Completed Let's kill you guys in Armoured Brigade

[Dayyālu]

Inspired by ValeVelKal wonderful Firefight thread, and by my lucky finding of a working ... ehrm.... version of Armoured Brigade, after some days of tinkering I feel that we can maybe reproduce the experiment in a deadlier, more welcoming setup.

Welcome to Armoured Brigade. What's this thing? Think Close Combat during the Cold War, but a somewhat higher level of command. If in good Vale's thread you had to command a squad, here you'll get to lead a platoon of mechanized infantry and tanks. As a game it's somewhat easy to pick up (I'd argue the interface is easier than Combat Mission) but it has some depth. Also combat is deliciously lethal , fitting to Cold War era combat between somewhat competent opponents.

Because I've already tested this, I guess I'll leave to my readers to pick both their army and the OPFOR. Game lets you go Blue on Blue and Red on Red, so we can get that British VS French that we all dream of. Also, we'll be on the offensive, because playing defense is a tad boring for a play-by-post.

If you want to join, post here and specify in your post

1) ARMY

Spoiler

US
USSR
FINLAND
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
BRITAIN
POLAND
YUGOSLAVIA
ITALY
FRANCE
BELGIUM

2) OPFOR

Spoiler

US
USSR
FINLAND
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
BRITAIN
POLAND
YUGOSLAVIA
ITALY
FRANCE
BELGIUM

3) LOCATION

Spoiler

ARDENNES
FULDA GAP
NORTH-EAST ITALY
NORTH GERMAN PLAIN
SOUTH-EAST FINLAND
MOJAVE DESERT

4) ERA (This needs some explaining. The game goes all the way from 1965 to 1991, so I'll give you the decades. Roughly explained, newer stuff is better for NATO puppets and worse for Warpact forces)

Spoiler

1960ies
1970ies
1980ies
1990ies

5) ROLE (This is essential for what you personally want to command. I give you the chance of being Recon or Support, but be advised that's boring as mud and I'd prefer to keep it under my own NPC-like control. Armoured means tonks, Mechanized Infantry is guys in IFVs/APCs. There's also the flat Infantry option, but that's borderline useful just in defensive urban combat. Borderline.)

Spoiler

RECON
SUPPORT (artillery, AA, flamethrowers, MGs)
ARMOURED
MECHANIZED INFANTRY

Uh, I hope not to fuck this up. It's an experiment.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Army : Glorious Belgium of course. Missing this Italy or France in that order

OpFor : Soviet Union if Belgium, Yugoslavia if Italy or France.

Period : 1980ies

I wanna be mechanized infantry.


Also, I think it won’t work as well as for Firefight because in Firefight one wrong move gets you pinned down if infantry and maybe destroyed if tanks and unlucky. In Armored Brigade, one wrong move gets you dead. But we’ll see

 

[baud]

Army: Poland

OpFor: GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Location: NORTH GERMAN PLAIN

Era: 1970ies

Role: ARMOURED


1975: revenge of the Poles.

 

[Dayyālu]

Also, I think it won’t work as well as for Firefight because in Firefight one wrong move gets you pinned down if infantry and maybe destroyed if tanks and unlucky. In Armored Brigade, one wrong move gets you dead. But we’ll see

I entirely agree with this evaluation: Cold War combat is almost ridiculously lethal compared to WW2. I want to try to see if this can work, and if it doesn't , hey, some posters will get an idea of why it was a good idea not to start WW3.

Nukes aside.

 

[Andnjord]

Army: ITALIA IRRIDENTE!!!!!

(awesome comic BTW, read it if you can get your mittens on it, though I have no idea what sort of barbaric translation you might have to suffer for it)

OpFor: GDR

Location: wotever, as long as there's tanks to blam

Period: don't mind

Role:

ovviamente

 

[Falksi]

Army: America, fuck yeah!

OpFor: USSR

Location: FULDA GAP

Era: 1990ies

Role: ARMOURED

 

[Endemic]

Army: Federal Republic of Germany

OFPOR: USSR

Location: North German Plain

Era: 1970s

Role:

(Mechanized infantry)

 

[ValeVelKal]

Man, a game proposes you to play as Belgium or Italy, and all you guys want to play is 'Merica and Germany ?

You guys disappoint.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Army: Poland

OpFor: GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Location: NORTH GERMAN PLAIN

Era: 1970ies

Role: ARMOURED


1975: revenge of the Poles.

I fully endorse this scenario

 

[Endemic]

Man, a game proposes you to play as Belgium

At the moment Poland is in the lead. I'll change my vote later if there's a tie, assuming Dayyalu lets us do that.

 

[Falksi]

Man, a game proposes you to play as Belgium or Italy, and all you guys want to play is 'Merica and Germany ?

You guys disappoint.

I was very tempted with Italy tbh, so wouldn't grumble if it got swapped for that.

 

[Dayyālu]

So, I'll leave this up until midnight or so and then start. If I don't get 12+ players it's even better, smaller map and more.... time to react to everything blowing up at once. Six platoons are already quite a lot to keep in control. Trust me. I'm old. I lose stuff all the time.

ValeVeKal Mechanized Infantry
Baud Armoured
Andnjord Armoured
Falksi Armoured
Endemic Mechanized Infantry
Moist Cloister Mechanized Infantry

Uhn, Poland is leading the pack with two votes (Yugo, US, Belgium, Worst Germans and Ita one each). We're going to play with Gierek's kids, it seems.

OPFOR is less confused, with Soviet Union and Deutsche Demokratische Republik leading the pack. I guess we're going to fight the big bad boys (Union has the best Warpact kit, DDR has the best morale&training).

North German Plain, 1970ies.

 

[sqeecoo]

Sign me up as a basic grunt, mechanized or otherwise! I don't really understand the other options so I'm gonna just say YUGO!!!

 

[Strange Fellow]

Army: POLAND
Opposition: POLAND


Meh, guess it's too late to affect the result, at least in a way I'd want to. If OPFOR: Italy changes anything that'll be my vote. Fighting Germans and Russians is passé and you know it.
I don't mind being a POLANDman though, so sign me up. Whatever you need. Siema kurwa, general.

 

[tindrli]

Am i late? If not sign me up. I want to be armored or support or whatever is available

 

[Andnjord]

If I don't get 12+ players it's even better, smaller map and more.... time to react to everything blowing up at once. Six platoons are already quite a lot to keep in control. Trust me. I'm old. I lose stuff all the time.

Am i late? If not sign me up. I want to be armored or support or whatever is available

You're not late, just making things more FUN! for Dayyyalu.

 

[Dayyālu]

Am i late? If not sign me up. I want to be armored or support or whatever is available

VOTE

tindrli Your vote (and mine) may or may not be decisive for the set-up.

 

[Andnjord]

Join the Red, White and Green side, we have pizza and hilarious mixes of design genius and stark incompetence!

 

[ValeVelKal]

To be honest, the Italian army in the 70ies is not as interesting as the later (or former) Italian Army. It is mostly US & German material : M113 variants, Leopard & M47 tanks. The only thing fully Italian is probably the Fiat 6614 for troop transport and some trucks. Even the MILAN are French .

Starting in the 90ies, the Italian army starts to get really unique stuff - and beautiful vehicles, too :the Ariete MBT, the Dardo and Freccia IFV and the beautiful beautiful Centauro

Fun fact : in case of war with the Soviet Union, the Portuguese were to put their troops under Italian command.

 

[Andnjord]

I'll defer to you on that. As might have been obvious my forte is pre-cold war naval warfare, so I was mainly going off on stuff like the Littorio-class Battleships. Amazing guns, great fire control systems that could straddle their targets at extreme ranges in the first few salvoes, all ruined because the shell manufacturing process was so terrible and lax on its quality control that said shells would splash everywhere except on the (really accurate) firing coordinates, meaning that when british light cruisers encountered italian BBs they didn't try to run away but rather defaulted to ATTACK! ONCE MORE ONTO THE BREACH LADS!!!! and got away with it.

But back to tanks. I know nothing about tanks and tank tactics. This is gonna be glorious.

 

[Dayyālu]

I do agree, the peculiar stuff in the Italian Army was built fairly recently and the Cold War italian land army is an interesting representative of .... the lesser tiers of NATO armies. Meaning, M113 for everything Leopard 1 and M47/M48. Also, varied infantry for specialized roles.

This doesn't make them less interesting for Armoured Brigade purposes, tho, they do play like a lesser tier of NATO armies and it's a interesting combination of lesser equipment, making it particularly interesting to fight WarPact forces that for once are qualitatively superior. Of course, Italian navy and air assets are a different thing, but here we're working with the land component. I can sperg a bit about the Cold War Italian army and their equipment if we get 'em, some details are amusing.

But back to tanks. I know nothing about tanks and tank tactics. This is gonna be glorious.

The basic rule of Cold War combat is: if something is seen, it dies. Or it gets suppressed and it dies. This is not WW2, and we're having 75 tech with adequate training, if something is out of position it dies. Tanks may be resilient, but this is the ATGM era, get out of a treeline at the wrong moment and you're toast.

 

[ValeVelKal]

The basic rule of Cold War combat is: if something is seen, it dies. Or it gets suppressed and it dies. This is not WW2, and we're having 75 tech with adequate training, if something is out of position it dies. Tanks may be resilient, but this is the ATGM era, get out of a treeline at the wrong moment and you're toast.

Yeah. In the 60ies to, well, nowadays, there is this battle between missile and armor - except that the race is not a gradual race in armor vs explosive capacity, it is a race by technological leaps where one tech fully defeats the other purpose when deployed
In the 60, missiles were still inaccurate as they were manually controlled [MCLOS]. Suddenly in early 70, all sides started to produce missiles guided by pointing at the target while the missile is flying [SACLOS] and those don’t miss if used by a competent operator. And if they hit the tank is gone, whatever armor it has.

The counter would be really deployed in the early 80ies - mainly reactive armor that blows up fraction of seconds before the missile hits, neutralizing the Munroe effect of HEAT missiles. And suddenly, in the early 80, tanks with ERA armor defeat whatever missile you throw at them, provided you don’t send two at the exact same location of the tank. So in the 80ies your tanks don’t fear infantry anymore...

... until the development of tandem charge for ATGM late 80ies, and really early/mid 90ies for reliable solutions. Basically the ATGM now has two explosive charges : first one triggers & disables the ERA, second one makes it through the armor. And now your tanks have to hide again, because if the other side has tandem missiles they are going to blow up.

This is not all theorical : the Israeli tanks rolled totally immune in Lebanon in 1982, but 20 years in the 2006 Lebanon War they lost (full destruction or battle kill even if recoverable) quite a lot to tandem charges, even though the tanks were presumably more advanced.

Now it looks like the tech is back on the side of the tank, with systems to either destroy the missile as it approaches (hard kill - Trophy system for Israel or Arena system for Russia) or to disable its controls (soft kill - in particular the Shtora system for Russia).

The Ukrainians reported that the Russians T-90 were protected by “ an invisible shield” so it works and no Merkava were hit during the 2014 Gaza conflict despite a lot of missiles being sent at them, BUT neither opponents used the very latest ATGM against them so who knows.

I am not developing other progresses on the ATGM or alternative solutions to the problem of either the attack (top-attack, ie hitting the tank where they can’t have ERA for various reasons) or on the defense (eg the French in particular dismissed ERA until 2017 and directly skipped ahead of time to a very passive soft kill system called GALIX which sends a sort of “magnetic scrambling smoke” ; stuff the Italians would buy from the French to equip their Ariete).

To come back to the topic, the 70ies is one of those moments when ATGM rules the battlefield because they are accurate because SACLOS and they are lethal because no ERA yet so if you are seen you are dead. It is less the case in late 80ies (not taking into account planes of course). This is of course fully represented in Armored Brigade.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Army: Poland

OpFor: GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Location: NORTH GERMAN PLAIN

Era: 1970ies

Role: ARMOURED


1975: revenge of the Poles.

I fully endorse this scenario

Same.

 

[tindrli]

Army: YUGO
OpFor: Italy
Location: NE Italy
Age: 90s
Role: armored

 

[Endemic]

I do agree, the peculiar stuff in the Italian Army was built fairly recently and the Cold War italian land army is an interesting representative of .... the lesser tiers of NATO armies. Meaning, M113 for everything Leopard 1 and M47/M48. Also, varied infantry for specialized roles. This doesn't make them less interesting for Armoured Brigade purposes, tho, they do play like a lesser tier of NATO armies and it's a interesting combination of lesser equipment, making it particularly interesting to fight WarPact forces that for once are qualitatively superior.

I don't think the Italian airforce was too impressive either, using the F-104 Starfighter well into the 1980s I'll be fair, they didn't have a lot of money to spend on the military.

As for the USSR in 1975...well, western tanks like the M60 and Leopard 1 only just got stabilizers around that time... meanwhile the T-64 (and it's cheaper, more reliable cousin the T-72) exists - a composite armoured beast that is almost frontally immune to contemporary NATO ground weapons at combat ranges. The BMP in their mechanized units has long anti-tank range capability, which is more than I can say for even the Germans on the border. That said, I suppose tanks of this era aren't accurate past 2km anyway.

I deliberately chose 1970s so Warsaw Pact forces would have the advantage, in the mid-late 1980s NATO technology starts to surpass the WP on the air and ground. They also deployed thermal imaging devices on a much wider scale.

edit: I should add that the biggest problem NATO had RE: the T-64/T-72 is that they weren't fully aware of their capabilities until Israel captured a T-72 in the 1980s. This meant even their next generation tanks (eg Abrams, Leopard 2) initially lacked sufficient protection against contemporary USSR tank shells.