World at War 85 1st ed, by Lock 'n Load publishing

After years of sitting on the shelf, it was due time for this game to make a glorious return to the table. We own most of the 1st ed collection, and intend to play through the whole thing.

Its may 14, 1985, and the cold war just went hot. The Soviet 1st tank battalion is pushing through, and its objective is to capture the towns of Bergengipfel and Eisenbach. Anything else would stall the Soviet advance.

Initial deployment

The Soviets have 10 platoons of T-72's, plus the HQ. They also receive 4 HE artillery missions, and 1 smoke mission.

Soviet deployment

The Americans have Team Yankee defending and played by Zoey. It has 2 platoons and HQ of Abrams tanks, an ITV section, and an mechanised infantry pkatoon. They decide to forgo the smaller town, and instead concentrate their defense on the town of Eisenbach, with the ITV section positioned in a forest nearby, and one of the Abrams platoons stationed on a hill overlooking the town.

Us deployment

The initial Soviet push has the main part of their force (4 platoons and the hq) advancing down the middle, toward its first objective. To the north they have 2 platoons going around the hill, and 2 more pushing through the forest. To the south, 2 more platoons are going around the large hill, in order to get behind the enemy. This separation of their force is a risky move, as it can easily cause some elements to be out of command and stall. A bold move, but one I felt necessary, as the T-72 were poor at moving fire. Pushing the whole force through Bergengipfel and the forested hill to its north would make them easier targets, while denying them a fighting chance.

Aftermath of turn 1

The Soviet command calls for a smoke mission, and we badly misinterpret how this rule works. The 1st ed lacks most visual examples, and the wording lead us to believe that the smoke was not in the target hex and the adjacent hexes, but that it had a 6 hex radius around the target hex. Nevertheless the Abrams still could fire through the smoke with a penalty to hit, and the ITV section was blinded.

The Soviets push for the first objective and attempt moving fire from there, with 0 effect. The northern flank has the 4 platoons surrounding the ITV section, but unable to attack it due to poor moving fire. The southern flank has 2 tank platoons using the temporary blindness of the ITV section to cross between the two hills.

Aftermath of turn 2

The Soviet command orders 2 artillery strikes. One on the Abrams platoon on the hill, which does nothing, and the other on the ITV section in the forest. This one misses badly and manages to hit its own side, causing disruption in both platoons it hit.

The flanking move finally causes the Soviet tankers to lose contact with their HQ, and this causes the attack to lose momentum, which will in the end, along with the game's chit pull activation system cause them to fail their objective.

Turn 3

As the smoke starts to clear, the American crews start to knock out the Soviet tanks.

At some point the Soviet tankers finally get a grip on the situation, and knock out the Abrams platoon in town as well as the ITV section in the forest, while another artillery barrage manages to reduce the mech infantry in town to half its starting size, and pin them down.

The southern flanking platoons circle around the hill where the remaining Abrams platoon is.  

After a fierce firefight on the hill overlooking the other objective, the remaining Abrams platoon is knocked out. All it took was two turns of stationary fire from 2 platoons of T-72's at short range, all the while the Abrams platoon cleared out the enemy tanks from the other objective, and thinned out the ranks from the platoons attacking it, before going down itself.

That left the pinned down mech infantry platoon leaderless, and unable to move. The Soviets ran out of time to capture the second objective.

In the end, the US lost its command element, the ITV section and both Abrams platoons, and the Soviets lost 6 platoons, and had 2 more on the board reduced in size due to losses.