Deep Battle Archives - Page 2 of 2

Operational Terrain 2: Making MDF River Sections for 4 Inch Hexes

17 Dec 20223 Mar 2018 by Steven Thomas

River-0 Unpainted MDF river sections - Banner

I’m really keen on Operational Level Wargames at the moment and have a mind to write a set of rules called Deep Battle. I thought a good starting point would be with the table top. Get a table that looks like the kind of game I want to play, and use that to inform the rules. So I’m going to continue experimenting with Operational Terrain.

One of the ideas from my Experiment with River Templates for 4 Inch Hexes was to get a company to produce my river templates in MDF. Warbases kindly agreed to do this for me. They were brilliant by the way. Full marks for customer service.

Deep Battle: Soviet Doctrine for Operational Level Warfare

30 Aug 20223 Feb 2018 by Steven Thomas

Operation Uranus - Successful Deep Battle -Eastern Front 1942-11 to 1943-03 - Banner

Everybody knows about the German’s Blitzkrieg style of warfare. But I was surprised to discover the Soviets had a similar approach to warfare called “Deep Operations” or “Deep Battle”. This was a well defined doctrine for Operational Level Warfare, was invented during the 1920s, and deliberately applied during WW2. Admittedly Deep Battle had mixed success during the war, but this was probably more to do with the previous purge of Soviet military leadership than with any fundamental flaw in the doctrine. Soviet doctrine in the Cold War period is still based on Deep Battle.

Operational Terrain 1: Experimenting with River Templates for 4 Inch Hexes

17 Dec 202228 Oct 2017 by Steven Thomas

Rivers for 4 inch hexes 1 – Templates for most likely options - Banner

Quite a lot of the Operational Level Wargames I looked at recently use a hex grid. And 4 inch hexes seem about the right size for the table top – at least to me – so I have been wondering what to do about terrain. My normal terrain will sit on hexes fine. But rivers are different. That realisation lead to experimenting with templates for generating river features to sit on top of a hex mat.

What Wargaming Rules to use for the Operational Level of War?

1 Aug 202123 Sep 2017 by Steven Thomas

What Wargaming Rules are really for the Operational Level of Warfare - Banner

I’ve tried Megablitz a few times but I wondered what other wargaming rules there are to use for Operational Warfare in WW2. I quickly found there are a lot of game systems that claim to be large scale rules. But you have to careful in this space as many rules that claim to be Operational are actually Tactical. Others are Operational-Tactical and a fourth group are what I call Operational-Map-And-Tactical. These groupings are from my categorisation scheme using my criteria for what makes a set of wargaming rules operational level – both found later in this post.

What is the Operational Level of War?

1 Aug 20215 Aug 2017 by Steven Thomas

I’m interested in operational level wargames for World War II. But my definition of “operational level” has been pretty vague. Something about campaigns and major offensives. So I thought I’d explore operational level war in more detail … and it turns out I was right. It is all about campaigns and major offensives.

PowerPoint Maps: From CC2 to PowerPoint for Drawing Maps

3 Jul 202213 Jan 2015 by Steven Thomas

Crossfire at Position Four- Village P - Banner

I’m starting to use Microsoft PowerPoint to draw maps for my Wargaming projects. So I thought I’d start a series on how to do that.

Wargaming Rules for WW2

3 Oct 201927 Apr 2013 by Steven Thomas

There are lots of wargaming rules for World War 2. These are the ones I play: Crossfire, Megablitz, Rapier Offensive and Engle Matrix Games. One day I might write up my thoughts on the competitors, of which there are many.

You can never have too many trucks

17 Dec 202227 Jun 2012 by Steven Thomas

Trucks-86 Russian Zis-5 3-ton truck - Banner

“You can never have too many trucks” is a catch phrase of Megablitz players, and, in fact, of players of other operational games such as Not Quite Mechanised. You see Megablitz includes rules for logistics and transport for those supplies is very important. Megablitz forces also need headquarters and signals units; signals units in particular are something that rarely appear on a wargaming table.