North German Plain Designer Notes
I. Design Notes
Why North German Plain?
The idea for a North German Plain '85 game came to light shortly after HPS released Fulda Gap '85 and interest in this possible European conflict in the mid 80's was expressed by the abundant "Cold War Warriors" - men who served in that theater of operations, but who, thankfully, were never called upon to perform their military task. The Korea '85 game was already well under way by that time. Our plans for titles and release schedule at HPS is fairly flexible, and frankly, we were not sure what the fourth title of the Modern Campaigns Series was going to be. There were certainly a lot of good ideas to pick from, especially with the most recent war in Iraq.
Trying to do a game in the post 1985 period in the Middle East was attractive, but we felt there would be a lot of technology issues the game engine would have to address, such as new rules for recon and intelligence gathering that the current game didn't handle. Furthermore, anything we might do would be compared to this most recent campaign in Iraq and the memories for some might be a little too close to home. So we elected to leave Iraq for another time.
It was during this search for the next Modern Campaigns title that Robert Mayer became involved in our discussions. Some people will remember Bob from his days as an Editor with Computer Gaming Magazine. He now teaches at a University in upstate Vermont and is very knowledgeable about history, world affairs, and games, a combination that was very helpful when he participated with Dave "Blackie" Blackburn and I in making Sicily '43.
So, together with John Tiller, we looked at a number of options, both "What If" and real modern conflicts, some lesser known than others and, after considering the merits of each, we found ourselves going back to Europe and the North German Plain - the northern part of our fictitious War in 1985 on which Bill Trotter wrote his essay concerning the events leading up to the War. For this title Bob Mayer wrote up his own essay concerning the Operations in this sector entitled Northern Exposure: Operation RHINEGATE: North of the Fulda Gap, so be sure to check out this History Help File.
This title had an advantage of a ready-made, broad public appeal.
I know the idea for this game certainly appealed to me personally as, in my younger days, I had aspired to serve in the Canadian Forces, just at the time when the first Leopards were being delivered to our brigade in Europe. But alas, my eyesight was not up to the Combat Arms task, and thus, I was never to command my own real tanks, as I once wished to do, and my military path led me to the Army Reserves. But being Canadian, I couldn’t resist the temptation and re-deployed Canadian units from southern Germany for the NATO counterattack, and reinforced them with an under strength brigade from near my home in western Canada.
For "Blackie", my partner in creating games for John Tiller, North German Plain '85, also held a special appeal, for he served with the British Army of the Rhine, although it was a period earlier than depicted in this game. In his days in Germany, his unit, the 4/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, was equipped with Centurion tanks. Suffice to say, we were all very happy to get a chance to help John bring together this Modern Campaigns title.
The Map
While North German Plain '85 is a continuation of the story started with Fulda Gap and continued with Korea, it is not just Fulda Gap '85 all over again. There are a number of differences, not the least of which is the terrain. Our first task was the additional map area. The extension came to over 60,000 hexes, each of which had to be examined for drainage, topography, culture, (roads, towns, forests, etc.) and labels. This alone is a huge task, especially when you consider that the period source map Blackie was using was challenging to read in places due to large, dense, urban centers.
The waterways in the northern part of the map were particularly confusing, due to there being so many of them. Up in this northern area of Germany the ground is much flatter, and more suited for armored warfare, the game is not channeled by valley roadways, but more so by waterways, and bridges going over these waterways. Thus these waterways and the bridges are very important in this game.
We also wanted to encourage the Warsaw Pact attacker to avoid the major built-up areas, as some authors suggested they would, as clearing them would have a tremendous impact on the speed of the advance. To do this we brought the roads up to the major centers, but didn't run them through those places. Thus, movement between many adjoining built-up hexes is at the cost of the base terrain and not the road movement rate.
The Map, like Fulda Gap before it, is oriented with north on the up-right hexside. Players should refer to Mike Avanzini's Campaign Map to see where the game map is placed in respect to a map of Central Europe.
The Order-of-Battle
Another difference between North German Plain and Fulda Gap, of course, is the armies that faced each other are quite different, particularly on the NATO side. Here the defenders are made up of West German, British, Belgian, and Dutch formations, each with varying unit quality. Unit quality is a very subjective component in any Order-of-Battle design and this is especially true of a war, or battle, that didn't actually take place. Reading any of the current authorities on this subject comes down to picking one point-of view that fits your need, because some feared the Soviets as "ten foot giants", while others painted a picture of a poorly trained and inept army. So who are you to believe?
What we did, therefore, for the Soviet's unit quality was to go with what we thought would work best to provide an entertaining game. This raised two points. First, from play experience in Fulda Gap, Bob Mayer counseled us to try and help the Soviets a little, as they seemed to struggle, in his experience, in the longer term in that title. Also, we thought that one aspect that can often separate a good player from a great player is their ability to spot strengths, and weaknesses, in units, and pick the best job for the right units, not just use the first formation available for a task. Therefore you will find a less uniform Warsaw Pact Army in terms of Unit Quality.
Many of the Divisions remain a C, or average quality units, but some Divisions are B Quality. And within the C Quality Division there may be one, or more, B Quality battalions, to provide some additional variation in play. Soviet Spetsnaz units, or special commando units, are of course A quality, and the Army level Air Assault Battalions are also above average troops.
Aiding the Warsaw Pact, on the Quality issue, is the fact that the NATO Defender is not all made up of a uniform, above average, well equipped force of B quality West German and US troops. While the West German army remained as B Quality troops, Belgians and Dutch troops, which make up a significant part of the NATO Army, have been rated as C quality. This is on account of the high percentage of conscripts in their armies. While the percentage is higher for the Dutch Army, David Isby explains that Belgium, "has under-funded their Armed Forces for so long, that it has had a serious effect on its capabilities."
For the British, we started out with all the units B Quality. But in keeping with the idea that the better player will use a mix of different troop quality more effectively, we thought we would try to create some variation here. The question was, "Which units were better than others in 1985?" Quite frankly we didn't really know. But when John created his Squad Battle's Vietnam game he said of leaders in that game: "the assignment of quality of those leaders was made in a purely random fashion, based on the situation, and not according to any judgment as to the abilities of the actual leader." So we simply replaced "Leaders" with "Units", in the above statement, for the British Army in this game.
Blackie added:
"You have to remember that all these regiments were all volunteers, and had been since the late 50s. Also the "squaddie"' in each unit were all from lads of the same geographical locations, or close by. So I can only assume it was the same then ('85), they are bloody good, professional soldiers, and are recognized as such worldwide. For example the regiment I was in, the 4th/7th RDG, had 2 squadrons made up of Yorkshiremen, many who knew each other before they had joined, went to school together, that sort of thing, the other squadron was made up of Scotsmen from around Edinburgh, same sort of background. This built up a morale that is legendary in the British Army, you did NOT let the side down, the regiment was like a huge family!"
So, we selected a few British units, pretty much at random, but included the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards of course, and we made them A Quality.
Of course on the NATO side, players will notice quite a wide range of equipment. Based on information from a few different sources, we made changes to the West Germans to have a more balanced number of Leopard I main battle tanks. Panzer Grenadier Brigades have Jagdpanzer units equipped with Kanone Assault Guns. The Dutch have Leopard II's, Leopard I's, and some Centurions, and the British are equipped with Challenger and Chieftain tanks.
One thing to consider, in any Modern Campaign Game is how the game parameter (PDT data) contains a setting for Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM's), not the OOB. That is individual SAM batteries are not depicted as unit counters in the game. But the U.S., West German, and Warsaw Pact divisions have additional AAA capability, beyond the SAM’s in the form of tracked AAA vehicle's, namely the Vulcan, Gepard and various ZSU's. The British, however, have no equivalent AAA vehicle and they rely on their own umbrella from Rapier Missiles which would leave the finest NATO force on the North German Plain Battlefield with NO AA protection, particularly from Warsaw Pact Helicopters. We didn't feel this dependence upon the Rapier should be a disadvantage for them in game terms, so, as a compromise, we gave Royal Artillery units a higher than normal AAA value and range to simulate this Rapier protection.
In all we think it's an interesting new mix NATO equipment for the Warsaw Pact player to oppose.
The structure of the Order-of-Battle is largely the same as previous titles, with the Soviets in battalion strength units, with the exception of Spetsnaz units and the Air Assault Battalions that are in companies that can combine into battalions, reflecting the nature of their deployment behind the lines. NATO units are as before, generally company size that can combine into battalion units, or left as companies, as the player decides, depending upon the situation. NATO Engineer battalions, that in Fulda Gap were just battalions, can now be broken down into company units too. This change to the OOB has been done in the Fulda Gap game also and will be in the next Update.
The Story
Having put together the Map and the Order of Battle, next came the task of putting units on the map and making up a good believable story for the War. We wanted to dovetail our story with that which started in Fulda Gap '85 but, as you will see later in the war, we elected to go in our own direction and our setup for the counterattack scenario does not exactly match the one in Fulda Gap '85, although the date is synchronized.
We began the process with by adding to the south edge of our map the units which overlay in the sister Game Fulda Gap ’85 which is directly south of our game map. Both maps are roughly the same size and so, to retain a similar feel, we establish a similar number and value of Objectives and kept the same Victory point total for the North German Plain Game. In selecting Objectives we were careful to avoid large, urban areas that authors suggested would not be something the Warsaw Pact would see as early objectives. Thus, the Soviets get no points for taking Hamburg, or Hannover, while lesser known places such as Celle, Herford, and Osnabruck, are quite valuable as important nodes along the axis of advance.
NATO unit starting locations were established using information published in Isby and Kamps’, Armies of NATO's Central Front. Units started in a FIXED state, we used the Fulda Gap game to give some sense of the release schedule, so that the two games would have a similar feel.
On the Warsaw Pact side, we knew the positions of each of the three Armies: north to south, the 2nd Guards Tank Army, 3rd Shock Army, and 20th Guards Army. Some of their Divisions would be on the game map at the start but, here again, we were acting on the premise that this was a surprise attack, with the Warsaw Pact units, more or less, marching from their Laager areas and proceeding to the border in division order.
Early in the discussion, Bob Mayer advocated more Soviet Spetsnaz, much of which would start out deep in NATO's rear, likely being deployed by helicopter and, once on the ground, confiscating civilian motor vehicles if transport was required. Thus, these units are given motorized status. In his book, Inside the Soviet Army, Viktor Suvorov discusses the organization of the Spetsnaz troops, with a small unit attached at each of the Army levels, and a full brigade of three battalions at the Army Group level. Bob also asked for more Airborne too, so we mobilized two divisions in this northern sector, a full Soviet airborne division and a smaller Polish one.
However, this was supposed to be a surprise attack, one NATO didn't see coming, so it was unlikely that the Soviets would have had the lift capability to drop all three divisions at one time in secret. So, with an airborne division being dropped at the start of the campaign in Fulda Gap '85, we thought it best to delay the follow up drops in this northern area.
It was around this time that I re-discovered an old pocket book I had read years ago called Red Army by Ralph Peters. This book is pure fiction, told completely from the Soviet side covering the action from the point-of-view of several characters throughout the chain of command. This is an excellent book for anyone who wants some interesting reading on this subject and, while our setup and starting objectives for each army is quite different from those established in the book, a couple of ideas we worked into our game came from this book. Ideas such as the Spetsnaz battalion sent as a diversion to the bridges in and around the Hameln area, or even the "Flying Column" scenario (#11_01), which is loosely based on Maj. Bezarins' exploits. But beyond these ideas, the concept for where the Warsaw Pact focus of attack would be was our own.
To deploy the Spetsnaz troops, we used the Strategy | Operations reinforcements feature that was first brought to this series in Korea '85. Each Army contains its own small Spetsnaz units that are deployed on turn one of the campaign. The placement of the Army Group level Spetsnaz Brigade is decided on the 1500 Hour turn of the first day, with the arrival set for 2100 hours that night. However, in keeping with the idea that in war, especially, one planned in such a hasty fashion this 2100 hour arrival is not certain, it has only a 70% chance of occurring on time.
The two airborne divisions also make use of the Strategy | Operations reinforcements feature. The smaller Polish Airborne Division lands at one of three locations: 1) the bridges to the south of Bremen, 2) the canal bridges at Osnabruck, or 3) at Nienburg on the Weser River. The drop zone selection is made on the 1200 hour turn of the 11th, while the actual landing doesn't occur until 2100 hours on the 11th. The Soviet 7th Guards Airborne Division, arrive on the night of the 12th (2100 hrs), with the Drop Zone selection again made at the noon turn of that day. This division picks from one of two DZ's: 1) south of the Ruhr near the town of Hamm, or 2) near Rheine to secure crossings of the Dortmund-Ems Canal. Of course both airborne drops can also be cancelled if a player wishes, but if the mission is scrubbed, the units will not be used in any other capacity in the game either.
As a note to players who own Fulda Gap '85, I understand that the scenario designer for that game, Joerg Lissa, will be adding an S|O's for the 76th Airborne drop in that game, and while we don't normally go back over previous games to add in new features, adding an airborne S|O will really add to the replayability of this title. Look for this in the next update of Fulda Gap '85.
In considering airborne drops, particularly the possibility of this number of operations planned for the second and third day of a War when neither side would have air superiority, the question was, "Could the Soviets pull off such Airborne Operations?" For this we looked to the work of other authors. Both Peters, in the above mentioned Red Army book, and Gen Sir John Hackett call for airborne operations after the start of the war. Gen Sir John Hackett, (yes - the same General Hackett from the British Airborne fame in Market-Garden) postulated such airborne operations in his book The Third World War, and we, collectively, thought this man would know a lot more about airborne operations, and their possibilities, than us scenario designers.
...to be continued - please stop back again later
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