Cold War Commander AAR, 15th September 2010

Units from a Russian airborne brigade were assaulting a British RAF base, garrisoned by forces of the RAF Regiment. (Not that many, as it turned out!)

Raf Goinsloh

HAS with grounded aircraft

RAF HQ Building (on the right) with troop quarters

Barracks, workshops, maintenance hangers and control tower

Russian Paratroopers POV of the airfield

HAS close-up #1

Jaguar in HAS

Harrier in HAS

Russian Airborne arrive

Hind Gunship strafed the living quarters

Whilst another Hind attacks a unit of Rapiers

Su25 Frogfoot vs Blowpipe…

As the RAF defenders are hard pressed, they call in air support

The Jaguars are driven off by determined ground fire

But a flight of Harriers battle through to hit their target

The end in sight – Scorpions and Milan teams in a last ditch defense, soon to be overwhelmed

Komrade Colonel Hardy senses victory!

The battlefield we fought over looked great, thanks to the efforts of Andy Lawrence. However, the defence put up by the RAF Regt was somewhat lacking, and we were overrun in just over 3 turns.

To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting the amount of armour that was dropped. The airfield was littered with BDRMs and there was little we could do to stop them once they were down.

I had deployed ‘sensibly’ – i.e. with my units on perimeter watch – so the entire Soviet force dropping together in the middle of the airfield left me weak everywhere, strong nowhere and with no concentration of forces.

So, it ended up being a frustrating game for the Brits – very little in the way of ground forces to begin with (a reinforced company of troops, plus 3 ad-hoc platoons of clerks & cooks, who actually caused the most damage in the game!)

I’m still not 100% sure whether I really like these rules or not – for example, the Russians were allowed to land without any sort of attrition to men/vehicles, and scatter was minimal, so their entire force was concentrated, which meant that any fire from the Brits was mean with a hail of opportunity fire in response – the outcome was never really in doubt.

So, a rematch in a few weeks, with the Russians attempting to hold the airfield against a ground counter attack from the regular army.