TWW: Persian Gulf update

I've played a few more turns of Frank Chadwick's Third World War series game, Persian Gulf.

It's been a hot mess.

At the moment, we're just starting Pact First Impulse for War Turn 4.*

- the conflict went nuclear as fast as possible. On the end of War Turn 1. It narrowly avoided going from level 1 to level 2 last turn. All of this benefits the Pact, since Soviet forces get 2:1 on artillery/short range tactical nukes.

- the Pact luck on airpower kept up for 2 more weeks (turns). The RDF B-52 wing was out with maintenance issues for 2 weeks. They shot down the precious A-10s and turned about the AV-8Bs once as well. Severely weather kept the Western Asian theatre out of threat from NATO airpower.

- The Syrians got massacred. Their entire expeditionary force was wiped out after a severe brusing with the Iraqis. They tried to limp home but the Turks crushed them.

- The US 24th ID (real world - become the 4th ID) and a tank bridge and a few assorted units rushed a Soviet force and mauled them badly . . . but when the conflict went nuclear, they suffered from the exchanges. The 4th ID and attacked armored brigade barely escaped destruction, and were mauled badly enough to need to flee to the coast and to get evacuated to Saudi Arabia (well, Bahrain anyway) for reconstituion. In game terms, they have proficiency 7 and took 6 disruptions each. Ouch.

- The Soviet's first wave of reinforcements arrived while the Turks were finishing off the Syrians. Looking at the board, I chose a different approach. In the past, I'd used them to backstop my Iran positions and try to finish off American units. This time, Turkey seemed vulnerable. So I had them rush Turkey . . . and it worked. They smoked most of the defenses and are now debauching into northern Iraq.

- The US had to back off, the Jordanians are surrounded in Iran in Kurdistan, the Kurds have been mauled, the Turks are mauled, and there is little left of the rebel centrist Iranian army.

- But then, the worm turned a bit. A Soviet gambit to finish off the 24th ID cost them a Motor-Rifle Division (in NATO parlance, a mechanized division) . . . in fact thei best one (it was 9-9-6, when front line units in Germany are 10-9-6 and most on the flanks are 7-7-5). And then weather cleared over Western Asia, the B-52s were back in action . . . and turn 4 began.

- The US was able to, finally, use the B-52s for deep strike missions, and went after logistical depots. The B-52s inflicted 46 brigades worth of unsupplied markers in one massive strike. The Soviets had 43 brigades in theatre. So suddenly, the Pact units whooping it up and chasing the mauled RDF to the coast are unsupplied. There aren't remotely enough units to deprive to change this much (using emergency supply redirection to keep the key units in supply), but we'll see. If the US can keep this up, it might change the war. If not, this is a brief respite before the Soviets finish off the rebel units in Iran and crush most if not all of Iraq. We'll see.



* Turns are interesting. Once you do some preliminaries, you get Pact First Impulse, a second phase for Pact units not in a ZOC, then a NATO Reserve Impulse for units not in a ZOC, then a Pact Second Impulse and second phase, then two NATO phases. It's all based on doctrinal assumptions about how both sides make war. Potentially, a Pact unit can move 4x and recover damage 2x; a NATO unit 3x and 3x. Usually it's less thanks to ZOCs (zones of control) and movement.