ChalkLine's Desiderata

[ChalkLine]

Alcohol Fuels.

In 1981 the US Army did a study of pure alcohol fuels* and found the following results.

Methanol promoted engine wear in certain sections of the engine. Top of bore and top of ring, cam followers and cam lobes, valve faces and valve guides all wore about seven times faster than ethanol or gasoline fuels. This was due to chemicals created as the by-products of combustion.

The found that pure alcohol fuels ran cleaner engines with less gumming and other deposits.

However Ethanol has its own problems. It absorbs water from the air and this separates if the engine is allowed to sit for extended periods (they didn't say how long). It is also corrosive and will attack the fuel lines of that period.

Game Effects:
Really, this can be used just for colour for mechanic characters or GMs could call for more rolls for methanol-powered vehicles.

(*They also studied alcohol blends and found no appreciable difference to 100% gasoline)

[ChalkLine]

A Third Echelon Campaign

In most games the players get the gee-whiz stuff at the very start and it slowly degrades during the game. Little by little, they start to pick up AKMs for the ammo, shoot off their 40mms and so on.

But in this style campaign the players starts off with real last-ditch stuff, not even Vietnam-era body armour. 1950s webbing, old style uniforms, weapons two generations out of date and so on. A hardcore GM will make their equipment and weaponry actually a severe disadvantage so the players have a strong incentive to scrounge, loot and cobble together more modern gear that’s more effective. The vehicles are clapped out old horrors that should really be in the back lot of a museum awaiting restoration. Even horses should be scruffy old nags. Worse, it could be cheap repurposed civilian gear that rapidly falls to bits.

The main challenge in this is letting the players get access to their own side’s equipment. Unless you want them indistinguishable from the enemy in a short spate of time you need to let them find out where stuff they can use is. It also really kicks up the trading aspect of the game.

This by definition is a lean campaign. I’m usually of the opinion that the enemy simply don’t engage if possible if they're down to their last magazine because really by then you’re combat ineffective, but in this style game everyone is short of everything and the players should not be able to pick up four magazines off a fallen enemy. Usually loot should be in the order or a dozen rounds, and I’d bump the combat difficulties up so there’s a lot more shots per hit than there is now (T2K, and all modern games, makes it far too easy to hit in a firefight).

[ChalkLine]

Updating the BTR-40 and the BTR-152.

The soviets seemed to have this obsessive aversion to throwing anything away.
It’s well known that right up to the dissolution the USSR and the rest of the Warsaw Pact hoarded oodles of 1950s equipment due to their belief that if the west started a war it would be a strategic war, and the only way to outlast the west was to have stockpiles of marginally useful gear that would still act as a decent force multiplier in a late war scenario. As such they doggedly hung on to crap like T-34s which really just took up storage space. However, in the Twilight War this logistical strategy would probably have paid off to some degree.
Also, those Lo-Tek objects made good sales to foreign clients as they tended to rugged simplicity bordering on the primitive.
However, as everyone knows if you create a whole organisation to do something that organisation will usually expend a lot of time and effort to both justify its existence and to try and enlarge its budget. It seems this depot organisation was no different. Copious plans were created on how to implement the old junk into the by now very different army. I found this interesting on how they saw the BTR-40 and the BTR-152.

These two complimentary vehicles were simply armoured trucks. Open roofed, all wheel drive the BTR-40 was an armoured GAZ-63 4x4 truck and the BTR-152 was an armoured ZIL-157 truck. Not even the Soviet Union hung onto those prehistoric bangers so if the ancient BTRs did get taken out of storage they’d have had very little in the way of spares support, making them useless.

It appears in typical Soviet bloody-mindedness this had been a consideration in truck design. It makes you wonder what a guy putting together a new truck thought when he read through the regs that demanded any future truck chassis must fit under those ancient APCs.
However, it seems to be the case. The BTR-40 will fit over the modern GAZ-3309 and the BTR-152 fits over the ZIL-131.
Modern Russian truck designers must be a far happier breed.
So, what does this mean?
Well, it depends on your campaign and how much you want to bother with this stuff. But here’s my stats for an out-of-the-depot BTR-40M and a BTR-152VM

BTR-40 (Original Vehicle)
Mass 5.3 tonnes
Crew 2 + 8 passengers (2+6 for the roofed BTR-40V)
Armour 6-8 mm
Main armament 7.62 SGMB MMG (1,250 rounds (total)) (optional)
Secondary armament 2×7.62 SGMB MMG (1,250 rounds (total)) (optional)
Engine 6-cylinder GAZ-40
80 hp (60 kW) at 3,400 rpm
Power/weight 15.1 hp/tonne (11.3 kW/tonne)
Suspension 4x4 wheel, leaf spring
Ground clearance 400 mm
Fuel capacity 122 L
Operational range 430 km (road) 385 km (cross country)
Maximum speed 80 km/h

BTR-40M (Twilight 2000 Vehicle)
Mass 4.0 tonnes (1.3 tonnes lighter)
Crew 2 + 8 passengers (2+6 for the roofed BTR-40V)
Armour 6-8 mm
Main armament 7.62mm PKM GPMG (1,250 rounds (total)) (optional)
Secondary armament 2×7.62mm PKM GPMG (1,250 rounds (total)) (optional)
Engine V8 gasoline (carburetor) ZIL-130
150 hp (111.8 kW) at 3,400 rpm
Power/weight 37.5 hp/tonne (27.9 kW/tonne)
Suspension 4x4 wheel, semi-elliptical springs
Ground clearance 400 mm
Fuel capacity 2x173.1 L
Operational range 1000 km (road) 800 km (cross country)
Maximum speed 95 km/h
And like the new BTR-152VM it gets power steering.

BTR-152V (Original Vehicle)
Mass 10.2 tonnes
Armour welded steel 15 mm front, 9 mm sides and rear, 10 mm roof(if present), 4 mm bottom
Main armament 7.62mm SGMB MMG (1,250 rounds) or 12.7mm DShK 1938/46 HMG (500 rounds)
Secondary armament 2×7.62mm SGMB MMG (1,250–1,750 rounds) on side pintle mounts (optional)
Engine ZIL-137K 6-cylinder in-line petrol, 107 hp (80 kW)
Power/weight 10.8 hp/tonne (8.1 kW/tonne)
Suspension wheeled 6×6 leaf spring
Ground clearance 300 mm
Fuel capacity 300 L
Operational range 650 km
Maximum speed 65 km/h

BTR-152VM (Twilight 2000 Vehicle)
Mass 9.91 tonnes
Armour welded steel 15 mm front, 9 mm sides and rear, 10 mm roof(if present), 4 mm bottom
Main armament 7.62mm PKM GPMG (1,250 rounds) or 12.7mm NSV HMG (500 rounds)
Secondary armament 2×7.62mm PKM GPMG (1,250–1,750 rounds) on side pintle mounts (optional)
Engine ZIL-137K 6-cylinder in-line petrol, 123 hp (92 kW)
Power/weight 12.4 hp/tonne (9.3 kW/tonne)
Suspension wheeled 6×6 leaf spring
Ground clearance 300 mm
Fuel capacity 105 L x2
Operational range 795 km
Maximum speed 80 km/h

Note that as far as I know none of these conversions have ever been done so this is all rough calculation on the difference between the base trucks and the modern trucks.
These things of course are pretty much useless as APCs but they make very good trucks for hauling crap, being a tad more survivable than base truck and giving protection to the cargo unlike up-armoured modern cargo haulers. Slat armour and applique armour are possible but probably useless, especially for the BTR-40 which doesn’t have the base armour to survive an even diffused jet from a tiny HEAT warhead. You pay for this by they being an utter bear to load, unload and secure your gear.

[ChalkLine]

Dug-In Tanks.

Not the field expedient positions, but rather tanks emplaced permanently.
Probably a common encounter in the Twilight War's latter stages, dug-in tank emplacements can be used to dominate a sector. However forgoing mobility for whatever reason, usually because the vehicle has lost whatever mobility it had, means that several steps have to be taken to ensure its combat effectiveness.

Firstly, siting the vehicle needs careful thought and consideration of not just the surrounding terrain but also of the local area where artillery may set up to engage the emplacement. This has to be balanced with the problem of getting the vehicle to the site, it's not easy to drag a 68 ton monster into a swamp for instance.

Secondly, the vehicle needs extra protection. Firstly this is done by terrain, ensuring the vehicle can only approached from one direction and orientating the hull towards it. Secondly add-on armour is established with overhead protection often emplaced for smaller vehicles and applique armour and stand off armour for larger vehicles. Burster layers should be emplaced in the terrain around the buried hull to break up long rod penetrators. Slat armour might be attached to the turret and even armour plates attached frontally with a counterweight on the rear of the turret.

If the emplacement is just a turret on top of a bunker then it can take any shape from the small to the very large. An abandoned hull, nearly always with the engine, transmission, suspension and running gear removed, can use the vacant engine bay as not only a protected shelter but also this can be opened up to provide access to the turret. This can also be the route that connects the turret to the rest of the fortification works.

These emplacements are usually not isolated, an infantry detachment with some sort of limited mobility is needed to cover it and stop the position being engaged from multiple directions simultaneously. Infantry shelters and fighting positions hardened against artillery should cover the flanks and rear. Telephone wire should be buried at least a metre below the ground between all positions.

The mobile reserve should be used to develop flanking counter attacks in conjunction with organic and higher echelon artillery.

Dealing with this sort of position can call on more than just skills for players, it takes clear tactical thinking and a weighing of assets against results. it can be a hard, wheeling fight just to get into a position to launch an ATGM against the site (a Cold War estimate was that the maximum engagement range in Poland would be 1,300m in Poland, even less in Germany and basically point blank in places like the Fulda area).

If the position has to be abandoned usually the emplaced turret will be destroyed. The most common way of doing this without explosives it to, after an emergency strip of systems, drain the recuperator fluid and remote fire the gun, demolishing the recoil system and the cannon trunnions and making it a write-off.

These positions work well as barrier guards and were commonly used by the USSR to cover river crossings.

[ChalkLine]

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

[ChalkLine]

Wieger StG-940

Military History Not Visualised has put out a video on a gun I never knew about, the Wieger StG-940.
This was made in East Germany for foreign sales but the also use by the special forces (and the loathed Stasi).
It's an AK-74 melded with a Galil and came in 5.45x39mm and 5.56x45mm.
They were built in their tens of thousands, but about that little is known as it was a secret project as the DDR was "a peaceful country" 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieger_StG-940

Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2n4m-UxPSk

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

A Third Echelon Campaign

In most games the players get the gee-whiz stuff at the very start and it slowly degrades during the game. Little by little, they start to pick up AKMs for the ammo, shoot off their 40mms and so on.

But in this style campaign the players starts off with real last-ditch stuff, not even Vietnam-era body armour. 1950s webbing, old style uniforms, weapons two generations out of date and so on. A hardcore GM will make their equipment and weaponry actually a severe disadvantage so the players have a strong incentive to scrounge, loot and cobble together more modern gear that’s more effective. The vehicles are clapped out old horrors that should really be in the back lot of a museum awaiting restoration. Even horses should be scruffy old nags. Worse, it could be cheap repurposed civilian gear that rapidly falls to bits.

The main challenge in this is letting the players get access to their own side’s equipment. Unless you want them indistinguishable from the enemy in a short spate of time you need to let them find out where stuff they can use is. It also really kicks up the trading aspect of the game.

This by definition is a lean campaign. I’m usually of the opinion that the enemy simply don’t engage if possible if they're down to their last magazine because really by then you’re combat ineffective, but in this style game everyone is short of everything and the players should not be able to pick up four magazines off a fallen enemy. Usually loot should be in the order or a dozen rounds, and I’d bump the combat difficulties up so there’s a lot more shots per hit than there is now (T2K, and all modern games, makes it far too easy to hit in a firefight).

How about playing Soviet characters from one of the mobilization divisions then that were basically equipped with WWII/Korean War era equipment - i.e. old T-34/85's for tanks, WWII rifles and submachine guns, etc.. - given how the Soviets basically never threw anything away that would be a great way to introduce something like what you described above

Love to see the PPSh-41 and PPS-43 as part of their equipment

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by Olefin

How about playing Soviet characters from one of the mobilization divisions then that were basically equipped with WWII/Korean War era equipment - i.e. old T-34/85's for tanks, WWII rifles and submachine guns, etc.. - given how the Soviets basically never threw anything away that would be a great way to introduce something like what you described above

Love to see the PPSh-41 and PPS-43 as part of their equipment

I think that would be a lot of fun. If the GM is careful then he can make modern equipment 'treasure' so the players should be up against essentially militia.