Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm: : A Test Of Wills AAR

A Test of Wills, the final screen. I am the NATO commander. Doug at Cry Havoc played as the Soviets for the 1st time.
Doug at Cry Havoc and I finished playing the "A Test of Wills" scenario for Flashpoint Campaigns. Doug played as the Soviets for the first time and won a marginal victory. It was well deserved!

This was my first head to head playthrough of a FCRS scenario using PBEM.  The game delivers you an email notification after your opponent finishes their turn.  You can then login and resume the battle without having to upload a new game file.

This game is great.  Doug's Soviets were charged with breaking through a line of minefields over forested terrain, with only a few roads to use, at night and in a blinding rainstorm. Once through he would meet my NATO units head on and fight for 7 victory point locations.

At first I was able to make the Soviets pay as they crossed through the minefields, inflicting a 2 to 1 casualty ratio where they crossed.  But once Doug's forces were through the fields of mines and obstacles he was able to apply the weight of his Soviet formations against my smaller NATO units and drive me back in the center where a 1500, 1700 and 1800 victory point locations are clustered.

In the end he achieved a marginal victory which was well deserved.  Fog of war and the terrain really made this scenario interesting.  We both struggled to see each other and without enough recon forces operated blindly more often than not as we fought over the center of the battlefield.  Artillery played a huge role in my NATO defense, especially a MLRS rocket launcher unit.  Timing resupply for the artillery was critical. Only once did I find myself without some artillery support as my four units resupplied simultaneously.  I worried about counter battery fire a lot too as it was clear Doug had a lot of artillery.

A couple of highlights/lowlights from the scenario:

- My MLRS unit caught Doug's units building a bridge and inflicted pretty heavy damage on them, delaying his attack in the north of the battlefield.

- Doug's artillery and armor caught one of my engineer battalions moving south towards an objective and completely annihilated it.

- I lost my command TF Herd HQ pretty early. My infantry units melted away in front of a strong Soviet force which caught the HQ trying to move out of the way. I lost it quickly and then struggled for a few hours of game time to realign my forces.

-Doug in a stroke of genius setup a minefield south of one of the objectives he had captured.  The minefield delayed my forces twice at a critical time and may have won him the game as he had almost nothing left to defend the objective.



 

Comments

Doug Miller said…
This was great fun! I really had no clear idea where your troops were for the entire game. I was pretty sure I was doomed in this one.

Well played, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

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