Tactical Forge: Mobile Defense along with wargaming thoughts

 Ben over at Tactical Forge threw this little gem out on Friday, 30 August 2024, and it's a very interesting walk through on how to conduct a mobile defense. 



The scenario appears to be a single US rifle squad being assaulted by the dismounted element of a motor rifle platoon, sans the 'Bronegruppa'(ie,the AFVs). 



The rifle squad is just too small to have a real decent chance of fighting off the attack, so they perform a retrograde by elements to keep the OPFOR off balance and to preserve the fighting power of the squad. Some interesting stuff to say the least.



What seems to make this work is the ability of the defender to break contact before being decisively engaged by the OPFOR. The defender sticks around for enough time to get a quick lick in and force the enemy to reorient. As REDFOR organizes to assault, the defender falls back to another set position. When the REDFOR hits the old position, the other element of the defender's force, who's been in overwatch the whole time, engages and forces the REDFOR to reorient… again, and hopefully carry out the same routine. Rinse and repeat until the REDFOR loses momentum due to attrition in troops and material.

Great in real life if you can pull it off, but nearly impossible to pull off in a miniatures game where both sides can see what's going on. Now maybe if there's hidden movement and maybe a referee?  It all comes to getting that limited intelligence component in.  In a typical wargame, like say Ambush Alley's Force on Force, both sides can see each other's pieces and know exactly where everything is.  That kills what would make this sort of gambit effective in real life.  We do live in a world where satellites and recon drones are a thing, but they are less than perfect, and the people who monitor them and make decisions based off of them are anything but perfect- as seen by Ukraine's ability to launch its Kursk Offensive in August 2024.  However getting that onto the game board is a tough task to say the least.  But here are a few ideas.

1. Trust: Prior to starting the game the defending player deploys their forces 'off board', but has a map that can be verified by the attacking player, that shows their rough location.  Game play continues as normal but with the defender's units 'hidden'.  The defender then, according to how the game works, exposes their units when they take an action that would alert the attacker to their existence.  This can be done if there's trust between the players.  This isn't really something that could really be pulled off in a competitive setting, and one player, the defender, really has more information than they should as they know the attacker's deployment and movement and their own deployment. 

2. Dungeon Master!:  This is probably the best option, but you've got to have that other player, the referee, who's running the game.  In this case both players have a map and plot out their deployments and ALL forces stay off the map.  In this double blind sort of play recce elements really shine as they can do their actual purpose!  Players tell the referee what they intend to do and the referee adjudicates the actions and makes calls based on the rules being played and the tactical situation.  I think this is the better of the two choices and is what actual militaries do when they wargame.  This does the best job of recreating the Fog of War that a mobile defense counts on in my opinion.  This would make for a great gaming opportunity for a club or convention game. 

If you get a chance, try it out and see what happens and let me know how it goes in the comments. 

Time now charlie mike.

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