Cold War Commander Iran Iraq

[flatpack]

A photo that I forgot to post.

These were the Iraqi T-62’s stacking, to attack our far left village.
I tried to shell them about three times, as they were a lovely looking target for artillery 
Unfortunately my Iranian Visually Impaired Observer Corps couldn’t spot them. (Nothing to do with my poor dice rolls at all…oh no,no,no)

[has.been]

Ha! Those silly Iranians fell for our ploy. That is really a column of dummy tanks.
Beneath each one is a valiant soldier on a push bike pedalling like crazy. 

We even stopped for a whole move to tempt their artillery.

[Westbury]

It was impressively bad shooting Bob 

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Beneath each one is a valiant soldier on a push bike pedalling like crazy. 
/quote]
^__^

[flatpack]

It was impressively bad shooting Bob 

Ian
 I’d realised it was an Iraqi unit, only armed with push bikes, so didn’t want to waste any precious artillery shells on them. 

[Westbury]

Another attempt at a narrative driven game for the Iran Iraq affair, this time the Iranian 37th Armoured tasked with retaking two towns on a main army held by the 15th Mechanised who had an SU22 squadron on line.

[Westbury]

The Iranians struggled to deploy on table to start with and the Mechanised Infantry battalion was late to the party and very bunched up.
The Iraqi tank battalion threw caution to the winds and rolled out against the deploying Iranians despite the previous evidence of how awful the T54's & T55's were in an armour shoot out.

[Westbury]

The fun part of the game was the air support. By and large the calling went well - I think we only had one failure. Once over the target the performance was, well, variable 
In the first couple of runs using munitions the planes could barely hit an adobe door and Pete's harrumphs were quite funny to watch. However come the napalm, cometh the pilot and we had two runs of napalm dropped on the bunched up mechanised battalion which reduced the M113's and their unfortunate passengers to ash.

[Westbury]

With their infantry now buggered the Iranian armour had a bit of a task on it's hands; two towns to take and a brave/foolhardy Iraqi armoured commander spoiling for a fight. So fight they did.
The Iraqi infantry in the one town did some RPG damage on the lead tank column but not enough to send them packing but the T54/55's gave as good as they got having closed the range and learnt the lesson from the last time about concentration of fire.

[Westbury]

Conscious of the clock (people had to go) I looked up the conditions for adjudicating winners and losers and realised the Iranians were one unit shy of breaching their command Breakpoint and right on cue the Iranians busted that by knocking out two more units. Without further ado we tested, the Iranians failed and withdrew. Perfect timing 

[Westbury]

Running these games is a bit like herding cats, 4 players who barely know/can remember the rules and an umpire who is only just ahead of them so it can be a bit frenetic and as a result things get missed. It was also our first go at using air cover.
As a game I thought it went well, we crammed a lot of play into a small window of time and got a definitive result, they remain my go to set for Cold War gaming. For those familiar with the rules both sides were 3,500 points with about a third of the Iraqi points being the air cover.
Reflecting on the game afterwards there were several errors, some umpire, some player. Bob had thought it strange the planes got a clear run - yes it was because I forgot each command element has an AA capability, not enough to halt the attacks but maybe enough to drive off or down a plane thus reducing the effectiveness of the attacks. I made a mistake on visibility through cover although it didn't make any difference as such and I wasn't watching Pete closely enough when he crammed loads of infantry bases into one built up area    Whether the players made any mistakes I'll leave up to them to reflect on 

[AKULA]

A great looking game ... and it doesn't sound like the mistakes with the rules detracted from the entertainment 

[trev]

Great game and miniatures.  An interesting topic too.  Nice.

[Westbury]

I ran the game again 5 days later with different players and fixing the couple of mistakes i made.
Interestingly both sides deployed more or less the same. The Iraqis placed their two infantry battalions in and around the two towns and their armour out of sight behind the southern town. The Iranians deployed their infantry more to the north taking advantage of the northern hills, they again deployed a tank battalion in column on the road (the lure of a road  ) and the second tank battalion further south than their predecessor.

[Westbury]

The Iranians again had a slight delay deploying and again the Iraqis launched their air wing early and again had zero effect in the first couple of attacks.
The Iranian infantry made better progress this time (not getting burned to death by napalm helped  ) and managed to debus and advance on the town.
The tank column on the road dithered a bit (cautious player) but finally swung south to tackle the other town.
The southern tank column advanced unopposed as the Iraqi player decided to keep his tanks hidden for as long as he could and avoid the usual problem of being outranged.