Back to Tapton Hall, this time to CALF 2026.Why CALF? Well, it is a one day version of the Conference of Wargamers (COW) and a calf is a small cow, so....
As a one day event it doesn't have quite the size of the usual COW schedule, and we ended up with around 20 attendees, two plenary games in the morning and half a dozen games over six sessions in the afternoon. There were sign up sheets for the afternoon games.
Tim briefs the assembled multitudes.
The opening plenary was SWAG (or Silly Weapons Acronym Game). Each team gets four sets of four scrabble letters drawn at random and has to come up with a company name, a vehicle, an aircraft and a ship. We were FAGO (Fabrique Armaments Groupe d'Ordennance) and perhaps handicapped ourselves by picking a French Canadian company.
While our schoolboy French was OK it was not brilliant, though we did christen two of our creations "Quebec" and "Kleber" which used up a couple of awkward letters.
As with all these sorts of games, it was a good group bonding experience although most of us knew each other anyway.
Next up was one of John Bs sprawling military political games, big enough for everyone. This one was more military perhaps, covering the attempt to kill or capture Tito in May 1944. Titos mountain fortress is above.
The German assault force consisted of Brandenburgers and 500 SS Fallschirmjagsr Bn. The whole operation came under the direction of 2nd Panzer Army (General Rendulic played by Ian).
And motoring up from the south, a mechanised relief column, negotiating Partisan infested country.
7th SS Prinz Eugen Division, a wierd mix of SS auxiliaries (John A) , Croatians (Rob) and some Heer armour. The whole lot was under Heer command (Lloyd).
I was cast as Admiral Canaris, Head of the Abwehr, and my main job was to promote the role of the Abwehr, support the Army and do down the SS and Luftwaffe. Goring (Chris K) and Himmer (Jim) naturally had different views. I also had to locate sympathisers for the plot against Hitler....
The German High Command! Ian rendered us into wicked Germans with Grok AI. Himmler, Rendulic, Goring and Canaris. Goerings yellow socks are hilarious, but at least we all have the right number of fingers.
Goerings airforce. Gliders, Ju 52s and various ground attack planes. Naturally there wasn't enough lift capacity for everyone so we went for four companies delivered by glider on the first turn, then everyone else by parachute once the Junkers had refuelled.
Two companies of Brandenburgers at one entrance, two companies of SS at the other. Resistance was heavy!
Meanwhile the ground force slogged forwards. The armour left the infantry behind racing to relieve the Paras. I'd also managed to approach no less than two extra co-conspirators ready ready to save Germany. I was sure our OPSEC was perfect.
Things got a bit desperate in the mountains as Partisan armour turned up. In a shock development, the Brandenburgers captured no less than Randolph Churchill (Churchills grandson), as he was a partizan liaison office at the time. We also captured a ton of intelligence documents, but wily Tito (Russell) escaped down a secret tunnel.
Aided by masses of airpower, the relief column finally broke through
And just in time as the Paras were on their last legs. In the confusion, Churchill escaped but was shot by the SS. Everyone claimed credit for the successes, while blaming everyone else for the failures. Sadly the two patriot/traitorous Generals were arrested and shot by the SS as they had left their personal briefings lying around to be read by the prying eyes of the Gestapo.
And what of Operation Valkyrie? Well, it was a sadly depleted group who mounted a coup in July, however magnificent dice rolling saw Hitler killed! Unfortunately for the conspirators, Himmler out manouvered Goering and was made Fuhrer.
That was loads of fun, and apologies to all the other player roles I skipped over. You can only interact with so many people at these things.
After all the fun in the morning, I ran Operation Battleaxe in the afternoon. I'll do that as a separate report.
Ian again enlivened proceedings by turning the Allied command into action figures!
There were three games in the later session.
Ian ran "Der Tag" covering Jutland.
Russell ran Labyrinth, the elaborate and ambitious board game on The War on Terror.
While I took part in James 'Soviet Wargame'. As part of his PhD research , James has uncovered a set of rules used for training by the Soviet Army, and this game was to give them a try.
In some ways it was a fairly typical CPX and the training intent was to reinforce doctrine and the use of operational norms. The command team was divided into four 'cells', Intelligence (Alex and Chris), Frontal Aviation (Pete), Artillery (John and Jerry) and Operations (me, Rob and Tim).
We were handed a Class I Motor Rifle division (all nine battalions in BMPs!) and told to plan the first phase of an attack on a NATO position in the Fulda Gap. The cloth is a print of the actual terrain.
There are seven NATO locations, five in the front line and two in the rear (an HQ and a 'choke point'). We had to allocate forces, fire missions and strike packages to each, coordinate the different arms and designate reserves for exploitation. The Intelligence Cell gave us some indication of the enemy forces.
This was a straightforward 'fight over the coloured pencils' planing session as the different cells tried to allocate their assets in accordance with an overall plan. We each had to complete a planning sheet with force allocations within 45 minutes, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
We went with a very conventional attack with two Motor Rifle Regiments up, concentrating two battalions each in sectors 2 and 3, sector 3 also got divisional engineer support as it contained a road. One battalion each in sectors 1 and 4 with a screening company in 5. In reserve we kept the Tank Regiment and most of the third MRR. Each assault battalion was supported by a tank company from the regimental tank battalion.
Having all read out our plans, duly noted by Intelligence, it was time for resolution at which point we all became 'umpires'. The various combat elements have a numerical rating built up bottom up fashion from assigned weapon values in a very similar fashion to Dupuy. The basic currency is the "T55" worth 1, an AK armed rifleman is worth 0.04 and a Chieftan 1.72, for comparison.
Fortunately we had pre calculated tables for the various formations (iirc a BMP battalion was around 38), these were compared to the CVs of the defenders modified by posture and terrain and a final combat odds ratio resulted. The desired ratio for a successful ground attack was between 3:1 and 5:1, but we weren't told that beforehand. There were no random factors, but obviously from a player pov we didn't know in detail what the enemy had, so it was a case of throw in what looked sensible and hope for the best.
The air went in first, but it was too penny packeted to have much effect, particularly against entrenched defenders. Petes brave pilots suffered 50% losses attacking the HQ are as it was stacked with AA. The artillery barrage did cause some suppression, which was helpful.
Finally we resolved the ground assaults. Fortunately our supporting attacks on sectors 1 and 4 had enough strength to overcome the defenders (Bundeswehr and an M113 Company respectively) but suffered 20% losses with the defenders losing 30%. As we were putting whole battalions up against companies, our actual losses were far higher than the defenders, one reason not to overcommit.
In sector 3 we achieved 5.1:1 against an armoured cavalry squadron with Sheridans and got told off for over committing - we could have held back a couple of companies and avoided the resultant losses. But in sector 2 we only just scraped a 3:1 against a well entrenched mech infantry company supported by M60s. The Intel boys had told us they were dug in, but we weren't paying enough attention.
The screening company (unsurprisingly) stalled in its attack on an Air Cav company supported by Cobras, but while it suffered 40% losses, it still inflicted 20% on the US.
Having done all that, we had to decide whether the division would commit its reserve or keep going. Given that four out of five sectors had succeeded, it was time to keep going. Units are fought out at 40% losses, so the first echelon still had some fight in it.
And that was it for that phase - the game runs on decision points, the next set of decisions would be when the Division hit the next US defence line.
We made an umpires assessment of where the next US defence line would be - unsurprisingly on the reverse slope of the ridge, and then moved up the Soviet units. The big red counters are Motor Rifle Battalions, the purple counters are Tank battalions and the orange ones are attached companies.
Assaulting the ridge will be the next set of decision points, and played out at COW in the summer. Finally each cell was asked to give feedback on the performance of another cell, we were asked to comment on the artillery and as far as possible everyone offered constructive criticism.
That was absolutely fascinating, and hugely enjoyable. As regular readers will know, I'm a big fan of military training games and have played quite a few. The main thing which struck me was how like Dupuy (Numbers, Predictions and War) it was in terms of the combat resolution, even the terrain and posture modifiers were similar and I imagine the unit rating algorithm was similar even if the numbers were different. The training aim was to teach doctrine and norms, and if we'd known what the norms were beforehand, we would have done a much better job. I subsequently had a look at FM-100-1 and realised we'd both messed up the artillery and air fire plan, and misallocated the MRRs - we should have had all three in line, designated as main or secondary attack. But that is the point of the game, great stuff and I'm looking forward to the published version. It will be very interesting to compare it to the similar British and US ones.
That wrapped up a very enjoyable day out, so many thanks to the organisers, game presenters and other players. To cap it off, I sold a lot more on the Bring and Buy than I came away with. Result!
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