COUNTERSTROKE AT SOLTSY - Strategy & Tactics Press

60 #232
mount their famous counterattack at Belleau Wood. A month
later, a combined US and French force mounted a smashing
attack on the German salient which still threatened Paris. In
three bloody weeks the Allies reduced the salient, drew off
Ludendorf’s reserves (until then earmarked for yet another
German offensive in Flanders) and permanently wrested the
strategic initiative from the Imperial German Army. This
game would simulate these summer battles along the Marne
at the regiment and brigade level, employing a variation of
the Lost Battalions game system. Ty Bomba.
D4. Plan 1919. Based on the premise World War I lasted another
year, using the Reinforce the Right system. The game
would include Gen. Fuller’s planned tank corps, strategic
bombing, railroad guns and even an Allied parachute division.
The Germans would also have elite Freikorps units that
can use storm tactics. Units would be corps, with divisional
breakdowns. American reinforcements for the Allies would
be critical, including US Marine Corps amphibious assaults.
There would also be an option for German tank fleets, which
will allow for mass tank-versus-tank battles. The map will
cover the Western Front from Paris to the Ruhr. Joseph Miranda.
D5. Soldiers 2: Mobile Tactical Combat in Europe, 1918.
An update of the SPI classic that covered the pre-trench warfare
of 1914-15. Scenarios would include historic and whatif
episodes from the western front, 21 March-11 November
1918. The system would be kept simple, but expanded to
cover heavy artillery, CW, air support, tanks, and infiltration
tactics. Ty Bomba.
D6. Operation Gericht—The Battle of Verdun, 1916. Turns
equal one week and are of two types: attrition, in which the
effects of a week’s shelling and contact are abstracted; and
assault, broken into daily impulses of fluid movement and
higher losses of major offensives. Artillery will be crucial.
Rules for pioneers, Brandenburgers, Moroccans, territorials,
melee, fortress reduction, isolation, morale, linear attack and
morale are included. Units represent infantry battalions and
regiments; artillery is designated abstractly by type. Large
hex map with small counters. Ty Bomba.
World War ii (circa 1930 to 1945 a.D.; mark
1 to 6)
E1. Barbarossa, 3rd ed. Army-level (with some corps) units
are used on both sides to allow to players to game WWII’s
entire eastern front, from Barbarossa to Berlin, in single evening.
One map, one counter sheet. Ty Bomba.
E2. Ty Bomba’s Kursk. The 1971 SPI flatbox edition of
Kursk battle game was redesigned, in a mechanically overdone
way, in 1979, as “Eric Goldberg’s Kursk.” This edition
would return it to a simpler level using a derivation of the
recent Drive on Stalingrad system, concentrate play on the
July scenario, while also allowing for Manstein’s options of
maximum reinforcements taken from all other fronts and attacking
the western face of the salient. Ty Bomba.
E3. Strike North: Japan Attacks the USSR. One of the
great “what-ifs” of World War II, a hypothetical Japanese
invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The assumption is the
Japanese decide to forego their offensive in the Pacific and
instead invade the USSR to support the Third Reich. Units
will be divisional and corps level, including air units. There
will be different CRTs demonstrating Japanese and Soviet
tactics. Joseph Miranda.
E4. USAAF. An update/remake of Flying Fortress, origi-
nally offered to Avalon Hill by the early SPI-crew. This
game takes an operational/strategic, effects-based approach
to modeling air operations in 1944, the decisive year in the
air war over Hitler’s Europe. There would be two 1944 scenarios,
one covering just US daylight efforts and a second,
“Grand Campaign Game,” that would also include RAF
night bombing. There will also be a one-month “mission
game,” covering the destruction of the Luftwaffe fighterarm
in March. Chrome would include: a full German FLAK
order of battle, airfield strafing, variable German aircraft
production (including exotic jet and rocket planes, with
the player being able to choose where to put the emphasis),
FLAK busting, P-47 drop tank problems, variable “critical”
German industrial sectors, plus all kinds of optional aircraft
to see the effects of faster R&D efforts on both sides. Additional
scenarios will include the 1943 strategic bombing
campaign, the pre-Overlord campaign, and alternative campaigns.
Bomba/Miranda.
E5. Salerno. The Victory in the West system moves on from
Sicily (S&T#89) to the landings on the mainland. Nathan
Kilgore.
E6. Rhineland. What if Britain and France confronted
Hitler when he reoccupied the Rhineland and did not back
down? World War II breaks out in 1936. Both sides would be
woefully unprepared, but there would have been some real
potential for a Spanish Civil War style conflict in which the
emerging military systems of armor and airpower would be
employed. There would also be the chance for Soviet and
US intervention. The game map would cover western and
central Europe. Units would be divisions and corps, as well
as airpower. Joseph Miranda.
modern (circa 1946 to present; mark 1 to 3)
F1. Air War 73. This would be a simulation of the 1973
Arab-Israeli air war. Units would be squadron level, differentiated
by aircraft type. The system would emphasize
command control, electronic warfare, suppression of air defenses,
and logistical planning. Players would have to trade
off aircraft losses versus requirements of the ground war.
Joseph Miranda.
F2. Angola. This will be a strategic-level game of the Angolan
civil war of 1976-1990s, using the S&T Holy War:
Afghanistan system. During the Cold War, Angola became
a major battleground of East versus West, which eventually
developed into some major mechanized clashes. Forces will
include the MPLA, Unita, FNLA, Cubans, South Africans,
and CIA mercenaries, as well as possible UN and Organization
of African Unity intervention forces. Units will be brigade-division
level, with some special operations battalions.
Units will be rated for their conventional military capability
and their insurgency value. The political aspect of the war
will be simulated via a chit picking system that will mobilize
various forces and allow for the vicissitudes of international
intervention. Turns will be yearly. The game will include
several short scenarios as well as one grand campaign of the
entire war. Joseph Miranda.
F3. Cold War Battles II. This would include two games
from the following: Pentomic (Soviet combined arms army
versus US divisions in 1960 Germany, with plenty of tactical
nukes);Kabul Strike (the initial Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan, which saw airborne, Spetsnaz and mechanized
forces seize control of the capital); Congo (mercenaries versus
rebels in the 1960s); Sandinista (Nicaragua 1979, the final
rebel offensive against Somoza’s National Guard). Game