Thoughts on deployment

[Last Hussar]

Interesting little read on actually thinking what you want to do!

https://www.beastsofwar.com/featured/deployment-battle-wargaming-tips-and-tricks/

[paulr]

Some interesting thoughts

I'm probably at the extreme end of the "Make mental notes, or even actual notes if that's your jam"

For some of the multi-day multi-player modern games we played I would write appreciations and operational orders. On one occasion they were reviewed by a visiting gamer who also taught at the NZ Staff College, apparently I would have passed that section of the course

[sultanbev]

It does depend on the rules and period. If you're playing Flames of War, it seems just go first to win, regardless of your deployment.

For a lot of ancients and Napoleonics whoever starts the best deployed usually wins, you wouldn't actually need to fight the battle to work out a winner. Lessons learnt the hard way in our Napoleonics is ensure all your units are set up ready to fire, especially your guns, and stop deploying units in front of your guns.
Another aspect is don't feel the urge to fill the full table width with troops, which tends to happen in Napoleonics, just to get all the models on table and cover all possibilities. It's okay to leave one flank bare say, but have an off-table reserve with a pre-designated arrival point.

In my case I've usually found that there is one vital piece of terrain that hinges the battle, and control of which determines the winner. Identifying that terrain is the hard part.

If I'm using Cold War Soviets in an encounter battle, I use their tactics, which is cross attach a tank platoon to each MR Company, and drive company columns down each road, tanks leading, alongside a pre-plotted indirect fire plan with all available artillery. Don't faff about with trying to call in artillery on targets you subsequently spot during the battle, your command values are too low and there is no trained OPs in the NATO sense.

Cover with ATGW or ATG from rear vantage points and off you go. It does mean drawing a map and plotting movement arrows and the aim points of pre-planned barrages, but it has a 50% win rate for me. I have been known to drive such columns through my own artillery barrages. Even if you take heavy losses (one company column often gets destroyed just before it drives off the enemy's rear table edge!) but the disruption it causes to the NATO player usually means they can't deploy quick enough to form a coherent combined-arms defence, just isolated platoon hedgehogs that can be overwhelmed by remaining company groups.

Another aspect to take into account is which way down the table are you playing. If you're deploying on the narrow ends, you've got a battle with little flanking opportunities, so it's a head-on slugfest more often than not. How you would deploy then would be different than if you were deploying along the wider edges, where there is more flank space but less defence in depth.

For our Napoleonic/colonial games, we add up the number of light cavalry stands on each side, these are scouting points. The highest gets to choose the table edge. If your scouting points double those of the opponent, you also get to make them deploy an additional brigade first. If you have triple scout points, then two additional full brigades, and so on. Otherwise the deployment is by brigade, the one with losest scouting points deploys first.

FOr WW2/modern it's simpler. Both sides roll a D6, the highest gets to choose the table edge OR chooses to go first. Both sides then deploy alternating units.

In either case, deployment can alternately be by map drawn up first.

[steve_holmes_11]

I chucked when I read

You're all set to dive into your favourite wargame, be it Warhammer 40,000, Bolt Action, or anything in between.

My largely uninformed opinion is that there's barely a fag paper in between.

Can anybody suggest a ruleset that sits in between Bolt Action and WH40K?


I tend to split wargames rules into three families.
 * Those which are won in the list-building, army choice stage.
 * Those which are won in the deployment stage.
 * Those where you have to "play to find out".

These days I'm almost exclusively interested in the third.
I find playing out a "done deal" remarkably uninteresting.
Not least because it's beyond the point where a competent commander would start withdrawing his troops.

Apologies for being "that guy".

I'll close with this thought.
Well designed scenario battle games pose interesting tactical challenges while avoiding obvious broken situations.
Design isn't easy, but the good ones provide the best games.

[Rhys]

If I'm using Cold War Soviets in an encounter battle, I use their tactics, which is cross attach a tank platoon to each MR Company, and drive company columns down each road, tanks leading, alongside a pre-plotted indirect fire plan with all available artillery. Don't faff about with trying to call in artillery on targets you subsequently spot during the battle, your command values are too low and there is no trained OPs in the NATO sense.

Cover with ATGW or ATG from rear vantage points and off you go. It does mean drawing a map and plotting movement arrows and the aim points of pre-planned barrages, but it has a 50% win rate for me. I have been known to drive such columns through my own artillery barrages. Even if you take heavy losses (one company column often gets destroyed just before it drives off the enemy's rear table edge!) but the disruption it causes to the NATO player usually means they can't deploy quick enough to form a coherent combined-arms defence, just isolated platoon hedgehogs that can be overwhelmed by remaining company groups.

It was interesting to read this in terms of different rule sets.
Playing Modern Spearhead (regimental level) with a plan like this would require you to bring a bag for your ass (which Paulr and Pierre would only be too happy to fill). We have always had more success using lines of cover to penetrate NATO defensive linesas you don't get shot at untill the point of contact. The only time I've ever had a chance to try a variation on this was one afternoon (division level assault) when I ran a BMP MRR regiment and a tank regiment on a 1500m front (from a total of 10km) because it just occured to me in the game scenario "why not?" (it was not locally sourced). I'm not sure the rule writers even remotly considered this as an option and Paulr was not overly impressed.

[sultanbev]

Playing Modern Spearhead

That would be an attack-defence game though?
The Soviets expected 50% of battles to be encounter battles, which is what we tend to play.

Only because attack-defence requires more set up time, which for an evening game at the club is too much time thinking & writing for most people these days.

if attacking a dug-in NATO force in prepared positions, I'd use different tactics. And a lot more artillery!
 
The other aspect of this I should mention is we tend to play 1960s-70s-early 1980s games, the pre-Chobham armour era, where the T-10M and T-62 are good tanks, and because everyone loves M60A2s

[hammurabi70]

That would be an attack-defence game though?
The Soviets expected 50% of battles to be encounter battles, which is what we tend to play.

They did!?  Where have you found this detail?  For all 20th Century battles we assume attack-defence games will apply, so that matters might be different is a revelation.  Are there battles in WWII that can be seen as encounter battles?

[Gwydion]

For large parts of the Cold War  Soviet doctrine expected (or hoped to achieve) a breakthrough of a crust or tripwire defence and be subjected to NATO counter attacks at Battlegroup level. These would be fixed and outflanked by Soviet forces in an engineered encounter battle. FM 100-2-1 5-29 The Meeting Engagement

Later variants included Operational Manoeuvre Groups in larger scale breakthroughs following an attack defence scenario.

Others looked at a large pinning attack to bring reserve and counterattack NATO forces into play at the Schwerpunkt and then engage with manoeuvre forces as they arrived.

Whether any of this would have worked is anyone's guess but they were thinking about it.

They also considered meeting engagements in defence as they often planned the outbreak of hostilities as a response to NATO attack. We may find this unrealistic but they practised it and the transition to offence in a fluid situation.

[hammurabi70]

For large parts of the Cold War  Soviet doctrine expected (or hoped to achieve) a breakthrough of a crust or tripwire defence and be subjected to NATO counter attacks at Battlegroup level. These would be fixed and outflanked by Soviet forces in an engineered encounter battle. FM 100-2-1 5-29 The Meeting Engagement

Later variants included Operational Manoeuvre Groups in larger scale breakthroughs following an attack defence scenario.

Others looked at a large pinning attack to bring reserve and counterattack NATO forces into play at the Schwerpunkt and then engage with manoeuvre forces as they arrived.

Whether any of this would have worked is anyone's guess but they were thinking about it.

They also considered meeting engagements in defence as they often planned the outbreak of hostilities as a response to NATO attack. We may find this unrealistic but they practised it and the transition to offence in a fluid situation.

Most interesting; unfortunately the link does not work for me.

The essence being there would be a counter-attack[/] force meeting an exploiting force to create a meeting engagement.  Do we have some WWII examples?  Late War Soviet operations ought to have some equivalents.

[sultanbev]

WW2 examples of meeting engagements are not common, but there was a desert one during Op Crusader with KG Stephan against a British armoured regiment equipped with Stuarts, there's a pdf around about it somewhere.

[Gwydion]

Most interesting; unfortunately the link does not work for me.

The essence being there would be a counter-attack[/] force meeting an exploiting force to create a meeting engagement.  Do we have some WWII examples?  Late War Soviet operations ought to have some equivalents.

It seems to have become corrupted  - I'll try again -fm100-2-1 5-29

As for WWII - small scale but how about the counterattack at Arras 1940?

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

That link works for me. But 203 pages of officalese is a bit much of a read.....

[Gwydion]

Which is why I put the page number of the relevant bit in - s5 - sub section 29 - scroll down to p.81.