[WarInEur] RE: limitations of Gaming

[Wardall Clark]

Steve points the role of military style war-gaming in real world planning.  WIE and CWIE is a board game like chess and checker:only one player at time may move. This means that certain things are sure things in the game which are not sure things life and vice versa. Without Fog of War, the game has no real opportunity for strategic surprise unless he optional KC double turn is used. or production is kept secret and allowed to be  manipulated in certain ways.  On other hand, once an initiative is begun the other side is frozen in place for a turn-week of movement, combat, and mechanized exploitation.  If the Axis can get over the Meuse from their jumping off points along the border in that game space then case Yellow(1940) or the 1944 Bulge  counter-offensive is a viable operation in WIE, otherwise, perhaps not. In real-life, Ike got worried within 48 hours of the initial 1944 attack and sent in the 10th Armored, the 101st Para, the 82nd Para plus some smaller  units even as the Axis tanks were rolling toward Malmedy and Bastogne. The allies motorized infantry beat the Axis to the key choke points and the attack had little if any chance remaining to reach its ultimate goal of Antwerp.  What is a sure thing in WIE (the movement speed of the lead armored units) was anything but in real life. The other key event of the Bulge campaign was the 7th Armored's defense of St. Vith for 7 days before retreating. Of all the failures of the Axis in the bulge campaign, the failure to drive the 7th out of St Vith within the first 72 hours was probably the most militarily disasterous.  The 6th Panzer Army was  forced northward toward Elsenborn Ridge and the US 1st and 99th infantry and were thus unable to keep up with the 5th Panzer Army which had surrounded and overrun the US 106th. The big supply dumps around Malmedy were never captured, and a host of Allied problems were avoided because the German break-through did not include the vital road center of St Vith. Now in every Battle of the Bulge game I have played, the 7th is forced out of St Vith fairly quickly by overwhelming forces. The combat table makesthis nearly a sure thing.   The same is true in WIE.  HOWEVER a WIE turn takes a full week and there is no way to launch an attack on the hex until the END of the initial movement phase.  If enough forces are amassed the 7th can either be flipped or retreated or flipped+retreated but in any event the hex remains either unfriendly or in a Hostile ZOC meaning that movement around the 7th armor's hex is greatly inhibited. This is a sure thing in WIE which in real life was considered something of a heroic feat of arms. Fortunately for the play of the game, these two false sure things balance. making the Bulge counter-thrust a viable way to at least temporarily stymiethe Allied Advance to the Rhine. The same probably applies to the 1940 campaign.  In WIE the Allied and Axis players both know that the Ardennes is NOT impassible to armored units. On the other hand, the main Allied forces are frozen in place for a full week while the Germans roll through Luxemburg and eastern Belgium to the Meuse river.  In a practice war such as OKH conducted, the Allied commander has immediate knowledge that units which include tanks are moving across Luxemburg just as we and the Saudis learned about Kuwait being overrun in August 1990. Unlike the French High Command, we and the Saudis were entirely out of position to do anything about it.  As Colonel Liss able demonstrated in the War simulation, the real world Allies did have some effective options, if they could make a decision immediately.  In WIE, any such immediate action is expressly prohibited. > Today's Topics:> >    1. The limitations of gaming (sgminfo)> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------> > Message: 1> Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:24:34 +0100> From: sgminfo <sgminfo at aol.com>> Subject: [WarInEur] The limitations of gaming> To: Warineur <warineur at mailman.halisp.net>> Message-ID: <46D2B472.1010600 at aol.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed> > http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAB/is_6_113/ai_n8589295> > > > -|steve|-> > > ------------------------------> > _______________________________________________> WarInEur mailing list> WarInEur at mailman.halisp.net> http://mailman.halisp.net/mailman/listinfo/warineur> > > End of WarInEur Digest, Vol 37, Issue 46> ****************************************
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