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A small but satisfying battle of manoeuvre, in Steel Armor - Blaze of War! Many sims give us a way of jumping straight into virtual battle with the minimum of preliminaries and Graviteam’s wargame-based tanksim is now no exception. The original release featured what the new version of SABOW has accurately re-labelled a ‘Battle Editor’. This provides a fast way of choosing multiple parameters to set up platoon-to-company level armoured battles. To this, the new release has added some ‘instant action’ options – a firing range for the US M-60, driver training for the Soviet T-62 and – one for each tank – the ability to set up both sides instantly for a smaller-scale battle you can drop straight into. You can still get the best from SABOW by learning the wargame element, which gives you control over multiple tank and infantry platoons and other units. But if you want to get straight to the tanksimming, it’s now much easier, with these instant battles putting you right onto the battlefield as a tank platoon commander. This short mission report describes one such encounter, which came as a pleasant surprise. I suppose I was expecting to face waves of enemies, advancing upon me as if in a Space Invaders arcade game; an opportunity for little more than some gunnery practice, but with targets that would shoot back. Fun and good practice but nothing special. If I was lucky, I might be able to squeeze in some platoon application of fire and maybe some ‘jockeying’ as the British Army calls the movement of tanks in defence, when moving between fire positions. The advancing enemies did appear, but they weren’t overdone and this, along with sufficient time and the initial disposition of friendly forces, gave me the opportunity to think as well as shoot, to plan and execute movement and generally practice the tactical handling of my platoon. For an instant action scenario, it was actually rather more ‘tactical’ than with most such sim options I’ve seen. And this was the way of it. SABOW models its two tanks – functionally, as well as visually - in such detail that I had decided to concentrate on playing and mastering one, rather than dividing my time more equally between them. Because its systems are simpler to learn – no stereoscopic rangefinder, for instance – I decided to focus on the sleek T-62. So, in the mood for a quick tanksimming fix, I decided to fire up a battle for that tank, clicking its icon on the main menu (the other T-62 icon, with the steering levers graphic, is for the driving course). This took me straight to a map of the battlefield, with my own side’s forces laid out. The briefing consisted of just a warning that enemy tanks were approaching , reinforced visually by some threatening red arrows directed at our positions (SABOW’s default is’ friendly red, enemy blue’ but I have reversed this in ‘options’ so we are the blue side). Sorry, no pics of this - I wasn't planning this to be a mission report, just some harmless, tank-bashing fun :) The map was from the Iran-Iraq war, which is the best ‘tank country’ of SABOW’s three theatres, Angola and Afghanistan being the other two. The main headache with this terrain is the frequent presence of irrigation channels which block movement or channel it (sic!) over fords. Elsewhere, though basically level, there are low mounds or hills and smaller dips and folds in the ground, interspersed with clumps or rows of trees or bushes, all of which provides some cover from view and/or fire. The map was clear of enemy sightings at this stage, but I could see that our side consisted of two tank platoons, facing north, marked as diamonds (you can cycle through alternative unit markers, including one which shows which way individual vehicles are pointing). Both platoons had the playable T62 so while I was started off with the left-hand platoon, I could have opted to play with either one, or indeed, swap platoons during the fighting. I tend not to do this as – when I’m in tanksimming mode – I prefer to role-play as a single platoon commander. From the map, I could have spent a little while playing the overall commander role, setting up deployment and initial orders for one or both of our two platoons. I could have done this from with new 3-D deployment option, instead of the map. This being a defensive action with our platoons pre-deployed pretty well so as to block the enemy axis of advance, I decided I would just jump straight into my assigned command tank, and take it from there! And there I was, sitting in my T-62 with the other two tanks of my 3-tank platoon (Soviet-style, but also common British Army practice). Seeing that we were all lined up facing the enemy somewhere up north and that my tank had a sabot round ‘up the spout’, my first task was to scan ahead for the foe-man, just in case they were about to hit us. This I did using the gunner’s sight, the better to be ready to let fly quickly, if need be. All seemed quiet, so I decided I would now take stock and get as organised as circumstances – notably, the enemy - would allow. Back to the map I went. Offensive action – even in defence – is one of the most important of the Principles of War. So I decided that my objective should be not merely to hold ground, but to destroy the advancing enemy forces. Now then...how best might this be achieved? ‘By taking them in the flank, with fire from a covered position’ seemed the obvious answer. The more I thought about it, the better I liked this idea, compared to simply sitting tight or making minor adjustments to my current position. I could have paused the battle while I thought, but I didn’t need long. Scanning the map from left to right, my eyes were soon drawn to an area of what - from the contours - looked like a sort of rough, low hillock, just ahead and on the left flank. I quickly decided that my platoon would move there, leaving the other three T-62s where they were, on our right. Between us, we would catch the enemy advance in a crossfire. The fact that this scenario had not immediately thrown the enemy straight at us gave me hope I might be able to complete my move in time. Even if the opposition appeared sooner rather than later, I reasoned that the slightly higher ground we would be moving towards would screen us, enabling me to get onto the enemy’s flank while the other platoon kept them occupied, frontally. Plan made! Even before a round had been fired, this little scenario was making me feel like I was right there, on the ground, in the boots of a tank platoon commander, being presented with a realistic tactical situation and the opportunity to make my plans, dispositions and decisions accordingly. I got my tanks into column formation and ordered my driver to advance and turn slightly left, headed for a ford over the nearest irrigation channel. This would have to be crossed, as it lay on the route to my chosen battle position. One of the neat things about SABOW is that the AI drivers behave somewhat as if they have minds of their own. In other sims, it’s like you are just clicking up or down a notch in a throttle setting, when (playing as commander, or as gunner but the commander’s ability to give orders) you order a change of speed or direction. It can be frustrating sometimes, but now I’m used to SABOW, it feels more realistic that my driver will sometimes hesitate or slow down and needs more regular instructions. It's like your AI driver in SABOW is a human being seeing the world only through a couple of fixed periscopes set a few feet above ground level, rather than an unthinking robot. Another nice touch is that the driver doesn’t just turn a fixed number of degrees for each key-press – the longer you hold down the ‘turn’ key (‘A’ or’ D’) to give a driving command, the greater the turn, with an icon displaying the turn angle so you can judge when to release the key. If your driver stops at an obstacle, you can either issue a stock command which starts him attempting an avoiding manoeuvre, or you take over his role and drive the tank as you wish. And that’s what I did when I reached my first challenge on this mission, fording that irrigation channel. The ford was at what looked to be a wrecked bridge and as we came to this I took over the driver position myself, knowing that this is one sort of obstacle they will often be most resuctant to cross, left to their own devices. From there, while I can still use W-A-S-D keys to change direction and speed, I’m beginning to appreciate the additional mouse control option. It’s really rather neat, in the driver’s compartment view, to drag back left or right mouse buttons and watch the animated driver figure pull back on left or right steering levers, as your tank changes direction! As I descended towards the bottom of the channel, my tank swayed and bucked, negotiating the broken concrete slabs that lined the way down, presumably all that was left of the bridge. Nearing the water’s edge, I cast caution to the winds and gave her full throttle, both to get up the other side and to minimise our immersion, in case the water level swamped us and killed our engine. A quick glance over my virtual shoulder showed that my other two T-62s were bunched up at the start of the descent, seemingly hesitant. I’d worry about them later, i decided. That is, if I didn't drown my tank, trying to cross this b****y great ditch full of water. But all went well. Over we went then up and out the other side, jerking and swaying once again over the concrete slabs, as we hauled ouselves back up to ground level. I quickly switched to the tank commander’s station and we hurried off to find some nearby cover, from which I could scan the area before sorting out the others. I should probably have used standard obstacle crossing drill to get over the channel – say, stopping the other two to provide cover, before I crossed - but I had been in a hurry. Now, was time enough to be more cautious. I gave the order to close hatches. Halting behind a small hummock, I scanned ahead and to the right, from the tank commander’s magnified sight. All clear! And just as happily, looking back, I could see that my platoon-mates had sorted themselves out and were now making their own crossing. Soon they were close up behind me again and I rattled off towards the hillock where I planned we’d make our stand. As we stepped off I called my platoon into line formation, the better to concentrate our fire to the front, where the greatest threat must now lie. Making for the nearer, right-hand edge of this hillock, I could see that the lie of the land there would give me some cover straight ahead, but would leave me exposed to the right, where the enemy might well appear. I began to edge more to the left, avoiding the exposed flank and steering for the centre of the area of higher ground. I was encouraged to see that - as prior study of the map had suggested - this was not so much a continuous hill, but more a low cluster of smaller terrain features. The ground was broken, with lots of folds and dips of different sizes, like you might expect to see from some long-abandoned small town whose uneven heaps of ruins had long ago begun to merge with the surrounding terrain. I led the platoon into this, keeping us in closely-spaced line formation. We rolled over the uneven ground, amongst clumps of scattered vegetation. I began to swing around to the right, so that we would acquire lines of sight and fire out over the expected enemy lines of advance. We approached the northern limits of the area of broken ground and I slowed down, halting in a defiladed position with higher ground covering us to both flanks. This gave us only narrow, intermittent arcs of fire, ahead to the north-east, but good protection from east and west. Although the shrubbery scattered around us further inhibited our view, I hoped it would also make us harder to spot. SABOW seems to handle cover quite well, to the extent that the planning map – I think at deployment stage – has tools which give you a visual indication of the level of cover provided in any given area. I hadn’t used this facility on this mission, as it is my habit to assess these things from the map’s conventional symbols. In this case, things seemed to have worked out tolerably well, leaving us hull or turret down to any bad guys able to see us. So far, so good! ...to be continued!

No, sorry, not a review, just a link to my recent mission report, as it sort of developed into a more review-like thing. But rather than now move it here, I thought I should post a link. And it's an excuse to post some screenies and offer a few more observations. The mission report/review thing is here. This new release of SABOW has succeeded in getting me playing a sim that I had left in a drawer for over a year, deterred by the fact I wasn't massively a fan of either of the two playable tanks, the steeper-than-usual learning curve and the 'sim within a wargame' approach (which also reduced the appeal to me of Rowan's Battle of Britain/BoB2). However - partly thanks to elements in the new release that make it easier to get to the tanksimming - see mission report for details! - I'm now a fan. Even to the extent that I'm beginning to see the wargame side less as something to be bypassed as far as I can, and more as a feature with a lot of potential and depth; one which I can actually enjoy as I choose, as well as the tanksimming side. Even though everybody in SABOW seems to speak Russian - possibly an advantage, as I know nothing of Farsi or Arabic and am at least beginning to learn some of the Russian terms used on the intercom- I am really digging the animated crews and the fact that all my tank commanders have names as well as unit IDs. And now I'm getting the hang of it, I'm finding there's attention to realistic crew drills that are approaching the technical excellence of Steel Beasts, with the advantage of being able to see the guys alongside me. Panzer Elite still has more hotkeys and an interface more optimised for a tanksim rather than a wargame. Steel Beasts better implements the team radio net and the use of callsigns on the map as well as on the air. But with the relaunch, SABOW has for me the mark of a really top-tier tanksim. And I believe we can expect further updates - there have been several already, since the relaunch, including those which added 'instant action' options and now also a firing range variant, complete with on-screen tips which play out as your M60 drives up to the firing point. Using these tips, for the first time I tried out the drill for getting a range from the tank commander. Go to the gunsight that has the simple reticle. Hit Ctrl (this gets you into 'cursor mode') and with the mouse, put the little crosshairs which appear onto your chosen target. Click on the rangefinder icon - it's the one on the left of the third-from-the-left strip of icons, below seen from the gunner's station... ...and you will then see the icon grey out briefly, hear some clicking sounds and then see the icon light up again. This tells you that your TC has ranged the target with the stereoscopic rangefinder and keyed the result into the analog ballistic computer, setting up your sight for that range. Lay your gun and fire! And you can use a similar drill for the other, graduated sight in the M60 or T-62 and get a verbal range, estimated visually instead. All rather sophisticated, and the firing range mission with its tips is just one example of how the new release's features seem intended to improve the accessibility of the tanksim element. It certainly worked for me! I've still a lot to learn about SABOW but I'm now hooked and would definitely recommend it as a tanksim, alone, whether or not you expect to appreciate the wargame element. Gotta go - I'm due back on the range!

On campaign with the new release of Graviteam’s Cold War wargame/tanksim! These days, Ukrainian developers Graviteam are famous principally for their PC wargames. These started life on World War 2’s Eastern Front as Achtung Panzer - Kharkov 1943 and morphed into the Graviteam Tactics series, ranging into other theatres and periods in the process. However, as many of us will know, Graviteam have also developed tanksims, not least one of my current favourites, Steel Fury – Kharkov 1942. While the latter lacks some of the more sophisticated features of tanksim classic Panzer Elite, it has some nice touches of its own and with the support of a talented modding community, still provides a top-notch first or third person simulation of fighting WW2 tanks in an all-arms battle, at platoon-to-company level. Combining the wargame and tanksim genres is Steel Armour – Blaze of War (SABOW), dating from 2011 and now re-released with the game engine of the Graviteam Tactics wargame. I recently updated my GamersGate SABOW to the latest version - patches are available on the Graviteam SABOW forums as well as via GG and now Steam - and decided to give it a go. I have had SABOW for some time, but confess that I had previously been put off by its rather complex-seeming interface and somewhat difficult documentation, both of which received some attention in the upgrade. This being a combination of a wargame and a tanksim - more about how this mix works for me, later - there's a lot to learn. And I'm still somewhere along the early part of that big learning curve. So while nominally a mission report, this piece is more of a tanksimmer's first impressions of SABOW, after playing it on and off over the last few weeks. The setting SABOW is set in the later stages of the Cold War. The action itself centres on three single-player campaigns, following the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979-89) and the middle years of the long Angolan Civil War (MPLA & Cuba vs UNITA & South Africa, 1975-2002). There is also an easy-to-use ‘quick mission builder’ with which you can in a couple of minutes plonk tanks and other units from each side onto a map and kick off the fighting, largely by-passing the ‘wargame’ element. To this, the new version has now added an ‘instant action’ option – click a main menu icon of either a T-62 or an M60A1 and you are pitched straight into a pre-set battle; no setting up involved. The tanks Two of the tanks featured in SABOW are playable, for the tanksim component of the game. First, there’s the Soviet T-62. This is used by the Iraqi Army in the (first) Gulf War campaign, by the Soviets in Afghanistan, and by the MPLA’s Cuban ‘advisors’ in the Angola campaign. Second, there’s the US M60A1, used by the Iranian Army in the Gulf War campaign. Yes that’s right – there are no playable units for the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan or for the UNITA/South African side in the Angolan campaign – for those campaigns, you can only fight in the T-62. Which was quite a tank, in its day, despite famously taking a hiding from Israeli Centurions in the ‘Valley of Tears’ during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The T-62 introduced smoothbore guns firing fin-stabilised discarding sabot AP rounds to mainstream tank warfare and with decent armour and a low, ballistically-well-shaped profile, it was a tank to be reckoned with, in its day. The M60A1 needs little introduction to any tank enthusiast. The successor to the post-WW2 M47 and M48 Patton tanks and still in widespread service a half-century after the original version appeared, the tall but sleek M60A1 boasts the famous British L7 105mm rifled tank gun, a stereoscopic rangefinder and a good combat record...not least with the Iranian Army, as featured in this sim and seen in the screenshot at the top of this post, in one of the several paint schemes you can select. The playable SABOW tanks have excellent animated interiors, to which the new release has made some improvements (including more readable internal signage!) Below is the M60A1 turret interior, seen from the loader's position. Standing to the right is the Tank Commander. Seated to the left, ahead of him, is the gunner. You can just about see the driver, lower down, below and left of the breech of the 105mm main gun. All crew figures are nicely animated. Below is the first-person view of the Tank Commander, hands on the controls of his rotating, machine-gun-armed cupola. The sights and view ports you can see here are all usable, as are those for the other crew members. To the TC's right, you can see the back of the gunner and to the left, you can just about see the loader. To the far left are the tubes in the turret rear bussle which hold the ready-use main gun rounds. The T-62 is just as nicely done. Below is the TC's closed-up view, looking across at the loader (autoloaders in Soviet tanks didn't put this guy out of a job until the T-64 series appeared). In the pic below that, is the TC's view with both crew unbuttoned, the loader dutifully manning the formidable 'Dushka' 12.7mm machine gun. There's a goodly selection of AI-manned kit in the sim, in addition to the two playable tanks. AFV-wise, this includes the Olifant (South African Centurion) and the same army's Ratel wheeled Infantry Fighting Vehicle, both seen below somewhat the worse for wear... ..and as well as infantry, sundry APCs and IFVs and various crew-served weapons, there's my fave tank, the British Chieftain, here in Iranian service... Personally I would have preferred a ‘Cold War gone hot’, central European setting for all this nice kit and a couple or so more playable tanks, but SABOW's well-replicated tanks and three featured theatres are something of a novelty and the latter replicate real rather than imaginary conflicts, which is no bad thing. So, how does it all come together in practice? Let's find out how I got on! ...to be continued!