Thinking about Baltic coast in '98

[Adm.Lee]

I don't think I raised this before. Roman and I are thinking about setting up a game or two on the Baltic coast, but we want to move it to 1998, to allow a bit more in the way of nifty gear.

Current thinking is that the Pact will stage diversionary operations along the coast prior to the main drive into southern Germany from Czechoslovakia.

Looking at Google Earth, there are darn few islands off Poland.

So, Bornholm would be an obvious target for some kind of diversion.

Prior to that, does anyone see a reason why NATO wouldn't post some or most of their amphibious assets up there, like the US Marines? It's been left vague what the Marine Division (and possibly still extant Air Wing and Exp. Force elements) was doing during this period. I propose the Marines moving out to that island, both to garrison it and as a base for their own raiding along the Baltic coast. With attachments from the Danes and Germans by any of their watery special-ops guys, and perhaps even some British operators.

[Raellus]

IMPO, placing a large unit- like a division, BCT, or RCT on an island is painting a bull's-eye on it for a nuclear strike. Concentrating assets on a relatively small landform would provide the Soviets with a tempting target. I can see spec-ops forces operating from a Baltic island, though. I agree that it makes sense to place the Marines (assuming they are back from Norway) in the coastal region.

[Tegyrius]

Thinking back to your own Baltic experiments, Rae, I have to say that Tarawa makes a pretty tempting target for a leftover nuke, too.

- C.

[Adm.Lee]

OK, so maybe not the entire MEF, but some sort of Baltic maritime spec-ops task force. Raiders and their boats, perhaps some air cover, while it lasts.

I'm toying with setting up a Soviet raid on the same places, at least pretending to be a full-size landing. Players as both NATO counter-raid and Pact raiders, at separate tables, separate times, during a convention.

BTW, I'm also about to start thinking about the islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Riga as places to play. I picked up a book on the 1917 German invasion there.

[Adm.Lee]

Update: Roman and I are running some games at Origins this weekend. Three of them will be on or near Bornholm in the spring of 1998. We decided the island would have a NATO CEWI listening post and an SOF boat detachment, as well as a Danish garrison

I'm running 1st: a NATO SOF team sneaks ashore on the Polish coast to recon some suspicious boat-building, which should point to a Pact amphibious assault onto the island.
Roman's running the Soviet assault on Friday, a bloodbath inspired by Saving Private Ryan, I hear.
Then on Saturday, we will run a double game: assume some of the NATO SOF guys returned in time, and that the Soviets broke loose a light-armor/motorized forward detachment. He'll run the Soviet team barrelling down the coast road toward the listening post, and I will run the SOF survivors and Danish guards in an ambush-- two tables, head to head.

V1 rules all around, since we've noticed that most Origins convention players are 40-something-year-olds who are playing partly for the nostalgia.

[Raellus]

Sounds really interesting. Good luck and have fun.

[Adm.Lee]

The games were fun, but radically different.

I ran for a joint NATO naval spec-ops team that was to reconnoiter a Polish boatyard that sat in the mouth of a river. Because it's a game, I put a rifle platoon on standby nearby, with 82mm mortars in support.

The dice immediately made it interesting, the first operator ashore tanked his RCN roll to sneak into the scrub near the boat-landing spot. That meant the LP there Definitely heard them, and started calling on the field-phone. In short, the group made it out after shooting up the platoon and the site guards, and counted the new-built boats and got a partial set of orders, indicating that Bornholm was a target.

I didn't get to see Roman's "Saving Private Ryanski" session.

The joint game turned out to be a total-party-kill for the NATO operators, there were a lot of NPCs and vehicles with the Soviet attackers. Their escape by truck got caught in the open by a swarm of grenade launchers, RPGs, and at least 3 KPVs. They did delay the desant boys for a while, and inflicted damage with some 120mm mortars.

I had 6 players at the first table: 3 of the regulars who often play with us, 2 total newbs, and 1 other veteran player. The last table had 6 NATO players against 8 Soviets.

In between, Roman also ran two sessions of a US recon squad (very low on food, fuel, and ammo) getting overrun in an Austrian village in the winter, and 1 session with a German parachute squad trying to assault a Spetsnaz team in the control room of a nuclear reactor. Fittingly, that last one was played late at night on Friday the 13th, full moon night, in the Cthulhu group's black-lit playing room.

Next year? Dunno yet, but there may not be so many death-trap scenarios. Certainly not so many different games.