one in 15mm and Khurasan is also doing them shortly. Can afford only to ‘strykerize’ in 15mm or 28mm, have to decide, or maybe I can just infiltrate a single Stryker in 28mm. I have Eureka modern marines and SEALS. I want the new ones from Empress. Vehicles… at the moment the only 28mm vehicles for this project is the Imprint AAV7A1. You need the Tuna Boat, trust me you need it.  Plus I need PLA, I have a single squad from Colonel Stone Compound. Need the new Empress.  On the plus side I have some Eureka (small Kriegsspiel sub-brand) Japanese.