OCS_06 Burma
Learning Scenario
Turn1.
Weather
No reinforcements
Supply delivery
Japanese.
Movement
Truck drops 1T to 1-33 and went to get more.
J player decides to try and block road, and move HQ and arty to good blocking position. Unsure what to do with units on other side of the river!
Supply
Supply rolls for units out of trace range. Roll on Attrition table, then apply result to Forage Table.
Rolls for Attrition on 2.215 -4 =ok, 2.215 & 33Arty 6 =ok but 33Enginerring group rolls a 9. -1step =OOf on Forage table.
Arty 2.18H in 9.28 are in supply to HQ who can throw from 6.29.
Reaction Phase. none as its first turn and no Allie sin Reserve. Allies could have used Hipshoots here!
Combat
J has limited options a 3 factor barrage would cost 3t.
Exp Phase.
End J Player Turn.
Allies.
Reinforcements and Supply. Units arrive North of board as does Supply. There is not HQ unit for Allies…. therefore no throw forward. We got a donkey…. thats it.
Allies issue Airstrikes. max 4 units per hex. 2 attacks.
26Factors -3 col for non adjacent spotter. -1 for Very Close range. Pops us down and we roll a 6 – No Effect. The attack on the Japanese HQ and Battlion are ineffectual.
The Hurricanes and B-25 pound on the battalions at the road junction. This time there is no -3 column shift just the one for very close terrain. Allied player earns a 1/2 result. Japs roll a 4 and take a step loss and DG. The Adjacent Division looks on eagerly.
Air Return.
Allied Move. Cannot overrun the DG’d Battalion, but we at least remembered to look at doing it! Overrun with non armour units a foreign (but good) concept for me.
Units move, Reserve units move 25% of movement or 1 hex. We forget to move our Arty. Which we correct later.
Allies shuffle up Ammo for the Divisions to fight with on the Donkeys . 2xSP to 2-63rd 17 Indian at Tonzang village.
Supply Phase.
The Allies running along the West side of the River from 3.25 thru 3.23 (Saizang) are out of Trace Supply range (5 truck MPs) all are potentially OOS. So they elect to eat from the map and the 12 RE of unit consume 6T of supply (1.5SP).
[EDIT] hang on, we are looking at efficiency ratings not RE numbers. None of these units in brown have an RE. Does this mean they are all 1 RE? That will alleviate the supply pressure! that’s 2 RE = 2T of supply required. We need to reimburse the Allies 4T of supply.
Combat Phase.
Barrage 24 factors -1 shift. [1/2/] roll:(4). Japs lose the Battalion! Pay 3t
No attack for the Allies, no advance after combat. etc.
Exp Phase and Clean Up.
Summary:
I find the insertion of the Supply phase into the middle of the turn a real brain burner. It makes perfect sense, but really means that you must carefully consider where your units will be at movement end, ideally at least a turn ahead. Or you are going to be scrambling to get restrict movement transports to have supply in range. I can’t imagine this issue on the Steppes of Russia! Stockpile placement, HQ location and transport networks are key.
Shuffling SP’s by donkey or truck is a pain in the arse already! Imagine 2000 counters and SP’s for all. OMG. What am I thinking.
I moved units several times then reset, as I thought through consequences. The units moving with the J Player HQ are an experiment that I fear is going to go very wrong. I’m wanting to see what can be achieved in mountain terrain. Not bloody much is the answer I fear. So these Brigades are strong units for the Allies, but not as efficient as the smaller battalions of Japanese!
We have not paid for AIr Refit yet, but the effectiveness of air here and the superiority is a major benefit for the allies. The Japanese efficiency ratings are really high, hopefully they won’t all die for I get to use them in a combat.
Reserve mode show real promise here and I see why its inclusion in some SCS titles has happened. Makes for interesting play and choices.
Turn 2!
I think what helps in Russia and even in this game is the HQs. You park an HQ close enough to a nodal depot of supply and they can throw supply all over the place for you.
One Depot hex might be able to supply a number of HQs, reducing the shuttling.
I love the supply rules. Did you cut the corners off all those counters yourself?
LOL…no. I bought it 2nd hand.
I like the impac tof supply. I dont like having to toddle trucks back and forth. It would be ‘nice’ for some mechanic to be in place to manage that for a larger game. or some tool in the game to aid the exercise. I saw in the Korea Module for instance that limited supply seems to affect historical accuracy of the use of Arty. There is never enough left you effective barraging.
I plan/hope to do a computer wargame where you have a pool of supply movement points to deliver attack supply to units. The net effect should be same as using truck counters but a lot easier on the player to use as the computer will calculate the movement cost and decrement the pool as supply is allocated.
I once had the idea of a set of “red ball express’ counters that you could lay down much like an extender and pipeline SPs from one end to the other in a turn. Say for each truck point added to the express you can move one SP 20MP a turn. Or even 25. You could give them a low movement factor so that it would take time to redeploy your supply structure from one axis of advance to another.
An advantage of these is that you could make them not convertable into raw trucks and thus into extenders to extend trace. It is often reported that it is a little too easy to change attack directions on the fly.
On the arty –
In Baltic Gap they introduced an ‘artillery ammo’ reinforcement that reduces the cost of large barrages for the Russian prepared offensives. You can hold two in reserve for a big set piece offensive.
Perhaps something like this could be retrofitted into Korea.
The Germans don’t use their arty because they love slinging the Pzs about. The Russians – I don’t know if the reported issues are bad play. You hear tales of teams spending hundreds of SPs on hedgehogs, seems some of that could be used on Arty.
nice!
very interesting.
I am keen to explore means to make the process more ‘solo’ efficient. I’ dont want to move trucks all over the East front in a physical game. must be anoher way that derives the same effect.
Similarly with TCS I now use a set of colored dice to affect combat./MC checks in one roll, I ‘dumbed’ down close assault a bit. I typically now dont fire at anything unless makes 9 col minimum
. Ideally the 14 col. combat looks brutally attitritional here too. Which is cool, but ‘knowing your options and what is needed at the front is key- you cant roll up here and hope for box cars.!!! LOL
I think the real thing you want out of barrage is the DG – the half strength hurts, the loss of the action rating is a +1 die modifier in combat at least, and if he retreats through a ZOC he has to lose a step each hex.
In fact, the ‘attacking empties’ optional rule was demanded mostly for those who are mad at rolling too well on the barrage table and losing the attack!
interesting. Coming from TCS and SCS, where “Suppression or DG ” is a result, but often losses are inflicted, I still have the mindset of breaking down the enemy with arty and inflicting step loses.
I know I need to adjust that approach for OCS.
Even for the Russian Bear, you have to focus your effort much more in OCS than in conventional operational games where you pick off a unit here and grind things up.
Dean is showing maneuver warfare, where you rupture the lines and disorganize his army rather than trading shots. One thing to think about is how many times you can attack in a turn in theory – you can hipshoot in the move phase, overrun many times in movement and exploit. barrage from the air and with arty, and if you get an exploit result or are a reserve you have a second move phase and combat and barrage phase. Then if your initiative works, you get to do it all again before he responds.
So for even a Soviet offensive the goal is to maul a restricted area and break into the ‘green fields beyond’ so that the bad guy thinks about falling back. The Soviets are usually better off using Arty and Combat and Exploit combat to bust the holes(due to inferior action ratings) and the Germans use overruns, and the Russians kill by making Germans retreat through ZOCs while DG (one step per hex) while the Germans use attrition from OOS.
But sooner than you’d like, either side starts running low of those darn SPs!
This is what fascinates me. It is not wether or not you can create a break thru earlier or longer than historically done. Nor is it the winning the un winnable war. Its the exploration under a set of constraints that are based on choices you made long a go! Different military capabilities, maximised by using them most effectively.
25 years ago, hell maybe longer a we played war in Europe. One guy used a “spreadsheet”, un heard of back then to manage the production spiral. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the cycle was maximized, for Panzer production and air! A simple tool, helped get the best out of a game system, back then we did not even have Personal Computers! IT was a stark insight to slap shod play versus squeezing more blood from the stone! Fortunately he was not a terribly good player so we held him off to the end!
I’m enjoying my toe in the water so far!
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thx! Glad you liked it.