Barge Busting in the Black Sea

 To take a break from rule testing I wandered over to the Black Sea and decided to take out my MO-4 flotilla out.  [ I had looked at Mad Padre's blog and got inspired for a coastal action.]  My choice of rules for this are Coastal Patrol and my campaign rules are naturally Flotilla Forward. 

My MO-4 flotilla is on a rising tide right now.  During their last mission, they landed troops against heavy opposition.  The Brigade Commissar got hold of it and turned it into a thing of glory.  Thus both the CO, Capt/Lt Unstov and the flotilla's reputation has increased.  I rolled up a new mission and got "Barge Busting".  I decided I wanted to have a Siebel ferry involved so gave the flotilla some reinforcements.  Let's listen in as Comrade Unstov enters his CO's office...

"Captain, Captain have a seat.  We have them on the run now.  Aerial recon shows a convoy of barges moving up to try to supply their troops that we have cut off.  These barges should be heavy with supplies.  I bet a torpedo would sink them, no?"  

"My boats don't have torpedoes Sir." 

"Of course not Unstov!  But our G-5 boats do.  I want you to escort several G-5s tonight.  Act as a decoy so they can smash the convoy then you boys can shoot up what is left.  Any questions?" 

 

Unstov's boat isn't repaired from last mission.  He can't very well not go so he transfers his pennant to boat 2 commanded by Lt Popov who he is not fond of.   

Boat 2 Unstov's flag  Lt Popov commanding  crew poor

Boat 3 Lt Mikhailov  Bo'sun killed last mission.  Crew poor and morale down to 7.

Boat 4 Lt Sokolov  Crew poor

Mission: Barge Busting [Scenario B]  Visibility 1200 yards   Sea state Balfour 3.

 each hex 100 yrds

Our band of heroes searching for the convoy.  [ I use the spotting rules from Crueler Seas.]

                                                       3 Blinds ahead; one under a squall.  

Rather than draw cards per CP I draw dice.  Given the poor Russian crews the Germans normally have the advantage.  Both sides move slowly, straining to see in the dark.  [ I love this part of the game.  What will happen?]

                       Hans!  Do you see something out there?!  Yes, Yes a small ship.  Feur!!

The Russian officers are surprised as shells explode around their craft. they take several hits below the waterline but so far everything is okay.  Now they can see the small patrol boat in front of them.  

Unstov orders the flotilla to gain speed.  The MTBs move away from the Nazi ship as it turns towards the intruders.  The other 2 blinds turn to protect the convoy.  

The battle begins in earnest.  The MO-4s are faster and about the same in guns; but there are 3 of them.

 Smoke billows from the KfK's engine room as a 45mm shell enters.  She is down to quarter speed!  However, Unstov suddenly hears a loud crack that is not from a 37mm gun.  No, this sound is much more menacing...

700 yards ahead a siebel ferry opens up on them with its 88mm.    

The Siebel ferry is guarding the rest of the convoy.

 Just a close up of the KfK. : )

Unstov orders full speed and a starboard turn.  He will draw fire away from the MTBs. His flotilla continues to pound the KfK as a fire breaks out.  The German crew have their hands full now.  

 A 50mm gun searches in vain for the MTBs. [ they are tiny.]

 After our second turn of combat the MTBs [left] have spotted the ferry.  It is a big target so they are going to fire torpedoes and leave.  MO-4 boats [middle] engaging KfK and now the ferry.  Ferry has turned to support the convoy [right] that is going to try to make it into the squall. Two more escort blinds are in the squall about to come out.  [ They only move 10kts/turn] 

 The Russians actually get the initiative and the first MTB makes a run on the ferry and launches its torpedoes.  Unstov's boat takes heavy damage from the lighter AA guns and starts to flood.  Not surprisingly, the torpedoes miss.  

Unstov lets Popov command his boat.  He tells the other boats that he is damaged and is heading for the squall for repairs.  They should distract the ferry as per his previous instructions.  Here you see Mikhailov's boat almost run over Unstov and head straight for the ferry.  Lt Shokolov's boat is flooding and he missed the turn.  He is off to the left of this picture.  The first german blind emerges from the squall and is nothing. 

As Unstoy continues past the ferry they are raked by it and the flooding becomes uncontrollable. To late but they discover the rest of the barges.  Popov signals abandon ship.

The second MTB launches torpedoes while the third has problems and aborts the run.  Lt Mikhailov actually causes flooding on the ferry as he passes.  He too sees the other barges and prepares to circle them.  

Meanwhile, the land based 50mm gun finds Lt Sokolov.  However, his crew repairs their flooding.  Time to get back into the battle!

Now I get a cool random event from Flotilla Forward.  A large ship shows up as a reinforcement. So... 

A Russian minesweeper hears the battle and sails towards the sound of guns!  They will have to sort out who is who but will be a welcome sight! 

As Popov and his crew abandon ship, a second KfK emerges out of the squall guns blazing.

Overview of the action.  Minesweeper moving up trying to identify targets.  The two MO-4 boats [upper left and center] are turning to starboard to engage the barges.  The final MTB has just launched its torpedoes at a small barge. [ center].  The convoy has almost reached the squall which is moving directly away from them at 5 knots.  

 The Minesweeper sees the ferry and knocks out the sole 88mm gun! Nice shooting Comrade!

  The minesweeper turns to starboard to avoid shallow water.  The Ferry opens up with it's lighter cannon and incapacitate the sweepers gun crew.  Nice shooting Hans!

Suddenly there is a flash across the sky as the 1st Kfk blows up!  It's valiant crew unable to bring its fire under control.  

                                             Lt Mikhailov [top left] starts his run on the barges.  

                               He continues causing some light damage to this one.  Take that nazi!  

 

With that the convoy enters the safety of the squall.  The Russians break off the action coming back 30 minutes later to fish out the crew of MO-4 boat 2.  Fortunately they succeed. 

Rollicking battle!  The Russians lost as the convoy continued unscathed.  They did trade a MO-4 for a KfK which is even up.  The torpedoes were worthless as expected but the ferry was a nasty opponent.  

Post battle Capt 2nd rank Volkov treats it as a failure of the MTBs to execute his brilliant plan rather than Unstov's failure or a bad plan to begin with.  Volkov sees the flotilla had a draw. [ the bar is not set very high in the Russian navy.]  He promises a new boat as a replacement.  In addition, Unstov gains the "speed demon" skill which allows his boat to gain an additional 5 kts of speed.  Finally Lt Sokolov's crew in boat 4 advances to average.  

What will be next for our intrepid Comrades?  Tune in next time for Flotilla Forward!   

 

 

 

 

 

 

The perfect Company Combat rule set?

 Happy 4th of July!  To my English friends you are probably happy we broke away 250 years ago right now.  As always spare a moment to think of all the service men and women away from their families today defending freedom.  With all the polarization, America is still a democracy.  We have bent before.  I have faith the ship will stay afloat.  

So I have been playtesting my Infantry Company rules and they work...

   but I have found I have been playing them less and less.  Turning to

 SAGA

Boom and Zoom

Sports games.

I enjoy these other games but I use to play my modern land combat about 50% of the time.  After an honest discussion with myself, the new system wasn't very fun.  It replicated command and combat well but the pace was slow and surprisingly predictable. 

"Since there is no randomization of actions, if I have the order and order 1st platoon to move, we know exactly when 1st platoon will arrive!" 

So I went back to my list of what I am looking for in my "perfect rule set." [ April 2025 post]

1. Has to work with a company per side

2. Command and Control is paramount.

3. has to have smooth combat resolution.

4. Has to be solo friendly.

5. Battles have to be resolved in a relatively short amount of time.

6. Has to be flexible enough to cover WW II to Afghanistan.

My current "Fire Fields" still fails at #3 and isn't that fun.  So I need to add a 7th criteria which should be obvious: Exciting!  

If you went back to my April post I tried to combine PBI with Piquet and that worked pretty well.  I like the randomization that the cards provide to the activation sequence and PBI provides a good foundation for the rest of the game.  It is still too hard to pin troops in PBI and the C+C isn't robust enough for me.  Then I went back to Fields of Fire. [ March 2026.] The biggest take away I like from FoF is that troops will fire at a target without being told.  This just makes so much sense to me.  

" Hey Sergeant, they are shooting at us! Should we fire back?"  

"So after all this rambling, what are you going to do?"

I am going to have each Company CO roll up their orders and activate their units per Fire Fields.

The platoons will activate by cards per Piquet.  This should add excitement and unpredictability. Platoon leaders will issue orders per Fire Fields. 

I will use modified PBI combat resolution.  This should be less clunky than Fire fields.  Will need more pinning of troops.  I do like that PBI has done away with "disrupted or paralyzed" status.  You are either good, pinned or off the table; simple.  PBI does this by dividing the squad into three parts.  I will model "disruption" by having the parts break apart thus loose cohesion.  This will have C+C harder to achieve. 

 "Let's not loose cohesion.  It sounds bad!"

By combining three different rule set ideas hopefully I will create the perfect rule set.  Stay tuned!

 

Joe 

 
  

 

More work on Fire Fields-- Afghanistan

 Had a lively discussion over at TMP about leaders leading from the front verses at their CP.  There are clearly trade offs but do rules allow both and reflect the trade offs?  Obviously, I think Fire Fields does because that is the type of decision I want to give the player and myself.  You can use your action points to "ensure" the schwerepunkt performs perfectly at the expense of not much else getting done or you can manage the battle and allow your platoons more efficiency at the loss of some expertise.

I played two more test battles and the command system and AI is working well.  The combat results hasn't.  The opposed roll thing is giving me too wide a variation.  All things being equal units should be pinned about half the time. [ Granted things are rarely equal.]   So I have re worked the combat results table.  Today's battle is a platoon action to test the new CRT.  

I decided to roll up a scenario for a US platoon in Afghanistan from my new GWOT table in Grunt's Forward.  I rolled up "One of our plane's is missing."

So our platoon is a Quick Reaction Force and they get a message that a fighter was lost.  They hop in their Humvees and head out!   

First the platoon from the 10th Mountain...

They are led by Lt Cespedes, an ROTC grad, from Texas A&M.  He is new in country and rolls a "1" for leadership so he starts poor noted by the bag of shame on his command stand. For variety I make 1st squad poor led by Sgt Schutzen and third squad veteran led by Sgt Dooley.  [ Now that the  command system is working I need to test individual variation in the system.] 

Roll up the board per PF.  US will enter from the south.  We will have an Apache overhead but won't have direct comms.  Each 5 hex tile is a "square" with the exception of the irrigation ditch which counts as its own space.  

For this scenario there are normally 4 places where the pilot can be.  Because we are "modern" the US already knows the pilot's location. [ He is hiding in the irrigation ditch.] They just have to get there and get out.  To make it more of a challenge There are only 3 possible locations the bad guys have to look and they are towards their edge.  

What is your plan LT?

Cespedes decides to send 2nd squad to the trees in front of the ditch and have them go grab the pilot.  1st squad will enter the trees on the left and provide covering fire. He will leave 3rd squad back at the buildings as a reserve and he will move up just behind 2nd squad.  They have mobility so hopefully a quick grab and go!

We randomize entry time of the 10th mountain, bad guys and Apache and we are off! 
 

The platoon executes the first phase of the plan perfectly with no contact.  They hear an Apache coming.  

 The bad guys get these...

 that are placed like this...

 that translate into this!  [ two squads in the village with a LMG, RPG, leader and a truck.  One squad with LMG moving towards the ditch.  Unknown enemy moving towards their left.] The bad guys immediately take us under fire and we return. [ No order needed. Not that we have spotted anything yet!]

  An apache shows up for support.  It is hard for them to spot enemy troops but it isn't hard for them to spot a technical!  

 View of the US "lines"   Orange markers show direction of fire. 

Our Lt gets 3 commands. [ He actually got 4 but gets 1 less for being poor.]  He orders 2nd squad forward into the ditch.  He cautions the Sgt to use the natural lay of the land as cover.  He doesn't go himself as 1st squad, Sgt S his weakest leader, is already pinned down and needs help.  
 

2nd squad gets stuck just before the irrigation ditch.  " Blast it!  I told them to use cover!"  However...

 

2nd squad uses their own initiative to figure it out, making the ditch!  

Cespedes, feeling better about his decision not to go to the ditch moves over to first squad [ right side of picture] and fails to rally them.  Unfortunately,  2nd squad is now caught in a crossfire when rebels show up on their flank.  [ Center of picture.] 2nd squad is pinned down and lose cohesion.  They do manage to pin the rebels in front of them.   

 Our hero gets 3 actions again but things are more dicey now.  What would you do?  He radios 3rd squad and tells them to deploy on the right flank to support 2nd squad.  Next he realizes 2nd squad is in a precarious position and they have the pilot.  He abandons 1st squad and moves to 2nd squads location and makes it into the ditch.  

 This photo shows the Apache has driven off the technical.  

The rebels have pushed a squad into the crops in front of 1st squad. [ bottom center]  They are pinned but 1st squad is not only pinned but disorganized.

2nd squad is still caught in a crossfire. [ center] Rebels have advanced towards their position but are pinned yards away.  2nd squad is pinned and disorganized as is Lt Cespedes.  

3rd squad has arrived on the right flank. [ upper center]  Sgt Dooley used his initiative to spot the enemy in the crops and failed.      

Close up of the action at the ditch.  the squad has broken down into 3 distinct pinned packets. 

 Even in a ditch, Cespedes gets 4 action points!  

He rallies the 3 men closest to him and directs the grenade launcher to accurately lay fire on the rebels.  Next he spends 2 points to call back to base and asks the Apache to lay down fire in the crops right of the irrigation canal.  

Meanwhile, the rebel leader moves up his own right flank to rally his men in front of 1st squad.

However, with no pilot there the men pull back to the village!!  1st squad, pinned down and disorganized will continue to fire into the crops. 

  

 The Apache gets the word and successfully spots rebels in the crops. Guided by the Apache fire, Sgt Dooley finds the rebels.  If nothing else, the crossfire is broken on 2nd squad!  

 2nd squad is again pinned including Cespedes  but the rebels are hurt by the grenades.  They are pinned and disorganized and 3 men are paralyzed with fear.  On the right flank...

all 4 rebels go down!   

Our pinned hero has stopped the rebel charge but he and his squad are pinned in a ditch.  1st squad is pinned firing at crops.  3rd squad is ready to move up his right flank.  He is overwhelmed as he gets 1 action. He rallies himself.  We get 2 individual actions.  The first goes to Sgt Dooley who moves up his squad and starts his own crossfire on the rebels in front of the ditch.  The second...

 goes to 2nd squad and Cpl Jones.  He unpins himself and safely scampers back from the ditch with the pilot!  

 A picture of Dooley's crossfire on the rebels who are pinned down.  

 The paralyzed rebels fall back but the leader brings more men up to charge the ditch.  They all become pinned.  Moreover, the rebel fire is ineffective enough that 2nd squad becomes unpinned due to the paucity of fire.  

 Since there is no return fire from the crops into 1st squad, they too become unpinned.  However,  they are so pumped they keep shooting.

With the pilot safe, all US troops unpinned and half the rebel troops pinned the rebels decide to retreat.  There will be other opportunities to give the Americans a bloody nose!  

Great game that played in just under an hour.  The command and control is really working well as Dooley could be counted on to be pretty independent and Sgt Schutzen not so much.  A big part of leadership is knowing your folks and who can do what.  The CRT led to many, many pins.  Probably need to dial that back a bit but it is better than before.  A work in progress.  

Enjoy

Joe