The Borscht Wars CM Black Sea Campaign

Rico

Rico

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Actually had a morning off to play around with maps and ideas... been toying with idea for a reasonably simple, fun, fictional Black Sea multi-player campaign in my head during these last few weeks of hectic work/life stuff.

Made a map this morning ... cobbled together with elements from HexDraw, Photoshop, graphic elements borrowd from Unity of Command and PanzerCorps games...

Borscht-map1-flat.jpg~original


A fictional island in the Baltic or Black Sea shared by two former Soviet republics... now discovery of oil/gas deposits along and on the southern coast have brought tensions to boiling point and armed conflict ensues.
Both sides are equipped with Russian kit (fighting would use Ukrainian and Russian units for the two armies ... US kit just modelled a little too dominant in BS to make this deasible)

Units based on the Tank or Motorised Rifle Battalion Task Groups in the BS OOB's... counters represent the HQ, 3x combat companies, the attached artillery group and smaller counters for the various support platoons: AT, MANPADS (had held AA missiles), mortars, recon platoons, engineers, grenade launcher platoons.

Borscht-map-units.jpg~original


Each company-size unit has THREE strength levels.
Casualties would be tracked following way -- after each battle, a unit is assessed and if at full strength it has been determined to have lost more than 34% of men and vehicles, it will lose ONE strength point.
If it has lost 67% of men and vehicles, it will lose TWO strength points and be at 1/3rd strength.
If it starts a battle with 2 strength points and loses 51%+ of its OOB, it's lose a strength point.

Units of 1 strength point and support platoons that lose 51%+ of their OOB, will be eliminated.

There will be abstracted die-roll results to determine effects of counter-battery fire on off-map artillery units.

On the map above you can see the "Guards" Mech Inf Btn counters on the right -- the NATO symbol oneach of the 1,2,3 company counters indicate strength levels:
Black = full
Yellow= 2/3rd
White= 1/3rd

Helicopter gunship and air support also still needs to be modelled.

Each side will then have production points (numbers at cities) to use for refitting units ot training up new units.

More as the idea develops ...

PS: ...and there might be a good back story why it's called the "Borscht Wars"... inspired by the old CMBB "Onion Wars" campaign I guess. :D
 
Dude, your map making has gone up a notch, kudos. I'd like to know how you did it and give it a go.

I'd love to play or help in anyway, count in me in, as a Onion Wars veteran I might have the rules which might give you some ideas about the purchasing rules etc..

I can help with the Onion Wars back story and @Concord is a Onion Wars veteran too.
 
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Nathangun said:
Dude, your map making has gone up a notch, kudos. I'd like to know how you did it and give it a go.

I'd love to play or help in anyway, count in me in, as a Onion Wars veteran I might have the rules which might give you some ideas about the purchasing rules etc..

I can help with the Onion Wars back story and @Concord is a Onion Wars veteran too.
Click to expand...

Thanks @Nathangun -- I use a lot of graphics from various games which I have installed and I "hack" from their files. :D

If you have them, I'd love to have a look at the Onion Wars rules -- I was thinking keeping it as simple as possible, which is quite tricky with the modern stuff sometimes. :eek: ... there is comparatively far less kit, but one isn't as familiar with it as with WW2.
 
I had a few ideas at before Easter during a busy but boring period at work. Over Easter started writing up a possible rules set building upon the work Odin started for the Radzymin campaign. A simplified version (learned a few lessons from Radzymin) but a bit more of a narrative similar to the OOC.

Key points:
- Node based. Create CMBS maps from a real life city (Mariupol) and have a node to node system where both sides have to fight across and capture the city and surrounding hinterland. Having fun at the moment in Google Earth seeing some great sites for potential CMBS battles.
- Taskforce based. Fixed campaign units which move from node to node. Special rules for some taskforces.
- Air Combat system for an air war meta game to decide air support levels at the CMBS level. (Already got the calculations spreadsheet working :p)
- 'Action Cards' each side can play to try and get bonuses or throw a spanner in the enemies plans.
- Political Points - sliding scale to account for a modern war and the rulers in Washington and Moscow.
- ARMA 3 Integration (possibly) - Bring the 1st FGM into the mix to act as a PMC and carry out missions of opportunity. Each side as a black ops budget and has to outbid the enemy for their services. If they succeed in a mission you get a bonus or hamper the enemy.

By no means a definite and not signed off by Bootie or anything. Ideally probably best to wait for the virtually inevitable Marine / Irregular module from BF. Would probably need some help with making some maps first. ;)

Mariupol - https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0999302,37.5647964,13z
 
Ithikial said:
- Air Combat system for an air war meta game to decide air support levels at the CMBS level. (Already got the calculations spreadsheet working :p)
- 'Action Cards' each side can play to try and get bonuses or throw a spanner in the enemies plans.
Click to expand...

Interested in seeing how air support could be handled... if possibly simple...

Action Cards souund like an interesting idea ... always a little harder outside a boardgame environment...

Trying to get away from tracking EVERY casualty level of detail ... burned out with that on top of hectic RL workload :shocknaz:
 
Rico said:
Interested in seeing how air support could be handled... if possibly simple...

Action Cards souund like an interesting idea ... always a little harder outside a boardgame environment...

Trying to get away from tracking EVERY casualty level of detail ... burned out with that on top of hectic RL workload :shocknaz:
Click to expand...

I'm cheating by using an Excel Workbook with formula to match the rules I thought out. So the same sheet that records the status of the individual aircraft also automatically has a working calculation sheet. All the player has to do is pick a mission for each aircraft from a dropdown box.

I used to play 'Warhammer 40k Epic: Armageddon' back in my uni days. 6mm operational level version of the more popular 28mm miniature wargame. (And far better!) The game had an easy to use but difficult to master aircraft system. Basically split your aircraft into three mission types, ground attack/transport drop off, combat air patrol and intercept. Basically one takes care of the other like dominos but the player needs to work out what level of effort they want to employ at each 'level' of the air game while trying to outwit their opponent. Go in hard with ground attack missions but have no cover for possible interceptors circling above. Forcing players to have aircraft spend every second campaign turn on the tarmac getting rearmed also throws up additional challenges in resource allocation. See pic below for an example of how it would work for a modern era campaign.

As for action cards, actually quite easy I think as long as it fits and helps to move along the campaign narrative, there's an element of risk involved for the player deciding to use them and the process doesn't involve a dice in anyway. :) Limitations of the internet and forum based wargaming. :p Action cards may offer a bonus somewhere else or cause an unknown problem for the enemy once they hit a CMBS battle. Can be very creative here but keep it small. You want them to mix things up a little but not dictate who wins the campaign.

Oh and for tracking casualties, couldn't agree more. The OOB in Radzymin has been a nightmare and a time sink. Always misinterpretation between Game Master and players through forums and emails. Stick to fixed OOB for each campaign token and simple maths to work out the impact of casualties between battles.

(First draft)
Aircraft%20Rules_zpsxksllt3a.jpg~original
 
The air war I have in mind is also covering the entire area of operations. Only one calculation per campaign turn. It didn't occur to me about counter battery fire, always figured off map artillery support would be miles back from the area of operations and difficult to pin point in the span of time of a few hours. Action cards and the ARMA 3 component could influence the level of artillery support however.
 
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Ithikial said:
The air war I have in mind is also covering the entire area of operations. Only one calculation per campaign turn. It didn't occur to me about counter battery fire, always figured off map artillery support would be miles back from the area of operations and difficult to pin point in the span of time of a few hours. Action cards and the ARMA 3 component could influence the level of artillery support however.
Click to expand...

I guess these days with long range artillery & mobility of SP arty as well, counter-battery work would be the job of air strikes?
 
Counter-battery fire now days use radars (technical digital solution) to at least triangulate back to artillery tubes firing using ballistic firing equations to figure out the firing artillery's position. With this digital triangulation and the long range artillery ability, artillery can still take out artillery as long as you fire within seconds/minutes before the artillery moves to a new position. However there is still nothing like the skilled observer (Arma3) on the ground in the rear with digital range finding equipment to deliver the counter-battery or air strike artillery killing ability.

I am not trying to make things complicated just trying to provide some additional information. After all the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle should always be used by any scenario/campaign planner. Otherwise you will lose your mind keeping track of all the game data and trying to turn it into game information.

My 2 cents.
 
fabishd said:
Counter-battery fire now days use radars (technical digital solution) to at least triangulate back to artillery tubes firing using ballistic firing equations to figure out the firing artillery's position. With this digital triangulation and the long range artillery ability, artillery can still take out artillery as long as you fire within seconds/minutes before the artillery moves to a new position. However there is still nothing like the skilled observer (Arma3) on the ground in the rear with digital range finding equipment to deliver the counter-battery or air strike artillery killing ability.

I am not trying to make things complicated just trying to provide some additional information. After all the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle should always be used by any scenario/campaign planner. Otherwise you will lose your mind keeping track of all the game data and trying to turn it into game information.

My 2 cents.
Click to expand...

At this scale it would have to be abstracted in a simple way like the aircraft rules that Ithikial posted above.
 
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