Note - following Mark's comments below, I have edited this somewhat to make it hopefully clearer.

After the fun of my first PBEM game in Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, Herman and I fired up another game - same scenario, but this time with our roles swapped. I would be Red (Warsaw Pact) and Herman would be NATO. Red has three broad staring locations - north, central and south. My plan was to attempt a pincer movement, without being discovered by NATO, to arrive at the northern and southern approaches to Hamelin at the same time, while not getting mauled or delayed on the way; providing the NATO defender with an overwhelming force attacking from two directions, right on his doorstep. Well, that was the plan anyway. I knew from playing NATO that it is difficult to cover the southern approach to Hamelin, and I thought the forests to the north would provide a great covered approach, though a bit slow. However, speed is of the essence for Red in this scenario, as Red has no artillery, and NATO's paucity of forces means he faces a choice between a forward defence or being able to blow all the important bridges on approach to Hamelin, which can slow (but not stop) Red.

I split my forces evenly between north and south and provided a single recon unit to probe the centre, hoping to suggest to NATO that I might take the middle route. The next two shots show my setup for my north and south groups with red arrows to signal my intentions.










As usual, my plan ran into some problems from the outset - while my centre probe bumped into some NATO forces almost immediately (see blue circle), my southern pincer jaw was exposed as well. Herman had forces positioned well forward and used these to probe south to discover my intentions. A short firefight with some extremely tenacious Leo 1As saw me lose some recon assets, but my main force manages to slip past and get on its way.





In the north, some sloppy waypoint selection by me exposes some of my recon assets to view and they take some artillery strikes, but I manage to keep most of my forces in cover and moving (slowy) west through the forest.

So, quite early in the game NATO probably has a good idea of my intentions. There is a bit of a race on in my view; can they get their forces concentrated in time, can they block my moves, can I get my forces into action in a concentrated way and get across the important water obstacles before NATO's stronger forces come into play?

Quite soon it becomes clear that the northern route is slower than I had anticipated, despite being a bit shorter than the southern route. I consider holding my southern pincer elements back for a while to let the moves be more coordinated, but conclude this would allow NATO forces to blow bridges and get further prepared. If my southern thrust arrives before the northern one it might benefit me - while there's a risk that NATO forces could destroy each of my elements in detail one after another, if I can hold the enemy's nose and keep him fully occupied, the arrival of my northern forces into the NATO flank may be devastating. You can see here the imbalance - my southern group has made good progress and is about to turn north, while my northern group is still stuck in the woods.





My southern forces' recon element probe forward and find one of the two critical bridges they need to get into Hamelin's southern suburbs, and from there to the bridge over the Weser, intact (red circle on map)! Our tempo was high enough to stop NATO form blowing all the bridges, or they decided to keep one up to allow them to counter-attack.





My tanks and mech infantry come up, there is a fierce fight with NATO infantry and tanks (Leo 1s it looks like) who are contesting the bridge crossing, and NATO is making good use of its artillery. Red is taking casualties but is also dealing out, by virtue of superior numbers and tanks (at least against effectively-obsolete Leopard 1As) a lot of punishment.

Finally the NATO forces holding the bridge over the Fluthamel are pushed aside and the remnants of my armour and mech infantry push to occupy the VPs on the outskirts and Hamelin, and most importantly, to seize and hold the main bridge over the Weser.





In the north, the rest of my force is struggling out of the forest and contacting weak NATO forces covering this approach (supported by effective artillery). No armour thankfully, so while the battle rages in the south, I shake my armour out and plot routes for the assault which will hopefully come to the rescue of my southern pincer.

Because they are in trouble - their thrust for the Weser Bridge comes into contact with Leopard 2A4s coming north on Route 83, heading for the same bridge and aimed right at the flank of my tank columns.

As my northern forces begin to assault south, Herman's reinforcements, along with his remnant forces in Hamelin itself, start taking apart my southern assets. I continue to feed reserve forces (including some T80s) into the southern fight, in hopes of preventing NATO forces here from disengaging and while my southern armoured forces are effectively pushed back across the bridge and destroyed (I get a message alerting me to losses approaching 30 percent - there's a risk my losses will be so high I will fail despite being now in what I think is a reasonable strategic position), my northern forces are approaching Hamelin in good shape, having pushed screening NATO forces aside.





The arrival of my northern pincer is decisive. Despite the quality of the remaining NATO armor, the weight of numbers of my T80s and mech infantry is enough to take and hold the key VPs and knock out much of Herman's counter-attack.












I am mentally prepared for a draw or a marginal loss (I'm concerned at the level of Red losses) and so I am pleasantly surprised when I am awarded a strategic victory, given I have less than 40% of my force intact!





If you have a spare hour and three-quarters, and would like to also see Herman's moves, then he has posted a youtube video of our narrated AAR here:






I had some fun making this, though I have learnt some lessons which will make the next one we do both shorter and more focused.

Thanks for looking

smith

Nice AAR!

Looks like you "forgot" to take a couple of VLs though.
In your second-to-last pic I see three VLs worth 1600pts behind your lines. Those points would've probably yielded a decisive success.

Great read! Looked like one hell of a battle.

Brian,

Certainly a great read and being familiar with the ground I have a rough idea of what you are talking about.

However any chance of circling or highlighting the places the text refers to?

I'm not familiar with the interface and all I'm seeing is red squares/counters and blue ones.

For example: "while my centre probe bumped into some NATO forces almost immediately"

Is that indicated by one of the Red squares/counters in the centre being a slightly different colour to the other four?

Ah, good point. That's the reason I haven't gotten into these hex/counter games before - impenetrable. I will put some notations up so it makes more sense - looking at the screens now I can see they could be hard to read.