New Campaign : CMBB : A Victory Lost

[Bootie]

Hi Guys

As you know Im looking to start a new campaign for a launch date of January 1st.

The topic of this new campaign will be....

Operation Saturn

Operation Saturn, revised as Operation Little Saturn, was a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front of World War II that led to battles in the northern Caucasus and Donets Basin regions of the Soviet Union from December 1942 to February 1943.


The success of Operation Uranus, launched on 19 November 1942, had trapped 300,000 troops of General Friedrich Paulus's German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army in Stalingrad. To exploit this victory, the Soviet general staff planned a winter campaign of continuous and highly ambitious offensive operations, codenamed "Saturn".

I intend to use the Vassal engine to run this game. It looks very good and will save a lot of time by charting automatically supply lines, movement and command radius.

I will go through some of the reasons why I chose Vassal for this project in the coming posts.

 

[Bootie]

We will start by looking at the top control panel in Vassal.

Working from left to right I will explain what each of these buttons do. These will only be available for the 2 commanders to use but can be used by the members of each team to look about the battlefield.

The Curly Arrow - This button is pretty straight forward and is an 'undo last move button'.

The Pause Button - This button is not required to be used.

The Two Arrows Button - This button is not required to be used.

The White Flag - Again not used as it is aimed at playing the game and using the vassal engine differently to what we are using it for.

The German Flag with black and white circle - Show German Supplied hexes.

The Russian Flag with black and white circle - Show Russian supplied hexes.

The German Flag with game piece - Show German Reinforcement hexes.

The Russian Flag with game piece - Show Russian Reinforcement hexes.

The Two Square Button - This allows the Games Master to place Out of Supply or out of Command icons on units.

The Dice - The Dice is basically a dice roll and will be there to assist the Games Master in defining random events such as weather.

Coloured Shapes Button - This is terrain effects and combat modifiers. Not used in our game.

Notepad - Not used in our game.

1,2,3 Button - This displays the reinforcements that will be allocatted each turn lasting 9 turns. Then its a fight for survival with no more reinforcements.

Gravestone Button - Destroyed units get moved into this section and are viewable by players.

Greyed out German Flag - Not used in our game.

Greyed out Russian Flag - Not used in our game.

The Mug - Not used in our game.

Game Piece Button - Shows the complete OOB and goes to them on the map.

VP Button - A Victory Point button. Not in use for our game.

Camera Button - Saves full map as a .PNG file.

Magnifying Glasses - Zoom in or out of the map.

Earth Button - Removes all pieces from the map so you can look at the terrain.

Yellow Square - Shows an overview map of the area.

Deactivate All - On the map you can click on an HQ and click Activate. This shows all units under his command. Press this button to deactivate display.

Move Button - Mark all as not moved. Not required in our game.

 

[Lord Bane (FGM)]

Sign me up for the Panzer Truppen! We will crush the untermenschen hordes!
Lord Bane

 

[Bootie]

LMAO... I havent even finsihed telling you about it. Are you throwing your hat in for the Axis commander?

 

[Bootie]

Now lets take a look at the map. Each commander will have a copy as well as me. They will need the vassal programme which is free to download and will move the counters on this map. This gets sent to me and from your orders on each map I tansfer to the control map which gets sent back and updates about battles etc put on the forum.

First the zoomed out version.

 

[Bootie]

Now the same shot with the German supply button pressed. Greyed hexes are all in supply to the Axis.

This automatically changes as units are moved.

 

[Nathangun]

Are the CM battles gonna be QB's ? or will there be an OOB ?

 

[Bootie]

Now we zoom right in the 27th Pz Div recently refitted at Millerovo.

By right clicking on the game piece we can see options that are available.

 

[Bootie]

Are the CM battles gonna be QB's ? or will there be an OOB ?

There is an order of battle but what Im looking at is having a 5 stack maximum for counters. Each counter on the board represents 1000pts of either infantry or armour. So if you stack 3 Infantry tiles and 2 armour tiles you will fight with 5k and you may be up against an infantry and an armour tile (2k). I have yet to configure the rules for these but plan to adopt something along the lines of... if you do not wish to fight you can retreat but this will leave you unable to move the following turn as you regroup. This will be arranged between commanders prior to the battle.

 

[Bootie]

Ok strategic range will not be used so lets have a look at the movement range that has been displayed on the 27th Pz Div.

Everything within these blue highlighted hexes is where you can move to.

 

[Bootie]

This is the supply line toggled for the 27th Pz Div. If the Russians break this there is a chance the Pz Div will be out of supply and suffer on the battlefield.

 

[Bootie]

Here the Hungarian 2nd HQ is 'activated'... this shows all units under its command marked with a yellow border.

 

[Lord Bane (FGM)]

5000 points seems like a lot. Maybe you should consider 3 as the max stacking limit. That way a force of 1000 might actually be able to make a stand if they were attacked by a force of 3000. With 5000, there is no chance.

Bane

 

[Bootie]

5000 points seems like a lot. Maybe you should consider 3 as the max stacking limit. That way a force of 1000 might actually be able to make a stand if they were attacked by a force of 3000. With 5000, there is no chance.

Bane

Ok 3 it is. See Im flying by the seat of my pants here.

 

[Bootie]

And this is the Hungarian 2nd HQ activated (showing units it is in command of) and also highlighted now is the command range. All units are under command. To be outwith range of command would mean sacrificies when it came to the CM battle (still to be discussed).

 

[Bootie]

Back to the Pz Div. Once a unit is moved it will display these yellow arrows to advise of the fact.

 

[Bootie]

A handy thing for the Games Master to use is the movement trail.

This enables me to see the tracks your units leave so be sure to move them one hex at a time.

 

[Bootie]

Well thats the general basis behind Vassal.... let me know if you guys are interested in something like this and if so we can start laying down the rules.

 

[Padre19]

is very interesting ...... Put me in command the Romanian troops!

 

[Bootie]

So far we have LB and Titidinca both interested in being the Axis.