TacOps PBEM - Final Results and lessons learned

Lessons learned:

1.       Helicopter rocket pods and air strikes may make infantry hit the deck, but they’re not very good at actually killing them.

2.       Machine guns lose accuracy over distance.

3.       Retreat can be too early.

4.       HE artillery is useless against armoured vehicles.

5.       MANPADs can be very deadly, especially when used in numbers.

6.       Smoke can be very useful and needs to be used.

7.       Information is a weapon of mass destruction – you need to have eyes on as much of the battlefield as possible.

8.       Don’t waste transport choppers.

9.       Check the terrain beforehand.

10.   Pre-set TRPs are essential.

The final results:

Time Left: 27 minutes

Mission results:

    Blue - Mission failure

    Red - Mission accomplished

    Red exit % - 43

Point results:

    Blue Attrition Points - 13814

    Red Attrition Points - 28875

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Blue Status:

UNIT	START	NOW	ELIM	EXITED
Helo AH1 Cobra	12	0	12	0
Helo CH46	40	0	30	10
Inf Squad	108	15	93	0
Inf SMAW Team	72	9	63	0
Inf MG 7.62mm Team	72	9	63	0
ATGM Javelin Team	118	4	114	0
LUV HMMWV + HMG	14	0	14	0
SAM Stinger Team	12	2	10	0
LUV HMMWV + LMG	16	0	16	0
Mortar 60mm	36	1	35	0
LUV HMMWV + AGL MK19	6	0	6	0
ATGMV HMMWV AT TOW	32	0	32	0
Helo CH53	16	0	6	10
Mortar 81mm M252 Team	16	0	16	0
Inf Team	8	4	0	4
Tank M1A1D	44	0	44	0
APC AAVP7	60	0	60	0
Mortar Carrier 81mm HMMWV	16	0	16	0

Force Lethality Value, Start: 32048

Force Lethality Value, Now: 1369

Casualty percentage: 90

Force Lethality Ratio, Start: 1:1.5

Force Lethality Ratio, Now: 1:10.3

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Red Status:

UNIT	START	NOW	ELIM	EXITED
Inf Squad	233	66	53	114
APC BTR80	203	26	90	87
Inf Team	41	7	8	26
Inf MG 7.62mm PKM Team	93	9	29	55
ATGM AT7 Saxhorn Team	39	12	12	15
Inf AGL AGS17 Team	42	8	12	22
ATGM AT4 Spigot Team	16	3	0	13
SAM SA16 Gimlet (Igla)	66	8	22	36
Inf SPG9 Team	8	0	2	6
Mortar SP 120mm 2S23	24	13	11	0
APC BRDM2	16	0	9	7
APC BMP2 IFV	137	20	35	82
Tank T80U	62	27	14	21
ATGMV BRDM2 Spandrel	18	3	0	15
AAA SP 23mm ZSU-23-4	8	8	0	0
Howitzer SP 122mm 2S1	36	22	8	6
Mortar SP 120mm 2S31	18	9	3	6

Force Lethality Value, Start: 49220

Force Lethality Value, Now: 14035

Casualty percentage: 28

Force Lethality Ratio, Start: 1.5:1

Force Lethality Ratio, Now: 10.3:1

Well done, Coyote – I’ve now got TOAW III and am playing that. We must do another game of this sometime.

TacOps AAR Part 18: ENDEX

1020 to 1032

The vast majority of Red’s forces were now west of 07 Easting. There looks a lot of less of them now, but it was still way more than I had.

My artillery was having next to no effect – the 60mm stuff landing on the southern mechanised units was merely suppressing them and the stronger stuff generally just missed. That said, I did get a very lucky 155mm ICM strike at 102145 that took out a Shilka. The non-ballistic fire went mostly his way – I had a HMMMV unit wiped out by tank and RPG fire. At 1022, the last two units guarding the north exit were wiped out and the OPFOR path was clear. There, it was all over bar the mortaring.

There were three airstrikes at 1023 – two for me (one aborted, one no damage) and one for Coyote (no damage). Javelin fire in the south hit some REDFOR vehicles.

The battle was really now just an exchange of artillery, both sides were essentially throwing stuff over a wall and hoping something went “owww”. Well, I was at any rate – Coyote had a better view of my forces than I did of his. I notice he was pounding the areas where those last two northern units were – guess he was trying to keep any replacements from joining them.

Red’s units were coming off the battlefield slowly – but he had a large batch ready to go across the goal line. There was some non-artillery fire in the south, where my forces were giving the enemy a painful going-away present. Until they got suppressed and covered by smoke.

As 1029 came around, Red dropped an MLRS strike on my southern units with little effect and his units were leaving in such numbers the replay makes my game go funny. I also lost a 60mm mortar unit – hadn’t been doing much anyway.

29% of the Red force was across the line at 1030 – he only needed 11% more to win.

The final three minutes of the battle saw the following:

·         An air strike by me, which I can’t remember, destroy an on-map Red arty unit.

·         A second air strike in a completely empty area.

·         Further shelling of the locations of my last northern units.

·         Increasingly ineffective artillery fire by me – the Red units simply weren’t there anymore.

At 1032, Red got enough of his forces over the goal line to win the game.

ENDEX

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I’m going to do one final post with lessons learned and the final scores. I’m planning to do a PDF with the whole AAR in, maybe edited a bit. Are people interested?

TacOps AAR Part 16: Boom and boom

1000 to 1009

Red started this period by engaging in a lot of long-distance shooting of low value infantry squads it could have safely ignored and by launching an airstrike with a MiG-27 that failed due to three Stingers shooting the thing down. This is not to as I was any better – I lost multiple air strikes to precisely the same cause, only the missile was called something different.

Red’s northern advance towards 04 Easting ran into the anti-tank units I’d concealed between the clumps of trees in a desperate attempt to slow him down. The exchange of anti-vehicle fire resulted in a large number of vehicles brewing up, the air filling with burning fuel and people.

1002 saw further damage being done on both side – a successful air attack on my part taking out a few vehicles with infantry fire killing an Igla/SA-16 unit, although said squad was then eliminated. Coyote crossed 04 Easting and took out the Javelin unit at 0404 that had caused him quite a few problems.

Coyote’s notes at this point have him feeling he was making better progress than expected and suffering ‘acceptable’ losses. Considering how much of my force he’d eliminated (70% to his losses of 19%), he was probably right in saying so. He also intended to move his centre force to support one of the other attacks within 15 to 20 minutes.

My artillery fire was starting to slacken now – with Red’s own units getting closer, he was able to take out some of my own mortars with some lucky shots at 1003. OPFOR was now truly through my lines. This wasn’t to say I wasn’t getting kills on him – I was (more than I remember getting looking at the replay), but my hits were drops in the ocean compared to the forces he had available. In fact, he could have punched through at the centre and the south as well if he wanted to.

1006 featured a lot of flying lead as REDFOR broke through in the south, the enemy unit in 0401 made its presence felt and a lot of infantry units finally gave up the ghost. 03 Easting had now been breached and all that was stopping Coyote from the goal line were two Javelin units and an M1 unit. That latter tank didn’t last long.

Red’s central forces were at this point variously committing north or south – mostly north. They had little need to worry about my thin blue line, now mostly scattered infantry squads.

As 1009 came round, OPFOR ran into the first of the last-ditch Javelin sections in the north. It seems that Coyote thought this was a counterattack. If only it had been that organised…

TacOps AAR Part 10: Ambitious but Rubbish

0850 to 0910

The first few minutes passed quietly, with limited artillery fire and an airstrike by me that found nothing, so didn’t even bother to drop a bomb. At 0854, 155mm killed a couple of my guys. Watching this period back, all that really happens was Red moving forward slowly but steadily.

At 0900, things changed. My Marine reinforcements arrived and they were packing M-1s. My plan was to have this come in around 06 Easting, which I figure would be far enough to meet up with the incoming Red Force that was due at around the same time, with some of the force reinforcing my main line and the other blocking map exit. The initial Hummer units arrived at 085945 at in the next turn, one blasted an IFV who had poked his head out of a forest for the final time.

Red promptly countered with an airstrike (Coyote had his units pre-plotted to interdict my movement) and took out said Hummer. Oh well. I dropped artillery in the area where the smoking IFV had been, to no effect and made a second Red air attack miss due to Stinger fire.

No less than three Hummers were hit by ICM fire at 0905 and the battle turned into one with more vehicular destruction than an episode of Top Gear as missiles flew across and up. Two minutes later, a Red airstrike followed by an artillery barrage hit a mechanised company and did some noticeable casualties, while an infantry squad took out a BRDM2.

I suffered a further blow at 0908 as a Red MRLS ICM strike followed by a smaller artillery strike took out a number of vehicles and squads, inflicting 3% casualties in one turn. Clearly my point of ingress was not a good one at all.

The next turn saw some infantry death on both sides, but things were definitely not going my way.

TacOps PBEM Part 9: Moving into place

0830 to 0849

We had four minutes of artillery exchanges that mostly missed – I came out the worst, losing that anti-tank squad that I mentioned before it had even fired a shot.

A couple of minutes of quiet followed by the same thing happening to another Javelin squad. Red was moving his forces into observation positions, allowing him to better direct his artillery fire and make things easier for the main assault. Some more artillery followed, along with my elimination of a BTR squad by an airstrike at 084215.

In fact, much of this turn was quiet, but little did I know, Red had found the gap in my lines and was starting to send some of his units through. A gap he would later use for his main assault (see circled).

TacOps AAR Part 8: Never bring a Hummer to an IFV fight

0820 to 0829

To try and get a view of the enemy forces, I sped a section of HMMMVs forward. Unfortunately, Hummers cannot stand up to RPG fire and by 0824, the entire force had been wiped out. Learnt that lesson the hard way.

Another plan went wrong as well. Red detected the anti-tank Javelin unit dug in on the road and starting dropping 152mm shells on them, which knocked the size of the unit down considerably.  While I did knock out a squad with an airstrike at 0827, Red’s forces (which I can see from the playback) were rapidly spreading out and so were a lot harder to localise. A lot of them were dismounted and were able to see me, whereas I couldn’t see them.

Things, to use the technical term, were all going Pete Tong.

TacOps AAR Part 7: Sound and Fury

0810 to 0819

This bit opened with another helicopter going down to an airstrike and some artillery fire that either missed or did little damage.

I lost my final Chinook at 0813 and so I had very little idea of where Red, who was spreading out, actually was. I did think that he would drive down the road at the bottom of the map and had an anti-tank unit hidden in the wooded area in grid square 1100, just waiting to get LOS on some BTRs and ruin their day.

Three Blue Airstrikes at 0816 knocked out a few troops and another BTR, but very little happened in three turns after that – certainly no casualties. In summary, one could call this period, to quote Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Well, except for the loss of the final helicopter in this battle.

TacOps PBEM AAR Part Six: Big Targets for Rotor-wings

0800 to 0809

The BTR series of armoured personnel carriers are designed to be “battle taxis”, bringing soldiers to the battlefield or transporting them long distance. While they provide good protection against helicopter fire, they are not tanks. As was about to be demonstrated.

At 0800, my choppers unleashed a large salvo of Hellfires and nearly all of them struck home. A Red aircraft did kill one of the helicopters, but the losses were pretty much all Coyote’s. I scored just under 496 attrition points just in that turn and nearly another 650 the following one as three ICM (that’s armour-penetrating) artillery strikes went dead on target, followed by more Hellfires, although I did lose an AH-1 to an SA-16 MANPADS when I got too close.

I was deliberately targeting those BTRs – I knew that if they were destroyed, there were infantry units that were either dead or unable to cross the map as they bailed out (in fact they were coming out to further fire, which cut some of them down – in a way, I feel sorry for the poor guys). In fact, four red units (two BTRs and their AT4 teams inside) actually fled the map at 0803 – I don’t know why Coyote did that.

If the whole battle carried on like this, I would have won easily. I was nailing Red with artillery fire and he wasn’t getting any on me. I even pulled off a successful airstrike. Watching the replay, the devastation I was causing is all too clear. Red’s force was reduced by over half in nine minutes, from a brigade of APCs and Motor Rifle Troops to a few of APCs with some scattered (and probably bewildered) foot-sloggers. I eliminated no less than 46 of the BTR-60s. The situation can be seen below.

But all this came at a price. I lost all but two of my helicopters in the process – losing transport and observation capability I wasn’t going to get back. I’d actually conducted much of the artillery bombardment semi-blind; I was going to have to go the rest of the battle like this.

TacOps PBEM Part Five: Completing Phase One

0740 to 0759

The reason that I’m doing these two posts together is that not a massive amount happened here – in terms of volume of fire at any rate.

At 0742, I found the last Red Unit on Objective E and attacked it with a helicopter, a mortar and airstrike – only the former doing any good. REDFOR dropped a load of artillery on an area with nothing actually in it and an MLRS strike on an area that actually did. Finally, three helicopters and an infantry squad from one of those finished off the final infantry squad.

REDFOR now had “Nothing to do for the next 14 minutes except pre-plot artillery and use harassing fires to slow [my] redeployment”. I spent that time preparing for the reinforcements for Red that would come from the eastern edge of the map, moving my Cobras to cover the main roads that Coyote would likely use to ingress his forces.

The turns moved rapidly, with only my movement – the remaining Red forces on the map stayed put and lowered their engagement ranges down to 110 metres to avoid being detected by me. A Red airstrike at 0755 killed a few helicopters and I lost a mortar unit at 0759.

At the same time, some of Red’s BTR units arrived on the map and got a taste of Hellfire. A taste they would never forget.

TacOps PBEM Part Four - Hide and Seek

0730 to 0739

If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.

One of my favourite web comics, Schlock Mercenary, revealed another maxim from its “Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective” – number 20, the above mentioned gem (my calendar for this year is the Schlock one featuring the first 12). There was a fair bit of that going on in this battle, even if it wasn’t intentional.

I cleared Objective B at 0732, thanks to the Hummers arriving and dealing with the foot sloggers rather than the helicopter. In that same term, a Red MLRS attack killed three of my soldiers and cost me another unit. Nasty things – have been since the Second World War…

I cleared C two minutes later, leaving Coyote with only three squads on the entire map, only one of which was actually parked in an objective – Objective E. To try and find the remaining holdout, my choppers circled around over E and then two (one not over E) were bagged by a pair of Floggers conducting airstrikes [So they’re good for something – Ed.]

Somehow I managed to miss a unit less than three hundred metres away from me from a helicopter…

TacOps PBEM Part 3: The Lull

0720-0729

Things got a little quitter – we had two minutes of non-lethal artillery fire from Red as I held off my own artillery until I got better target data (i.e. actually found someone). When I did start, I dropped 155mm shells on a part of Objective E that I now realise was completely empty.

Much of REDFOR’s initial force was gone – all he had were a few squads of straight-leg infantry. To quote Gary’s own notes at 0728, when ¾ of his force had gone:

I've been getting good artillery resupply but I'm unable to see large sections of the map now to spot the most lucrative targets.  Have to target some likely locations now so the ammo does not go to waste, especially the multiple rocket launchers.

Lack of ability to see key parts of the map was a key feature in this game for both of us. Of course, it is a key feature for much of warfare – remember pre-Overlord that the Germans were completely unable to get reconnaissance photos of the area where the real invasion force was forming up because their aircraft kept not making it back – so were duped by the fake force.

At 0728, I lost two Hummers to RPG fire as I found the remaining two man unit in Objective D. It barely lasted 90 seconds as an AH-1 finished it off. Two down, three to go.

TacOps 4 AAR - Part 2

Part One

0710 to 0719

This was a time filled with artillery, cannon and machine gun fire. It is surprising how much the accuracy of small arms fire falls off at distance – I remember the reason why the Russians developed the Dragunov support rifle as opposed to a full-blown sniper rifle is that most of their Second World War engagements were at distances of under 400 metres.

An airstrike at 071145 finished off a couple of the infantry units in square 1004 – it was one of the few successful airstrikes I would have in this battle. ZSU-23-4s: nightmares on six legs. I also lost some of my Hummers to RPG fire – it’s clear why the Americans are moving away from them as they were never meant to operate in an urban environment. While the artillery was a nuisance as it kept suppressing some of my units, it didn’t do a lot of damage.

The cannon fire and machine gun fire from my helicopters slowly began to take its toll on the OPFOR infantry – perhaps I should have gotten a bit closer. The rocket pods made a lot of noise but did little to the foot soldier. These and the artillery focussed on Objective E, getting the enemy presence down there to a mere six soldiers by close of 0719. Objective D actually only had two soldiers, but I had difficulty even finding them.

The casualty level was still a bit lopsided – 27% to 3% - but it was getting better.

Delaying Action - A TacOps 4 AAR - Part One

[I’m posting these as individual parts and as I watch the long replay, but I’ll eventually put a single PDF version of this report together that will replace all the posts on here, which may well be revised]

First rule of politics, kiddo: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

-          Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, Boardwalk Empire

I wish that I could tell you the story of how a young, plucky Brit with very limited TacOps experience held off the superior numbers of a veteran player (kind of like that time I held someone to a draw in a game of Harpoon ANW) with nothing but a stiff upper lip and Kaylee Frye on an M60.

Sadly, though, I can’t. I lost this, mostly due to my own inexperience. That said, I feel that I didn’t make a complete pig’s ear of it.

Task Force Nankervis, one of the largest scenarios in the boxed game, involves a USMC Brigade having to seize a valley in a helicopter assault and then hold it (with reinforcements) against an OPFOR attack through the valley. To win, I would need to clear all five objectives and stop 60% of the superior Red Forces from traversing through east to west. The game options I chose hid information about the enemy order of battle from me (and vice versa), which made things more interesting.

I’ll break down this battle in ten minute chunks, covering ten minutes at a time.

0700 to 0709

My initial assault was with my helicopters against objectives A and C – dropping off most of my the forces there. Intensive ground fire followed and within two minutes, I’d suffered fifteen per cent casualties, including 21 transport choppers and a lot of valuable anti-tank units that would been very handy later. Red gained almost 5000 points and I only eliminated a paltry 40 point infantry squad. Therefore, I withdrew twenty of my CH46 and CH53s off the southern edge, thinking that they had fulfilled their purpose. This was in retrospect a major error – it deprived me of valuable airlift capacity and also machinegun platforms.

In the initial exchange of notes after ENDEX, Coyote noted my opening moves were very aggressive – perhaps too so in hindsight.

At 0704, my Apaches wreaked havoc with Hellfires (now there’s some alliteration) on the BTRs that were located to the north-east, but 152mm fire from Coyote caused the same on units that were too closely bunched together - I noticed this and started to disperse them.

I took Objective A at 0708, but my attack on Objective C faltered under heavy RPG fire that took out a large number of vehicles. I also started using the machine gun carrying Chinooks  against the infantry in Objective E.

The opening ten minutes weren’t brilliant for me at all. I’d already suffered 25% casualties for only 2% on REDFOR – only eliminating 12 of their 203 BTRs.

TacOps 4 AAR coming

Since July, I’ve been playing a PBEM game of TacOps 4 against GCoyote from Armchair General. That game is now completed – yes, I lost, but I don’t think I did too badly.

We’ve given each other the force passwords and I’m going to provide an AAR based on the replay, as well as what each of us were sort of thinking at the time.

I hope you'll enjoy it.