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Old 09-23-2021, 09:40 AM
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ChalkLine ChalkLine is offline
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Warsawa.

Some time back I was getting a Ruins of Warsaw play-by-post off the ground before my health suddenly deteriorated. As that game will probably never be run as it looks like I'm not getting better I thought I might share my campaign ideas with you.

In this re-imagining the setting reflected modern conflicts more than the set piece marauder force fight in the book. I actually like the original but the aim for my game was different, the players would have to navigate the shifting loyalties of the factions and aid the leaders to maintain their forces and hold the enemy off. In the battle the real enemy was winter, if the 'good side' can maintain its food stocks until the onset of winter the other side will collapse.
The problem is that rather than some cartoonish 'Black Baron' the enemy was a shifting coalition of bandit forces all representing themselves as freedom fighters. In some cases they probably even believed it to be true. They had shifting names that translated to things such as “The Polish Democratic Army” or “The Masurian Independence Movement” that split and combined much like in The Spanish Civil War. Of course, deep down they were robbers, murderers and thugs who used violence and terror to achieve their aims.

As such the urban "Rattenkireg" was supplemented by constant attempts to woo troops and settlements from one side to the other. If the player's side lost too many settlements either through military action or desertion they were doomed.

The overwhelming problem here is "The Prisoner's Dilemma". Simply put, this is a case where you have to decide if you can trust others not to betray you first. If a settlement with all its petty human jealousies, resentments and fears starts to think that the settlement over the river is going over to the other side to combine against them then they start to think they'd better do it first. Even though they knew the enemy was frankly evil the worry is do you risk your people fighting a losing battle or join the winning side, keep your heads down and hope you come out all right? Especially when it’s shown the enemy has absolutely no mercy for those who oppose them (the opening scene was them shooting women and children who were fleeing).

The campaign was going to be much larger. For some reason the original setting was set smack-bang right in the centre of the three nuclear strikes. In this game the settlements were larger with a larger area of no-man's land between them. Warsawa is an amazing city with some fascinating and varied areas and I wanted to take advantage of them such as the old 19th century fortifications, the river itself, the vital few remaining bridges.

The world was going to transformed, not just by the horrific nuclear strikes but primarily by the long Siege of Warsaw that receded it. The groundwater was not safe to drink and standing water had to be avoided as it was still contaminated by the extensive use of chemical weapons, these weapons being ideally suited for sieges. The terrain was a mix of The Battle of Stalingrad and The Battle of Berlin and these two battles were going to be borrowed from heavily for ideas. For instance I was going to have The Warsaw Metro expanded before the war and considerable fighting was going to down there in its dry, semi-flooded and flooded sections. Some of these sections were struck by bunker-busting munitions.

Koronev's 10th Guards were a wild card. Riffing on GDW’s description I had them as ultra-idealistic deserters such as the men of the Kronstadt Rebellion in 1917. Still communist, they were firmly convinced they were going back to make a non-Leninist Svoiet Russia (there were all probably going to get killed). One groups was going to be a women’s detachment that the friendly Russians would tell the players not to approach them; “Don’t go over there tovaritchse, that is the where the girls are camped and they are, shall we say, a bit politically enthusiastic”. However they were going to be fanatical fighters.

The Russians had the same problem the players and the other nationalities had; the Poles loathed them. While the Poles have always hated Russians, no matter how well disposed the Warsovians were to the West before the war they’ve been shelled, gassed and nuked by those they thought were coming to their aid and now the Poles in Warsawa have a visceral hatred of them. This hatred extended to every non-Pole, the Poles just want everyone out of Poland and for them to stay out. Weirdly enough given historical animosity, it’s well known in Warsawa that the Germans never wanted to enter Poland and only did so under extreme pressure, they’re tolerated the best of the NATO crowd. Similarly the other Warsaw Pact troops are also tolerated better/ The primary goal of the entire game was to win the trust of these understandably bitter people. This was to start with them intervening in a massacre and develop as the suspicious Poles overcame their dislike.

There was to be a gaggle of forlorn, lost non-Russian Warsaw Pact elements in among the defenders. Some examples were the always cheerful Hungarians who would come up with wildly improbably ideas on how to get home (“let’s build a dirigible!”) as a way of keeping their morale up. The East German sniper team who forlornly knew they could never go home as they were traitors to their homeland. The squabbling Yugoslavians (in my campaign Yugoslavia doesn’t entirely fragment and the Soviets have some units of them and their unique kit) who instantly close ranks any time any of them are threatened and a few others.

Anyway, that’s what was in the cards. It was a big campaign with no set ending or course, it was going to be largely left up to the players.

10th Guards Equipment

245 troops
6 SA-7/16/18 MANPAD
3 RPG-7V
3 BTR-80
12 UAZ-469
9 GAZ-66
1 URAL (Command Van)
1 ZIL-131 (Maintenance Truck)
4 KRaZ/Ural truck
12 Ural (Command)
2 UAZ-452 Bukhanka Van
1 POL Truck
1 UAZ-452A Bukhanka Ambulance
2 GAZ-24-10 "Volga" Sedan
1 POL Trailer
4 2-axle cargo Trailer
1 1-axle generator Trailer
2 2-axle generator Trailer
1 water Trailer
3 Field Kitchen - Trailer
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