Daren was interested in having a bash at FFT3 so I duly obliged. Daren pinged me a list of what Soviet kit he had and I knocked up a force out of it for him to use whilst I would be using my alt-history Poles. We decided on an encounter battle, chucked some terrain down and diced for which side we would be arriving on and got to it!
Daren had a couple of Regimental sized units with a Recon Btln which were in no way near a ‘real’ TOE but as this was a training game really and it was what we had we made the best of it – lets say it was an ad-hoc force made up of surviving units from an earlier battle sent out to secure an objective on a flank?
1st Regt (BMP):
Cmnd BMP-1
120mm Mortar + Truck
1 zsu-23-4
1 brdm/sa-13
1 brdm/AT-5
BMP Btln: 3 Inf + BMP-1
3 Inf/Spigot atgm + BMP-1
3 inf/SA-14 manpad + BMP-1
Tank Btln: 9 T-72
2nd Regt (BTR): exactly same but with BTR-70 and T-62
Recon Btln: 2 Brdm-2
4 Pt-76
To face this force I had part of the Armoured Cavalry Division consisting of an Armoured Cavalry Regt and a Tank regt. I also had a Mangusta attack helicopter that might make an appearance.
Armd Regt
1 Cmnd 4k-7f apc
1 Striker
1 Blowpipe Manpad team
1 Spartan
1 4k-7f-GrW81 sp81mmM
2 Inf Coys @ 1 Inf/Bantam
2 Inf (3 ar, rg, lmg, law, maw)
3 4k-7f-20 aifv
4 Tank Coys @ 3 Vickers mk.3
Armoured Cavalry Regt
1 Cmnd LandRover
1 Striker
1 4k-4fa- GrW81 sp 81mmM
Inf Coy @ 1 Inf/Bantam
2 Inf
3 4k-4fa
2 Lt Tk Coys @ 3 Scorpion-90
1 Tank Coy @ 3 Vickers Mk.3
So the forces were quite evenly balanced with roughly equal amounts of tank stands each and off table artillery but with the Sovs far outweighing the Poles in terms of infantry and with better ATGM in the infantry platoons.
The battlefield from the Polish side. Scorpion-90’s to the fore, Vickers MBT’s head for the wood. Russian Recon units can be seen in the wood on the right and deploying around the manor house.
I won initiative first and lead with the Armoured Cavalry Regt. I barrelled the Scorpion-90’s as far forwards as possible but in position to cover the deployment of the rest of my force. The tank Coy headed for the wooded hill on the right to cover the road and valley to its front whilst the infantry followed them. We were using my command and initiative house rules so I was hoping that I would be able to get the Tank Regt on as soon as possible to push on through and take the battle to the Soviets, if not the Cavalry lads were in for a tough time. Daren decided to beef up his Recon btln by adding a company of T-62’s and BTR infantry and a nice little recon battle ensued with the Poles coming off better once the Vickers came into line.
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Then things swung Daren’s way with him managing to roll up his first reserve unit and decided to bring on the BMP/T-72 Regiment and they came on in usual Soviet style in a menacing looking phalanx of steel. Facing this onslaught was 2 companies of Scorpion-90’s and a Striker platoon. Luckily for me Daren belied his Royal Artillery training and had trouble calling in his artillery during this phase of the game so I didn’t suffer too badly from it, my gunners were doing better and I managed to slow him down a bit with suppression but he soon got his SP atgm BRDM into play and I began to lose a couple of platoons to tank and atgm fire causing the remains of one company to fail its quality check and do the bofski.
Oh bugger, here they come! Classic Soviet attack.
And again….
Soviet advance grinds on but my artillery does food work suppressing them.
However, just when things started to look dodgy I managed to get enough pips on initiative to get my Tanks on the table and they crashed forwards looking to take on the advancing BMP’s ad T-72s. Daren decided to debus his infantry now looking to secure his gains so far as he had taken some hits to his BMP’s from my surviving Scorpions and the Striker. When my tanks got far enough forwards to start engaging the T-72’s we were running out of time so after a few rounds of tank duelling we had to call it a night with us reckoning that with the arrival of Daren’s other regiment we would probably both hold where we were with Daren controlling one junction and me the other, so a good draw was the result.
Polish Tank regiment arrives to save the day.
And again in all its glory.
Daren liked the rules and once we got a few turns in the pace picked up somewhat – I was to blame for most of the delays as I kept forgetting bits and pieces of the rules so we had to do some looking up (and asking Terry). The initial battle between the lighter forces was particularly good I thought it was just a shame we ran out of time before the tank battle really got going – maybe we need to do something on a big game Saturday soon so we have more time.
Tracks and Threads 