This was fun. I had no illusions I would win as the Warsaw Pact commander. When I noticed I would have to  fight past a battalion of M1 tanks, it would be challenging at best. I thought maybe if I massed my formation, online in the open terrain, I had the best chance of pushing maybe a few survivors to the right past the left most American unit, but even that was not enough. I didn’t expect my dismounted infantry to be abandoned in the town of Ansbach. I also was not surprised by the effectiveness of the M1 Abrams main gun or the TOW missiles. I was happy to see the Soviet Spiggot missiles were just as effective and tried to make as good use of those as I could. I could see in the dice rolls it was tough because the M1s were dug in. It meant I was shooting at turrets only. But I think it was the CAS that had more effect than the T-80s.

I realize this was more of a probe than an actual assault, but the Soviet doctrine called for attacks of three to one rather than force on force as we had here. I think if I had two armor and a mech infantry battalion assaulting, it may have been decidedly more in my favor. I was surprised the A-10s, F-15s, or F-16s didn’t show up. Gunther mentioned they were flying around in the area in the IC thread. Why didn’t American CAS show up? There were plenty of targets to shoot at.

Regarding the questions…

1.	The Fog of War did help to give that feeling of not knowing what was in front of me. I knew there were Americans out there. It could have been one company, two companies, Mech infantry or even an older tank; the M60A3. When I knew it was a battalion of M1s, I knew it was over, but that’s information I did not have at the outset of the game. At that point, I just had to make the best of it. I knew my T-80s were merely targets for the US player. I considered employing smoke, but US M1 Gunners use the thermal sights as their primary which makes smoke irrelevant. It would have had the same effect as a very large sheet of glass.

Did Gunther’s attempts at preserving the Fog of War hinder gameplay? He could have put the responses in the IC thread, maybe even in hiders. As long as CaptainBritton and I could read what was there and not allow it to influence our future actions or refrain from looking, it would be OK. But that takes some serious trust issues. Using the Private Messages (PMs) communicate was probably the best means of communication.

2.	The map images I saw were fantastic. Could it have been better if you (Gunther) used operational graphics rather than photographing the little cardboard chits? The hex identifiers did make it easier to identify locations of friendly and enemy units.


3.	I’m not sure what you are asking here. I knew how my unit was moving and it appeared the US units didn’t move at all. I think if a US unit had moved and Gunther stated it moved, that would have resolved any issues here.

4.	The PMs helped a lot to preserve the Fog of War. The resporting system worked as far as putting it in a format of a message from subordinate commanders and listing the results of dice rolls.


5.	This game was great for this scenario/war game. I loved it. I would love to do it again. Not sure I would be able to with work going on.

The FATE system. I have seen that in use. I think it would be great for use I a wargame, if the players were using units, equipment and vehicles of their own creation, either basead on real stuff or not. The Fate dice are kind of based more on events resulting in average ways and only rarely being very good or very bad. You would need to assign some good Die Roll Modifiers on player created junk rather than based on historical performance of this stuff.

Overall,  a very good experience. I don’t care what the rules say, hats off to CaptainBritton for melting my T-80s on contact.