By Tom Gall
Battlegroup is a WWII set of miniatures rules by Plastic Soldier Publishing. Written by Warwick Kinrade and first published in 2012, there have been many source books released over the past 14 years covering all parts of the war from early on with Blitzkrieg, Barbarossa, North Africa, the Pacific, Italy, D-Day, Market Garden, the Bulge, to Berlin when the war is all but over.
Let’s see a game in action with the Germans attacking a French in No Retreat. We choose 100 points, for our forces.
The French have a Chasseur Company with:
The Germans have a light tank company with:
No Retreat was the mission, with French selecting defend and Germans selecting attack as their stances. French choose to be on the side of the table closest to the camera in this picture.
View from the other direction, note catzilla on the loose. His cuteness was fully effective.
Deployment has the front placing their 4 minefields to close off the left and center as best they can, presenting the Germans with cross checks to get to the nearer objective. The far objective is close to the woods, it’s an S35 Somua on a big base (which was the Charles Degaull special hero from way back when.)
One French infantry platoon is deployed to the left flank all around the objective. The 25mm anti-tank platoon is in front of the church, the 47 mm anti-tank platoon is next to the graveyard, the right flank has another French infantry platoon. The French 105s are on the left flank close to the objective, and the 81mm mortars are roughly in the center around the objective. The 25mm AA platoon is on the hill. The Panhards and S35s are in reserve and the Laffly platoon is in ambush.
The Germans set up their 88 on the hill and they choose the French left flank as the side to press:
The Germans press up the side and the French on turn 2 spring their ambush of Laffly tank hunters. Two French infantry teams and sent out to assault and make contact with a bailed out Panzer I. A Panzer II comes in for the counterattack and after a bit of back and forth the Panzer II fails to counterattack which converts a couple of bails to kills.
With so many bails due to higher firepowers, an ambush and assault combo can be especially effective, but is not easy to pull off.
Another vantage point of the German attack. The 88 up on the far hill in the upper left was shooting down into the town trying to pick off the French anti-tank guns. The French 25mm and 47mm anti-tank guns would often bail out German armor who would then get back in.
The Panzerjager Is crept down the road and the other light panzer platoon came around the other side of the house. Lots of targets for the French guns, but likewise hit on 3 French were having to roll well for saves AND take advantage of the higher German firepowers to hold on just a bit longer.
As expected the Laffly trucks were machine gunned to death. They did try and shoot and scoot but failed. The German point of the spear was annoyed but not out of action yet.
The French guns continued to hold, which allowed the French reinforcements time to arrive. The Panhards first and then the Somuas, the timing was about the same turn that the 25mm French anti-tank guns finally start to crumble.
The light tank company is getting ready to dash across for a daring assault against the 25mm anti-tank gun, with the French formation HQ in the church to assist in the assault. Note just out of frame on the right are where the 47mm anti-tank guns used to be leaving just the 25mm AA guns off on the hill and the Panhards coming up to reinforce.
Another picture before the assault, note that the 81mm mortar teams are in the graveyard. They had moved up to bombard the 88 and were able to eliminate it.
Here you can see just before the assault, which was successful, however what would follow was the breaking of the German formation. The French AA guns, the 5 Panhards, 4 Somuas and some of the 105s doing direct fire would bail out / eliminate enough tanks that all that needed to happen was the French HQ to come out and auto win an assault against the German HQ. Even then the poor German offensive was not likely to be within 8″ of an objective by turn 6 to keep the game going. The French were able to delay the Germans enough such that either way it was going to be a French victory this time.
Given firepower values are generally higher in early war, assaults are even more important to eliminate units either on the attack or the defense. Artillery direct fire guns with a firepower of 3+ are especially valuable.
German 88s with their range and 3+ firepower can be super effective but they are not cheap.
A front armor of 3 as found on the Panzer IIIes, and the Panzer IIs is pretty effective. The French AT9 anti-tank assets are good and post game I would recommend the 75mm French artillery guns over the 105s simply to have their dual role as anti-tank guns and as artillery.
The Laffly tank hunters are laughable. They are glass cannons in the extreme, you’ll get one round of fire and they will get machine gunned to death.
German tankers need artillery to back them up. Infantry that isn’t backed up with anti-tank guns however can be easily assaulted by tanks. Just remember not to rolls 1’s when the infantry hit you and keep the HQ around to give yourself re-rolls to help with counter attacking.
While this game didn’t include German air assets the Stukas are something to consider for an AT3, 2+ Firepower artillery template.
Early war is very fun, you’ll experience bail out results more often with armor. Infantry / Gun teams will be harder to kill with the less effective weapons so when you roll 5’s and 6’s it is all the more sweet to enjoy the moment of success.
by Tom Gall
November 29th the Screaming Eagles braved the snow and held their first Checkpoint Charlie tournament, 100pts, no limitations otherwise. The weather impacted the number of people that turned out but those that did had fun time and most importantly we started to see how people were approaching list building for competitive matches.
There was a fair amount of table talk centered on the use of missiles and how things may or may not be different then later era Team Yankee. As we learned through the course of the day however, there was far more than missiles to consider.
By Paolo Paglianti
Our friends at Battlefront sent us one of the Limited Editions from the new Pacific range — and it’s packed with Japanese troops! What do you think, shall we do a nice unboxing together?
By Tom Gall
Battlefront’s The Pacific will soon be in the hands of many a Flames of War player, but before it arrives in your hands NoDiceNoGlory has a series of articles to highlight the many treasures found in this book. In this first article let’s take a speed through the various bits and circle back in following articles to look at the details.
The Pacific covers the Asian theatre of World War II during 1942-1943 for version 4 of Flames of War. The last time Flames of War players saw source materials for this part of the way was during Version 3 with Gung Ho, and Banzai.
Additionally for Early War there was Rising Sun. Back then the books were organized with usually a single nation in one book, like Japanese in Banzai, and the US Marine Corps (USMC) in Gung Ho.
By Richard Steer
Every year, the Hutt Miniature Wargames Club hosts the ValleyCon wargaming event in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. 2024 was the club’s 25th anniversary, and fittingly, ValleyCon 2024 was its biggest event yet. 170 gamers came together from across New Zealand to spend two days playing in tournaments for eight gaming systems.
I played in the Flames of War tournament, which had 20 players with 98-point Mid-War lists using Dynamic Points in five 2.5-hour rounds. I try to bring a new army to each ValleyCon, and 2024 was the year that I finally built a British ‘Death or Glory’ Armoured Squadron.
When Battlefront published WORLD WAR III TEAM YANKEE SOVIETS https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=7154 four years ago, they introduced Soviet units with NATO capabilities – the Shock T80 company. The backstory was that one of the regiments of 4th Guards Tank Division was permitted to experiment with Western-style tactics. The regiment created a special ‘shock’ battalion pairing shock tank companies with shock motor rifle companies.
Some consider the story inflated or perhaps fantasy. The truth is the Soviets had units that trained beyond the NORMs for motor rifle and tank formations and some that mimicked NATO tactics. The problem is that they weren’t equipped with T80s or BMP-3s.
This is their story, and PART II will be discussion of how to represent these units in casual gaming.
Independent Regiments for Border Screening
Soviet troops patrolled the Inner German Border (IGB) from 1946. When the East Germans established their own military, they quickly established their own border troops – the Grenztruppen. These were lightly armed paramilitary police units. While effective at patrolling the border, they offered no security against a NATO attempt to forcibly reunify Germany. The Soviets backed these troops up with tank battalions augmented with their own infantry. These were called border screening troops, and distinct from KGB units. Their purpose was to protect the Soviet (and later Volksarmee) units deploying from garrison.
After Khrushchev ended the Soviet heavy tank family, STAVKA had the problem of repurposing heavy tank organizations. Many retained their original identities, even as they were re-equipped with Standard Tanks (the Soviet name for what the West called Main Battle Tanks or MBT). However several became parent HQ for collections of border screening units.
Some heavy tank battalions were fed into the screening organizations or used to give independent tank battalions to motor rifle divisions in the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG), Central Group of Forces (CGF) and others. By 1980 this process was complete, leaving GSFG with seven Independent Tank regiments for Border Screening. 5th Independent Tank Brigade’s conversion into the 138th Independent Tank Regiment ended the process.
These new regiments initially retained their old tanks until fielding of the T64 made T62s available. When T62s were withdrawn, they were re-equipped with T64As upgraded in East German workshops to T64B armor standards. According to ex-Soviet tankers corresponding on TANKNET, the T64s were in place by 1983.
These units’ peacetime function was providing collective training for other Soviet units in their area. They were encouraged to adopt Western style tactics, so that the beneficiaries of their attention became familiar with how NATO forces would respond. While not as sophisticated as the National Training Center experience, it was different than the typical Soviet exercise.
The incidental effect was these units were better trained than the typical Soviet unit, and able to copy NATO tactics. Put differently, they were virtually a match for BF’s description of ‘shock’ units.
In wartime, the role of the border screening regiments mirrored NATO’s covering forces with one significant difference – in short notice scenarios these regiments were expected to roar across the border and screen it from 20-30 kilometers deep in NATO territory, preventing NATO artillery from shelling border crossing points.
The organization differed from the standard tank regiment. Each battalion had FOUR companies with a total of 41 tanks each, giving the regiment 124 tanks. The regiment had a full BMP battalion with 45 BMPs (BMP-1P after 1983). Some sources claim the reconnaissance company had an extra tracked recon platoon. One oddity was the absence of an artillery battalion.
To keep Western intelligence guessing about the wartime purpose of these units, the artillery battalions stationed separately and the TANKNET correspondents claimed they would be augmented by 2S3 Acacia battalions (Coincidentally, seven Soviet divisions in GSFG had an extra 2S3 battalion).
A New (Old) System of Maneuver
In the late 1970s Soviet military thinking focused on two concepts designed to break up NATOs evolving Forward Defense/Active Defense strategy. At the tactical level the concept was called Forward Detachments (FD) and at the operational (Army and Front) the method was the Operational Maneuver Group (OMG).
These techniques had been the cornerstone of Soviet success in WWII. However, as the Soviet Army mechanized, the techniques seemed less relevant. Both techniques exploited the speed differential between motorized units and the largely foot-mobile and horse-drawn formations fighting on the Eastern Front.
Soviet military theorists reconsidered the relevance when NATO moved from MASSIVE RETALIATION to FLEXIBLE RESPONSE in the mid-60s. NATO’s operational level implementation was Forward Defense – essentially lining the IGB with conventional forces using fixed defenses punctuated with large reserves to contain a Soviet breakthrough.
This system’s weakness was displayed during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Both the Syrians and Egyptians broke through Israeli fixed defenses. The Israelis ‘won’ the war suffering heavy losses. The USA observed the war and concluded Forward Defense would fail. They began moving to a different operational method – Active Defense.
Active Defense visualized the Soviet breakthrough being ‘swarmed’ by thinning the Main Line of Resistance (MLR) to commit local reserves in small packets. Soviet strategists saw opportunities in the Active Defense technique. This raised potential for smaller Soviet forces to penetrate the remaining cordon on the MLR, as well as counter elements of the ‘swarm.’ This was the job of FDs.
The other opportunity was penetration in operational depth – i.e. to the NATO corps rear boundary – of a large, combined arms force while the main breakthrough was contending with the ‘swarm.’ This penetration would disrupt NATO logistics over a wide area and be too big for the remaining local reserves. This was the mission of the OMG.
FDs were combined arms units created at the division and regiment level as opportunities arose. Ideally, the units had teamed together in training. An OMG had to be preplanned. Training exercises in the mid-70s showed that ad hoc ‘Corps’ comprising two divisions had the combat power necessary for the mission, but the long logistics tail of the corps and the ad hoc nature of the arrangement reduced efficiency. Also the bigger the OMG, the longer the response time.
Ultimately the Soviets created specialized units to perform as OMGs at the TVD level, but at Front/Army levels repurposed existing formations to improve response time. This gave new life to independent tank regiments and independent tank brigades.
I’ve already discussed the border screening regiments of GSFG. Once their screening mission was complete, they assumed the role of normal independent tank regiments – a quick response OMG for their army. Each GSFG army had at least one.
Frontal Tank Brigades had disappeared from the GSFG by 1980, but the resources remained.
Hiding In Plain Sight – Tank Training Centers
By 1980 GSFG had consolidated most of its tank training units into two tank training centers operated by the 41st and 101st Tank Training Regiments. These were large organizations, providing both individual and collective training to GSFG units.
They each had several battalion sets of tanks, although most were T55s – cheaper to operate. They also had advanced tanks for familiarization and transition training.
With hostilities imminent, they would close. Western intelligence theorized that they could become the missing Frontal Tank Brigades, operating a mix of advanced (T80 or T64) tanks and T55s.
The Tank Brigade TOE (Table of Organization and Equipment) was like the tank regiment, with tank battalions having five companies instead of four, for a total of 154 tanks. Both tank training centers easily met this threshold, and 101st Regiment had two training areas and could easily have fielded a fourth tank battalion. These centers had a mix of self-propelled artillery, likely fielding a mixed battalion. Again BMPs would provide the transport, although the riflemen would come from reserve units activating in the USSR.
While T55s seem odd in this role, remember the OMG’s purpose was a quick penetration of the NATO MLR and exploitation into the logistics areas. The T55 was easily a match for the equally old M48s that populated the West German Heimatschutzkommando brigades charged with Rear Area Combat Operations (RACO). Any tank – including the airborne ASU-85 – was deadly to the logistics units targeted by the OMG. And T55 fuel requirements were significantly lower than T64 or T80.
These units would have a high proportion of experienced praporschik (warrant officers) to command platoons thus being better able to operate independently. If the GSFG transitioned to war maintaining this proportion, these units could also qualify as ‘elite.’
Combined (Unified) Army Corps
In 1980 the Soviets began experimenting with a new formation, variously called the Combined or Unified Army Corps. This was a revival of the Soviet mechanized corps of World War II, not a Corps in either the Western sense or the Soviet usage (Soviet corps of the late Cold War were multidivisional territorial commands directly subordinate to a military district, and usually found protecting the external borders. They lacked most of the support services normally found in a combined arms army).
Three divisions initially participated in this experiment – the 24th (Iron) Motor Rifle Division (MRD) at Lvov, the 120th (Rogachev Guards) Guards MRD at Minsk, and the 5th Guards (Don-Budapest) Tank Division (TKD) at Kyakhta.
In 1982 STAVKA authorized the 120th Guards MRD and the 5th Guards TKD to proceed with the next phase of the experiment. The 24th MRD was frozen. Western intelligence theorized that this was because the Soviets couldn’t afford the attack helicopter and air assault regiments demanded by the new TOE.
120th Guards MRD now became the 5th Combined Army Corps (CAC). 5th Guards TKD became the 48th Guards CAC. The organization developed through 1983. The CIA reported that the new organization was four brigades of five battalions each. Figure 3 shows the Corps organization around 1985.
The brigades had an organic BM-21 rocket artillery battalion, doubled the size of their air defense company and later added a battery of eight SA-8 Geckos changing the ADA unit into a battalion. The Corps air defense regiment eventually had five batteries of SA-11 Gadfly. The Corps had a BM-27 battalion in addition to ‘divisional’ BM-21s. The Artillery Regiment expanded to three 2S3 Acacia battalions.
The other unusual feature of these units was the Combined Arms Battalion (CAB). There were at least two in each brigade. Originally, two tank and one motor rifle battalion completed a Tank Brigade, and the companion Mechanized Brigade added one tank and two motor rifle battalions.
Both Corps had organic air assault capabilities, with a Landing Assault Regiment (including a BMD battalion) and an Independent Assault Helicopter Regiment.
The number of CABs and subunit organization varied between the two Corps and from year to year. The baseline CAB appears to have been two tank companies and two motor rifle companies, but at times there were as many as five companies with Tank CAB having 3 tank companies plus 2 motor rifle companies and Mechanized CAB having the reverse.
The baseline organization would have 462 tanks and up to 566 BMPs, 45 BMDs, 72 2S1, 54 2S3, 90 BM21s, 18 BM-27s, 32+ ZSU-23 or Tunguska, 32+ SA-13, 32 SA-8, and 20 SA-11. As the organization fluctuated, the tank strength approached 500 tanks.
One feature of this experiment was NATO-style task forces combining tanks and BMPs on a habitual basis, to the extent of putting them in the same motor pool. Training exceeded the norms for the regular forces.
Initially the 5th CAC fielded T72s and the 48th CACs fielded T62s. As experimental units they had first call on newer equipment (T72B and T62M) and trained intensively.
The Soviets started the experiment with other units (notably 32nd Guards TKD and 90th Guards TKD) but they did not get as far as 24th MRD.
Next article will cover the ways to represent these units in Team Yankee.
By Jim Naughton
When I originally contemplated writing this article, data points were hard to find. But BF’s expansion of the game has added additional data beyond the original unit in WWIII TY Soviets.
In RED DAWN we find ‘VDV’ and ‘VDV Afghantsy’ units, the first being a battalion with improved skills and assault ratings and the second being veteran paratroopers with NATO-like ratings.
From NORDIC FORCES we find Finnish troops using (mostly) Soviet gear with ratings like the VDV Afghantsy companies.
MIA – PACT Airborne Forces
When Battlefront published RED DAWN and the Airborne Assault Missions Pack 18 months ago, I found one casual comment disturbing. Page 46 says “WARSAW PACT armies (Czechoslovakian, East German, and Polish) lacked dedicated airborne infantry (as opposed to airborne raiding troops) …”
This is a distinction without a difference, and a dismissal. I intend to correct the record and give some ideas how these MIA units can be incorporated into the game in casual play.
I’m going to follow the sequence in WARSAW PACT in this discussion but start with a unit found in all PACT armies.
Opinion Piece By Jim Naughton
DYNAMIC POINTS: IF ENOUGH CUSTOMERS WHINE, THEY’RE RIGHT
A recent FACEBOOK post called attention to a BF plan to introduce DYNAMIC POINTS into Team Yankee. It referred the reader to the Team Yankee website. Since then, there has been a lot discussion in the various TY Groups on social medium.
Couple years back, dynamic points were invented for Flames of War. The ostensible ‘reason’ for this was FOW tournament players had reacted to the Army Point (AP) values of the bread-and-butter tanks of MIDWAR by choosing Lend-Lease Tanks for the Soviets and spamming armored cars. Armored cars worked because they had enough armor and lots of machine guns to tank-assault many infantry units. Lend-Lease tanks like the M3 medium had an extra shot compared to T34s.
