[GZG] Vehicle and Unit ID

Mr.B said:

"Most games also freely give out the information as the position and unit
type. The players will know that Unit X is on the hilltop and dug-in, or
that Unit Y is located at the edge of the buildings. Also it is rare that
squads are mistaken for platoons or companies for squads, and even more rare
would armor units be mistaken for infantry."
---------

I once ran a double blind game that did this excellently in two regards. It
was a coalition attack in PGW2 (the first US visit to the sandpile) on a small
port town defended by Iraqi forces. the US had UK support. M1s, Bradleys,
Challengers, etc. going in against a few T72s and BMPs plus lots of infantry.

The Iraqi player was smart. I gave him a small quantity of land mines to use,
but he asked me "Is there any reason I can't plant fake mines and post mine
signs along the barbed wire?". My reply... noooo not really. So he did that.
This totally bamboozled the enemy commander into mounting his entire attack
along one flank (because he thought the entire front line was mined) in an
area about 18" wide on the board. (He could have, with minor difficulty,
driven right up the center... but he didn't know that). The defender, of
course, setup his few anti-armour capable units on the flanks to engage
the enemy if they tried the flank sweep.

One one hill, which became the allied advance's first objective, he deployed a
single jeep with a 106mm recoilless to spot for artillery. The allied forces,
led by abrams and armoured scout vehicles (the version of the bradley for
cavalry scouts) came cooking up that front... the tanks started to drive
around the hill into the flank of town. Then came the cav scout vehicles. And,
while calling artillery down on the tanks, the jeep decided "Why the heck
not?" and plugged away at one of the bradley's with the 106. I don't even
recall if he penetrated, but the hit and the inability of the allied commander
to spot a single well concealed 106 made him think an entire infantry company
was deployed on that hill, so he deployed 4 abrams and the 4 CFVs plus later
another 4 Bradleys full of infantry and all of their gropos to attack this
hill. Every so often the jeep would pop off a shot, there would be some
spotting rolls, the allied forces would fail to spot, and the Iraqi artillery
would rain down.

In the end, the entire allied attack went nowhere thanks to one well planned
but simple deception (the mines) where the allied commander didn't even recce
it to see if it was true and on one small unit executing a provocation which
then caused a cascade deployment of an entire company to counterattack. (And
the Iraqi player had plenty of time to move *all* of his armoured reserves to
positions to engage the very obvious allied thrust, had it ever made it around
the hill with the 106).

So, double blind games with detailed spotting rules can make this kind of
stuff happen, but that's rare, I admit.

Tomb

> So, double blind games with detailed spotting rules can make this kind

Even without the prospect of mis-identification, Double Blind games can
give you lots of opportunity to play with your opponent's head. Have a unit or
two keep their heads down while the enemy line rolls by, then pop up in what
is now the Red Force rear area. Adding misidentification just makes it more
fun, particularly if you've got civilians and media on the table: "Is that a
sniper, a scout, or just a civilian?"
"Movement in my rear area -- enemy partisans, or friendly civilians
trying to bug out?" "This is new crew for station WBIAS, interviewing Sergeant
Czaba. Sergeant, can you explain why you just shot that mother and her
children
with an anti-tank rocket?"

> laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:

> Even without the prospect of mis-identification, Double Blind games

In Reality, until quite recently, not only did you not know reliably where the
enemy was, you didn't know where friends were either.
Even now, Blue-on-Blues happen.

Multiplayer games, with each player physically separate not just from enemy,
but from friends, adds a whole new dimension.

Back in 197-x, I was involved in a "Rolling Thunder" air campaign set in

the skies over Route Pack 6 (Hanoi area). I was the NVA commander, and
managed to cause the USAF and USN all sorts of grief - a pair of Mig-19s

coming in by surprise could easily cause a whole Yankee Imperialist multiplane
package to jettison ordnance and abort the mission.

The next time, when the Migs got bounced in their turn by the F-4 MigCap

and the F-105s continued, this time there were a dozen Mig-17s, and some

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> laserlight@quixnet.net <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

Of course, 1)In such a situation the ROE would likely require positive ID. 2)A
military unit that would allow uncontrolled interviews during a firefight is
wierd to say the least. You have to remember that out of hundreds of thousands
of rounds fired, the
blue-on-blue or collateral damage stuff might get an inordinate amount
of media coverage, but in reality it is truly unusual.
 Take Desert Storm. There were a couple dozen blue-on-blue cases, but
there were thousands of Iraqi vehicles blown up with great precision. Even in
Iraq today, what cases of mistaken identity there are (in the most
deliberately confusing environment possible) tend to be cases where people
act like terrorists. One case I'm familliar with was a pair of off-duty
Iraqi Police who were totally intoxicated and attempted to run a US roadblock.
Someone chopped their vehicle in half with a.50 caliber machine gun.
Unfortunate, but no negative consequences for the chain of command or the
soldiers in question.