Late 20th -21st Century Warfare

My fascination with modern warfare goes back to misspent teenage years reading Tom Clancy, Harold Coyle, and others fight out World War 3 in the pages of their books. That inevitably lead to many long hours playing Harpoon and Red Storm Rising on the PC and our own home grown hex and counter wargame "Combined Arms Command." (What is the defense of a BMP in the woods? 15!)

More recently my post-WW2 gaming falls in to two categories, Cold War 1980's in Central Europe and more speculative moderns looking at the Stryker Brigade Combat Team. For both, I prefer to use the excellent 1/600 scale figures from Pico Armor. They have a huge selection, are affordable, and allow realistic looking engagement ranges on the table.

Cold War, 1980's

The war that thankfully never was still fascinates me, and the more research I do with the benefit of hindsight, despite what the techno-thriller authors of the 80's asserted, I am not sure NATO could have withstood a conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets were not the stupid, unimaginative automatons we have been led to believe, and to see this you need to play at a higher level that usual for most miniatures games.

As a result, I use 5Core Brigade Commander for this level, allowing me to field NATO Brigades and parts of Warsaw Pact Divisions (if I have them attack in echelon), with each base = 1 maneuver company.

My forces are based around US Army and German forces circa 1985, asset cards and stats can be found below.

All battle reports can be found on my blog here.