Wargame: European Escalation

[33LIMA 972]

Fighting a Cold War gone hot with Eugen Systems' classic PC wargame!

 

 

Once upon a time, in a world before PCs...

 

Although never a really serious player, back in the days before home PCs, I'd long been interested in wargames with miniatures - not the boardgame variety, as the model-making or collecting aspect was important to me, too. I still have the 1/300 scale metal WW2 AFVs and basic little rulebook I bought back in the 1970s. In the late 1980s I dabbled with the Cold War era and acquired a modest set of 1/300 and 1/285 miniatures from Davco, Heroics & Ross, Scotia and GHQ, basically a Soviet tank battalion with T-72s, a couple of Motor Rifle companies with BMPs, plus US and British tank/infantry company combat teams in sufficient strength to give them a fair fight, with a variety of Abrams, Bradleys, Chieftains and 432s etc. Even tiny 1/300 items like Ferret Scout Cars could look quite well when painted and were much more suitable for decent wargaming than larger models (I don't really see much attraction in skirmishes with quite large models, which seem to be having something of a resurgence of interest in the form of the 'Bolt Action' rules)

 

For my own Cold War forays, I used an adapted version of the Wargame Research Group's 'Rules for All Arms Land Warfare from Platoon to Company Level' (June 1988) for 1925-1950 because they were the first I'd found which really tried to replicate the way armies actually operated, instead of providing (in effect) a chess game with different pieces and rules, usually underlaid with an obsessive attention to armour thickness and penetration and other theoretical weapon characteristics rather than real-world tactics and capabilities. It was like, suddenly, a  set of rules had been written by real army officers, rather than by enthusiasts who can only get so much understanding of how armies really work by reading books. 

 

As I wanted to play solo, I adapted methods from the same publisher's solo wargames booklet, adding a system of drawing cards from a deck, as my force advanced, to generate realistic enemy units ahead of us. It worked quite while and while I never had enough space - and thus had to use too small a ground scale for my 1/300 units - the results could be quite pleasing, visually, played out on a grass-mat laid out with my home-made modular terrain system.

 

In the pic below, a platoon of US Army M60A3s, sited to fire hull-down from a flank, burns as a Soviet T-72 platoon, backed up by a BMP-1, approaches a village defended now by mechanised infantry in M113 APCs and mortar carriers.

 

 

In the different scenario below, a company of BMP-2s is closing in on a ridgeline objective, backed up by T-72s. BMP-1s and another pair of T-72s wait in a field in front of the village church.

 

 

Below is what was likely an earlier pic in the same battle, with a T-72 platoon leading a company of BMP-2s which has yet to shake out from platoon columns into line formation for the assault. Ahead, MiG-27s flash low over smoke screens laid by supporting SO-122 SP guns, whose observation and support vehicles can be seen in the foreground.

 

 

You'd think that I'd have jumped at the chance to play wargames on the PC. I have tried a few, notably the original Combat Mission and the more recent Theatre of War. But good though they could be in their way, to my mind they suffered from the same failing as some earlier paper wargame rules. They gave you a force equivalent to something like a company but allowed (or worse, effectively compelled) you the player to move around individual tanks, vehicles or soldiers. That's a chess game with different pieces and rules, not the way military operations work. If you're commanding a company-sized force, your 'pieces' are your platoons, be they tanks or infantry, certainly not individual soldiers, guns or vehicles. By and large, you deploy, move around and give your orders, not to individuals or individual vehicles, but to the commanders of each platoon. The latter carry them out, by and large using 'canned' tactics like battle drills and 'Standard Operating Procedures' or SOPs.

 

If you're playing a wargame, in command of a force comprising maybe three or more platoons of one or more different troop types, it may be fun to pick out and send that high-morale, expert-rated fellow with the panzerfaust along that hedge to stalk that pesky Sherman. But while real-life company commanders do sometimes have to organise such things, it's not the approach a proper tactical simulation of platoon, company or battalion-level operations should take by default. Instead, your forces should come pre-organised into platoons. Barring rare exceptions, you should give your orders only to these platoons (in effect, to the platoon leaders). They should carry out your orders using standard tactics, with an absolute mimimum of player micro-management. This is the missing factor which those 1988 WRG WW2-era rules at last implemented.

 

Having found this factor rather lacking in the PC wargames I had so far tried, and having meantime also found that simulations rather than wargames amply satisfied my interest in 'blowing [virtual] stuff up', I left it there. Until last week. On holiday in Spain's Costa del Sol, I wandered into a Game store in Malaga in search of a bargain and came across a copy of Wargame: European Escalation as a 'Super Oferta' for the princely sum of one Euro. Having an interest in both wargames and the Cold War era, I had been vaguely aware of Eugen Systems' sweet-looking 2012 PC wargame (and its 2014 development, Airland Battle), in part from watching videos like this one:

 

 

For a price that wouldn't have bought me a platoon of 1/300 T-72s 25 years ago, you get hundreds of nicely-crafted AFVs and other units on a range of different maps (with a proper ground scale), set in the same era I had tried to wargame all those years ago. And with visuals aproaching that of a simulation. It was worth giving another PC wargame a try, I decided. That was a week ago. Safely back in the rather less sunny UK, this mission report describes how it worked out and what I've made of it, so far.

 

And The Lord said, let there be pixels...

 

Having decided to have a crack at Cold War wargaming in the computer age, I found that while my copy of W:EE came on a DVD, it was Steam-based. So installation involved downloads from that provider, which happily included some free DLC, in the form of several 'expansion pack' campaigns. The base sim provides four basic campaigns or 'operations' which constitute the main single player element. The nearest thing to a 'quick mission bulder' is a 'Skirmish' mode within single player, which enamles you to set up player -vs- AI battles. Excluding the expansion packs, the 4 campaigns comprise 22 missions, set during the period 1975 to 1985.

 

The bad news is that if like me you thought the unlock system that came with a certain recent WW2 combat flight sim was not a good idea, W:EE will kind of put that into perspective. Yes, you can play as one of 8 different national armies, distributed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Yes, you get a great selection of nicely-rendered playable units for each, from MBTs to IFVs to APCs and a range of support vehicles and helos. And yes, you get an impressive variety of moderately large and impressively-detailed maps, ranging over several parts of the potential World War Three European battlefield. But no, you can't actually play anything but a tiny segment of all this super content, until you have unlocked it, by playing and accumulating points.

 

With my 1/300 miniatures, I could set up and fight a battle with any of the units I'd bought. But in creating a PC equivalent with vastly greater scope in about every respect conceivable, they decided to let you have access to almost none of this vast potential, a design decision which beggars belief...my belief, anyway. Perhaps it's somehow tied into anti-cheat measures for the W:EE muntiplayer component. But for now, all I can do is grit my teeth, swallow any sense I have of good and proper game design and begin the aptly-described 'grind' to unlock more of the things I really want to play with. Sensibly, it appears that Eugen Systems have dispensed with this concept for the follow-on wargame series - Wargame: Air Land Battle - which, as well as somewhat better graphics and fixed-wing air support, reportedly and thankfully bins the unlocks. If that's so, I would definitely consider investing in it, although the fixed-wing element can reportedly be a bit too lethal, when in a real WW3 the flyboys would on most days either have been grounded by the bad weather or attacking targets beyond the immediate battlefield...until their airfields were nuked, anyway.

 

As for W:EE, I've tried to find some sort of cheat to unlock the content but no dice. Creating a 'private' multiplayer battle just for youself was said to enable you to get at unlocked units, possibly functioning much like a mission editor, but that didn't work for me. That would be some compensation; but at the minimum, what is really needed is for you to be able to begin any of the available SP campaigns from the get-go and to do so with a much less restricted set of available units.

 

The alternative to playing campaigns and unlocking stuff is the aforementioned 'Skirmish' mode. This is ideal to practice, and lets you do so on any of the many maps available, like this one, for instance. These big, beautifully-rendered virtual environments are the sort of thing that would have massively exceeded my wildest dreams (not to mention my available space and my modelling abilities) as a dilletante 1/300 wargamer, back in the day.

 

 

Maps galore and great warfighting terrain to boot, but as for the actual weaponry, even in this Skirmish mode, you still seem to be restricted to the kit you have unlocked at any point in time. So the darn unlock system is pretty pervasive.

 

Anyhow, if you're now asking 'Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?', well, that's coming next!

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

In the beginning, there was brother against brother

 

To digress for a bit, if you took much of an interest in the Cold War - apart from maybe learning to stop worrying and love the bomb (with apologies to Dr Strangelove and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) - you may like me have read some of the literature it spawned, books like defector 'Victor Suvorov's' classic Inside the Soviet Army and David Isby's encyclopaedic Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army. If you were in the forces during that period, you may like me remember seeing your first picture of the T-72 or T-64 (accompanied in my case by a melodramatic remark about the fate of the person who got the photo to the West) or being warned against siting your platoon's trenches on a forward slope when the Soviets had a tank which could put a first round into a six-foot-square window from 3,000 metres. Or words to that effect.

 

There were also books which portrayed the possible course of a World War Three in Europe. Tom Clancy did one I remember reading; but my favourite from this genre was First Clash by British tanker Kenneth Macksey, which was not a novel but a dramatisation written for Canadian forces for training purposes. This described a possible conflict between the M113-equipped and Leopard 1A4-supported 'Vandoos' (the Royal Vingt-deuxieme Regiment) and the expected Soviet armoured onslaught, in the sort of soldierly detail you don't get in other books.

 

I think it was in John Connells New Maginot Line - a critique of the foibles of modern (mostly US) defence spending unmatched until Lewis Page's literary demolition job on the British equivalent in Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs - that the author recorded the difficulty NATO planers had, in constructing a believable scenario in which WW3 would actually start, thus providing the higher-level 'battle picture' that doubtless kicked off many a NATO Reforger-type exercise. W:EE actually makes a brave attempt here - each of its four stock campaigns takes some trouble to construct a casus belli to get things started. The first campaign is a case in point. It's called 'Bruder Gegen Bruder' and starts with a video compliantion from the period, which moves from real-life world events of the mid-1970s onto the fictional story of an East German border guard who kills two comrades in defecting to West Germany.

 

 

His former employers request his extradition and are most unhappy when Bonn - then the capital of Bundesrepublik Deutschland, remember? - say 'Nein.' Unhappy, to extent that next thing you know, there's an East German incursion into Federal German territory and war is declared. The combination of voiceover, period photos and news clips is blended pretty seamlessly with map animations and game footage as you are led into the scenario.

 

 

Likely or not as the fictional sequence of events portrayed might be, it's really rather neat that the developers have gone to the trouble. Not since the 'MPS News' segments from M1 Tank Platoon 2 have I seen such a laudible effort to get a single player campaign off to such a good start. Not often, anyway. It's a nice touch. You are drawn into the storyline till the point where an in-game camera sequence pulls back from one of the river bridges the East German forces have crossed, past their tanks and the knocked out West German BundesGrenSchutz (BGS, the border guard force) M113s, to the platoon of four Leopard 1s with which you are ordered to repell the enemy incursion. To anyone who was interested or immersed at all in military affairs of the period, it's like it's all coming back into focus; deja vu all over again :) Rather excellent.

 

 

In the screenshot above, you can see, near the bottom, the blue tag indicating our Leopards, next to some commercial buildings and their car park. Left of top centre - tagged green, and thus not playble, though friendly - are two squads of BGS, escaped from their knocked-out APCs, which you can see burning on the road, top centre. Just to the right is the enemy, tagged red - and yes, they are in T-34/85s. This is 1975 and the National Volksarmee is - fortunately for us - still a way off getting T-72s. It seems the East German's own border forces in this sector are not the best equipped, though they've been more than enough for the M113 APCs they have met so far. But these obsolete tanks are not the worst we will come up against, on this, our first mission in defence of the West, perhaps the first shots of World War Three.

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Cast to the Lions Leopards

 

The way W:EE missions seem to work is that on-screen prompts give you a series of objectives, one at a time, as the mission develops. Sometimes you may also get a secondary objective. Objectives seem generally to relate to maked zones on the map, which become visible when you zoom out into a sort of satellite view. Complete the primary objectives, and you win. In doing do, you gain points, in the form of 'Command stars'. A win enables you to progress to the next mission. 'Command stars' enable you to unlock more or better units from those available to your side; sometimes, these can be obtained as reinforcements, which you can deploy during the mission you are playing. What you have available at any point in time seems to be called a 'deck' and you can have two of these, one for playing as NATO, one for playing as WARPAC. In single player, which side you play for may be determined by the campaign - eg in Bruder Geben Bruder, as far as I can see at this early stage in my W:EE endeavours, you can play only for West Germany/NATO.

 

I'm still learning the command interface but it seems amongst the more straightforward ones I've seen, with its own quirks but fairly intuitive. Basically, at its simplest, you mouse click on a unit, then mouse click the spot you want it to move to (or a visible target that you want your unit to attack). That's basically it.

 

Sensibly, units are platoons, except where you might have a single vehicle of a particular type. Also sensible, the unit AI looks after nearly everything else. Like formations, taking cover where you ordered it to halt, and engaging spotted enemies. This may not be what PC wargamers are used to, if they have played games where micromanaging your units is the norm - 'chess with different pieces and rules' as I've been calling that approach. But in my experience, W:EE provides a much more realistic simulation of the mechanics of military operations, beyond the tactics of individual tanks and infantrymen. So in my book, top marks for W:EE. It's got exactly the right approach for any simulation which puts the player in the role of the overall commander. As opposed to simulating a chess game variant. And yes I know chess is a sort of wargame, but a very highly stylised one.

 

Of course, with the player largely unable to micro-manage, and the local stuff left to the AI, the latter needs to be that much better. Fortunately W:EE's AI, while it seems to have some quirks of its own, seems generally good enough to step up to this particular plate.

 

Here's a case in point. My first objective is to destroy the T-34s who have harried the BGS and established themselves on West German territory. The T-34s are in dead ground, hidden from my Leo 1s who are on a sort of plateau. But the bad guys have evidently been spotted by the dismounted BGS and reported to me on the radio net. To destroy the enemy, I decide I will simply roll forward to a convient treeline on the northern edge of the plateau and shoot the WW2 vintage T-34s from there. I accomplish this simply by left clicking my Leo platoon, then right-clicking my chosen firing point or battle position.

 

 

That's all I do. I can't control speed or set complicated paths. I can, however, cancel orders, order faster movement by roads, select targets, and break up units (eg for 'bounding overwatch') and then re-join them. But I don't need to do any of this for now. My Leos move rapidly over the interventing field in a decent inverted wedge formation, come into line as they reach the treeline and halt, in decent cover. As soon as they see the T-34s, they start shooting. The enemy initially turn and charge at us, perhaps to close the range or get into dead ground or better cover. Their 85mm guns, given a hit, will be dangerous for my fast but thinly-armoured Leos. But this avails them nothing. One T-34 is soon burning amidst our M113 wrecks while the other pulls back, his tag indicating that he has had enough and is routing. He doesn't get far before 105mm rounds whack into him. PanzerAusbildungsRegiment 19 should have stuck to its training role, rather than ending up confronting the Bundeswehr's modern Leos in their obsolete machines.

 

 

As far as I know you can't turn off the unit tags. I find them slightly more prominent and/or informative than I'd like them to be but they are quite effective and not too conspicuous. Likewise I understand you can't turn off other on-screen aids, like the command interface on the right, which includes a useful mini-map. My prefence would be to have control over what was displayed, item by item.

 

Anyway, so far, so good. The enemy AI had seemed a bit suicidal but my own side's had done a pretty good job of managing without needing the player unrealistically to micromanage. Just what the Wargame Doctor ordered.

 

The unit models are nicely-done and have respectable animations, like turrets swinging and vehicles rocking on their suspension when firing. It's nice to zoom in and watch this but when an enemy is spotted you will probably find yourself zooming quickly out to assess the situation and direct units accordingly. If possible I would like to develop a play style which is mostly zoomed in and relies on the mini-map as far as possible but events - especially bad ones - can arrive and develop very fast in W:EE and this may or may not be feasible. I may resort to pausing the game at interavals, mostly to look around and take stock, if that's feasible; a bit like a turn-based approach. Somewhat slower-paced battles would help but so far it seems hectic enough and this is just a minor skirmish. Or a series of them, for there's plenty more to come.

 

In the screenshot below, you can see that a message is ordering me to eliminate an enemy breakthrough in Charlie sector. My Leopards are temporarily shaded blue, which happens to units in foliage cover (WARPAC ones going red) so you can see them.  I decide that my next move will be another short platoon dash, this time down off the edge of the plateau to fire positions in the next hedgerow, just short and right of the T-34 burning on the road. So far, so good.

 

 

...to be continued!

[jeanba 1,920]

I played the game few years ago and maybe I will have a newer look into it ?

[+Swordsman422 61]

I have both EE and ALB. I prefer ALB for the tactical utility afforded by aircraft. However, one of my main sticking points has been the unit system. Sure, I get cards limiting the type and number of units available, but I always found it unrealistic that the player could not always put together a realistic grouping of units, especially late period types. Why are their only two cards of M1A1s available when building a deck? And yet I am able to field dozens of mechanized infantry vehicles? I just never understood limiting the number of cards available to the player. As long as I have deck points available, I should be able to draw as many cards of any type as I can afford, even if it is wasteful.

 

I once went in and modded ALB to allow the player to draw up to six of every type of card, with all of the cards representing no less than 4 of that type. Then a patch happened and all that work went poof. The realization of that was not one of my shining examples of maturity.

[33LIMA 972]

Yes Swordsman that's just the sort of thing I'd want. To be able to start every campaign with a credible (say) company-sized, balanced all-arms force - say a tank or mech infantry company with a platoon or two of the other arm cross-attached. Plus a recce section, a Mortar Fire Controller and a Forward Observation Officer, also a section with manpad AA or a tracked system like Shilka, Gepard or Tracked Rapier. Maybe an ATGM section like FV438, BRDM-3 or M901 ITV.

 

[in a similar vein, I remember hand-editing the Panzer Elite unit files so I could choose a platoon with all the same type of tanks, instead of the often rather silly mix of 'vanilla'.]

 

With the option to swap to different base vehicles eg M60A1+M113, M1+M2, or British or Soviet equivalents. If I want to roll over a NATO defender who for that mission sd designed, happens only to have with Leo 1s or M60s with a force headed by T-80BVs rather than T-62s or export T-72s, let me. Better still let me have similar options for both sides, so I might face tough opposition with inferior forces, or light opposition with superior ones. But let me generally start off each campaign as the boss of a realistic, balanced Combat Team (as the British Army of the time called a company sized all-arms force).

 

The sort of unlocks and restrictions I'm finding in W:EE may be fne for a competetive, multiplayer wargame.

 

Still for all that, so far I'm finding W:EE more than good enough at what it does do well to grab and hold my interest, even though it'd be a whole lot better with a more open approach, better suited to the interests of single player gameplay.

 

While the enemy AI seems to have some Banzai tendencies, it's not too bad and the basic approach (to command and control -vs- micomanagement) seems much superior to other PC wargames I have tried, however nicely rendered or accurately specified their units may appear.  I mean, it was Rome Total War that taught me that the Ancients had developed a reliable system of instantly and accurately conveying unit orders across active battlefields which would be the envy of many a 21st Century army; and that the Greeks and Romans were wasting their time, training their armies to deploy and fight in organised lines or phalanxes, when they could do so equally well as separate mobs :)

 

Anyway, coming shortly, Part the Next.

[+Swordsman422 61]

Just a suggestion for EE, artillery is nice, but heavy on the supply lines and not terribly accurate at ranges you might consider useful. Mortar vehicles are a lot more flexible, and while range is limited, accuracy is an improvement. No civilians, BTW, so be fully prepared to level or steer clear of any village you come across.

 

I look forward to your next report.

Edited June 8, 2015 by Swordsman422

[33LIMA 972]

Bruder gegen yet more bruder...

 

My next move was a simple repeat of my first one. Click on my Leopard tank platoon, click on my next chosen fire position and off they go, through the tree line, down the edge of the plateau and across a field of ripening crops to the next hedgerow.

 

The silly mistake I made here was to forget about a second pair of T-34s which had been reported at the start of the mission - presumably by the un-horsed BGS troops, up ahead - at the far, eastern end of the river bridge, over to my half-right. Perhaps because the BGS lost line of sight and my Leos didn't acquire it, they were by this time, no longer tagged or marked up on the min-map. This changed when my Leos reached the hedgerow. With no need for micro-management for me, they swung right and started shooting at the vintage East German panzers. You can see the situation in the semi-zoomed-out screenshot below. My Leos are shaded blue so I can see them in cover, beneath their blue label or tag. The green-labelled BGS are in the fields ahead of us. Over on the far side of that bridge are tagged in red the two T-34s. What you can't see are the 105mm tracers crashing into and around the T-34s and you can't of course hear the crash of the gunfire. But it's all happning, and quite impressively, in a suitably small-scale way.

 

 

One of the T-34s survived our volleys for a few seconds, but it wasn't long before both were knocked out. We can't claim any credit for the killed BTR-60 wheeled APC sitting in front of the tanks; likely, this was a victim of the BundesGrenSchutze, before their own M113s went under.  At this point, we were rewarded with an 'Objective complete' message. To the right of the bridge in the first screenshot below, you can also see W:EE's quite impressive rendition of the Inner German Border, complete with twin walls and watchtowers, with the ground in between presumably mined.

 

 

 

I should probably have split my Leos into two pairs and moved them tactically, leapfrogging or caterpillaring them separately, in what the US Army calls 'bounding overwatch'. W:EE lets you split and recombine units for this and other purposes. But I'd got away with it. Leopard 1s are thin-skinned but were amongst the fastest Main Battle Tanks on the battlefield in their heyday, the post WW2 Germans having concluded that heavy armour was no longer much use, given the thickness (and thus the weight!) needed to make a difference against modern HEAT and kinetic energy projectiles. For now, I decided to stick with short, fast platoon dashes from cover to cover.

 

So far, so good!

 

...to be continued!

 

PS thanks for the tips, Swordsman!

[33LIMA 972]

Any more bruder out there?

 

My next objective was displayed to be reconnoitoring Bravo sector, just to our north. Time to get moving again! Baby steps, though. Baby Leopard steps, you might say...another fast dash as a platoon, just as far as the next hedgerow. This was accomplished without incident.

 

At this point, I was spared the need to split my platoon for tactical movement by the arrival of a little recce vehicle, a French-designed Hotchkiss carrier, or SchutzenPanzewagen 11, which the Bundeswehr operated in quite large numbers in a variety of roles. The recce version which now joined us, I could see, was usefully one with a turret-mounted 20mm autocannon. He had starting orders of his own, for without any action on my part, he appeared at the bottom of the map and rattled north after us, up the central road. Roughly level with where my Leos had stopped, he halted and 'went firm' at the junction with a side road.

 

 

Now, he was under my control. So I ordered him to leapfrog beyond, from his present slightly-exposed position. I sent him up to the better cover of a small stand of trees, next to a lateral track. From here, I expected that he would be able to observe the terrain over which my Leos would next be advancing.

 

 

This move accomplished two things. Firstly, as another on-screen message told me, my recce objective was counted complete. Secondly, we had now acquired visual contact with the enemy. Sorry, yes I know, I know  - 'DON'T USE THAT WORD, UNLESS YOU MEAN IT!!!' 'Contact' means 'contact with the enemy'! Not just a sighting. I should know better. OK...we had now got 'eyes on'.

 

 

The new sighting, with whom we were not yet in actual contact, was another trio of hapless but not entirely helpless T-34s. Believe it or not, the East Germans did still have some of these museum pieces in service in the early-to-mid-1970s, apaprently. But they really should have kept them well away from any risk of bumping into modern MBTs. Intent on proving the truth of this observation, I made a simple plan for their rapid destruction. I would go left-flanking. Not too wide, as I didn't want to be caught in my own flank, by getting too close to that big wood over there.

 

First hop was across a field to the side of a pair of houses. There we halted, but as expected, we were still out of sight of the enemy and unable either to shoot or be shot by him.

 

 

 

Next move was along the axis of a track for easy orientation, steeling slightly left, for the cover of another hedgerow. Once there, we halted.

 

 

 

Still no shooting. Time for my cubs to close for the kill, I decided.I selected yet another a fire position, this time ahead and right, towards the enemy tanks. My Leos responded rapidly. This move finally brought us into cannon-shot of the foe and the Leopards cut loose. Usually the AI seems quite good about adjusting their positions, when halting, to take advantage of the cover that is hopefully present at the spot you have chosen for your unit(s) to move to. Which is good as you have limited control over individual units. On this occasion, however, one of my tanks stopped a bit too far forward, ending up just on the enemy side of the hedgerow. The trick may be to try to bring your unit in nearly at right-angles to any linear cover that you want them to hug. We got the two nearest T-34s - the one beyond was still out of sight - but the foremost Leopard was damaged by return fire.

 

 

 

To get at the third T-34, I took my Leopards back to the left. You can see that the nearest tank exhibits the slightly blackened look which is the first W:EE visual indication of damage. I then chose a new firing position back to the left. further north from our first one. And from there, we spotted and shot him.

 

 

 

By about this time, as you can see from the on-screen message in the pic above, our next objective had become pushing further back the enemy breakthrough in Bravo sector. With this aim in mind, I turned again to my trusty Hotchkiss. Recce units like this in W:EE are not mere cannon fodder, to be sent ahead to reveal enemies by suicidally drawing fire. They have both extra spotting capabilities and more of what today tends to be called 'stealth' - the ability to move about less conspicuously than other units. I sent my Hotchkiss forward again and off he went, up the main road between the concealing hedges, past T-34s burnt out in the fields. Notice that in W:EE, you can see grass or crops where they have been flattened by the passage of vehicles!

 

 

 

Whatever was up ahead, I was relying on my Hotchkiss once again spotting it, before it spotted us.

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Hide and seek with the bruder

 

By now, I was geting into a steady rhythm with this. A sort of hunter-killer cycle. Push the recce Hotchkiss forward a bound. See what he spots. Then push the Leos up to a position from where the can shoot the identified targets, from cover.

 

Trouble was, the targets the Hotchkiss now spotted from the strip wood were bigger and badder...specifically, a pair of T-55s. Decent armour, thicker than my Leos, and a good enough gun too, 100mm rather than the previous generation 85 of the T-34s. Not so easy, this time.

 

 

I was aghast when the Hotchkiss suddenly started shooting at the enemy tanks with his 20mm pop gun. Hadn't I been careful enough in chosing his position, so he was further back in the woods? Too late now. I suppose I should have immediately pulled the Hotchkiss back, but instead, I chose to push my Leopards forward, to shoot the T-55s while they were otherwise occupied. Fortunately the Leos didn't have far to go. They charged forward, halted at the hedgerow I'd selected as their fire position, and laid into the T-55s.

 

 

 

I got away with it. We clobbered the T-55s and somehow neither the Hotchkiss nor my Leos took any damage. In the pic imediately above, you can see a piece of text near the latter ('Combat Level 2') which I think indicates this unit has gained some 'experience points'. This display is a bit 'gamey'; I'd prefer this sort of stuff was notified at the end of each battle, rather than floating over the unit. Even a message top or bottom of screen would be less obtrusive. Maybe I'm only seeing this, because this first mission is a sort of training one, with various on-screen tips. I dunno.

 

At this point, for a reason I can't remember now, I decided my Leos would now leapfrog my Hotchkiss, rather than the previous practice of the recce vehicle clearing ahead. For their next fire position, I chose the left-hand edge of the wood from which the T-55s had emerged, believing that area was now clear of the enemy. It was. But the woods to my left were not. My first inkling of this was bursts of automatic weapons fire from there, directed at my tanks, which cleverly pivoted left automatically, to face the threat. Whatever it was.

 

 

In fact I already knew what it was, pretty well. It was the thing which had ended my previous try with this mission. By this time, I had deduced that the same enemies tended to appear in much the same place, each playithrough. There doesn't seem to be any variability. This didn't spoil the immersion or the fun for me, but it is a bit First Person Shooter-ish.

 

As happened last time, we were being attacked by a BTR-60-equiped Motor Rifle platoon. And as before, the beggars were charging us, the dismounted infantry led by the BTRs which pushed ahead. All that was missing was cries of 'Banzai!' At least Japanese forces usually waited for cover of darkness and tried to infiltrate before making suicidal assaults. This was pretty poor AI. I hadn't detected or engaged the BTRs. They should have sat tight or even withdrawn, or at most, tried to infiltrate their dismounts into RPG range. But no, they just charged, out into the open, right at us. C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre.

 

 

The first time this happened, I was caught by surprise. I let the Leos sit tight, killing the BTRs. This gave the charging dismounts just enough time to get close enough to unleash a spectacular little barrage of RPGs. Game over, near enough.

 

This time, correctly but sadly anticipating the same inhuman tactics, I pulled the Leos back fairly quickly. They still managed to clobber the BTRs before moving but I lost my nearest Leo in return - a lucky hit from a 14.5mm MG or more likely a long-range RPG effort before he could open the range. In the pic below, incidentally, you can see the on-screen tip telling me that my losses and experience gains will carry over to the next mission.

 

 

Anyway this time at least, we wiped out the Banzai Bruder. Our MGs and main guns mowed 'em down as they charged us. Serves 'em right. Absolutely no sympathy for any of them, charging tanks over open ground, like that.

 

 

I appreciate that a desperate, direct charge is appropriate in some situations, like when you are caught at very close range in the kill zone of an ambush. That didn't apply here. The BTRs should have sat out the war, rather than charging us.

 

Besides the destruction of these rather silly people, the other consolation for the loss of one of my precious Leopards was the announcement that we had achieved our current objective.

 

 

Could have been worse. For the loss of one tank, we had gained a fair bit of ground and wreaked a goodly bit of havoc upon the enemy forces. The latter, fortunately, had not been concentrated, but instead, were deployed about the place in the proverbial penny packets. Perhaps the teachings of Heinz Guderian weren't much studied in the Socialist paradise of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, otherwise they might have thought, 'Klotzen, nicht klechern'. Anyway, we were still in business, while the other bruder's balance sheet was looking a bit shaky.

 

No offence to the DDR by the way, I still treasure my Praktica BX-20.

 

...to be continued!

[jeanba 1,920]

Did this mission yestearday, I lost one Leopard and 1 SPz-II (another one being damaged)

[33LIMA 972]

Did this mission yestearday, I lost one Leopard and 1 SPz-II (another one being damaged)

 

Good result. I only had one SPz, must have missed the option to deploy an extra one.

[33LIMA 972]

Revenge of the Banzai Bruder?

 

At about this time, things started to become a bit more complicated. First, I was presented with two more on-screen objectives, my last two as it turned out. They're on the screen below, the primary one higher up, descreasing in size as it fades (destroy an alpha sector bridgehead) and a secondary one in the centre (destroy an HQ at a checkpoint, wherever that is). I think the distinction is that primary goals are mandatory for mission success, sesondary ones are not, just earling extra victory points, Command Stars or whatever. don't ask me why the screen is darkened but it's in the 'satelite' view I think, well zoomed out at any rate.

 

 

At this point, another complication appaeared. A pop-up top left of the screen offered me some more troops which I could deploy. Not the most warlike ones, unfortunately, a couple of Magirus Deutz 'Jupiter' 7-tonner suply trucks. Thanks, guys, that will come in really handy. True enough, my Leos' volleys had used up a fair bit of 105mm bit two supply trucks weren't the most welcome addition to my force, at that point. Could I have used them to pick up the un-horsed BGS troops? Probably not as the latter were non-playable. Impatiently, I just ordered the two trucks forward, to join us in the woods, from which I was about to move forward. I didn't know how to 'bomb up' from them and didn't pause to try. If we ran low on ammo, they would be close behind us...assuming they were carrying any. Resupply is apparently an important part of W:EE but I recckoned on fighting out this battle with the resources I'd started with.

 

 

Accordingly, I leapfrogged my three remaining Leos, forward to the right-hand edge of the strip wood from which the now-defunct T-55s had emerged. Once there, I zoomed back out a bit and looked at the ground. The next move would be the Hotchkiss leapfrogging us. The question was, which way should our advance now develop - to the left, to the centre, or to the right?

 

 

 

I considered each option in turn, in the approved manner, as I'd been trained many moons ago. On the left, relatively open, with a series of hedge or tree-rows which would provide respectable fire positions on the way. In the centre, some urban close cover in the form of small industrial development, good cover but too close, better bypassed than driven into with tanks. On the right, much more open country than on the left, with less cover and East Germany to the right across the river, in range of tank guns and ATGMs. Decision - swing left, use what cover there was to advance in bounds, watching both flanks, as well as ahead.

 

This is where I started to lose the plot. I was well cheesed off by the loss of a Leo to the Banzai Brigade; and that with closer country looming ahead, the best re-inforcements HQ would send me was a couple of effing trucks. Stupidly, I failed to slip the Leos across from the right of the strip wood to its left hand side, before sending the Hotchkiss forward from that position. So when he very quickly spotted a T-34-85 next to the buildings and a BMP-1, no less, in open country, he was on his own; the Leos were well out of the picture. From that point on, the battle was...well, not lost, but I could feel control, and therefore the prospect of victory, slipping through my fingers.

 

 

Cursing my laxity, I quickly pushed my three remaining Leos ahead. They leapfrogged the Hotchkiss, shot up the T-34, and laid into the BMP. The latter cut loose with a Sagger but from what I could see from its smoke trail, it went out of control just before reaching us, possibly because we hit the BMP (Saggers being first-generation ATGMs requiring a skillful gunner to 'fly' the missile all the way up to impact). The visual effect of the Sagger going haywire just before reaching us was rather nicely done.

 

This wasn't too bad but the BMP wasn't alone. To the right were a couple of BTR-60 APCs and a UAZ 469 jeep. They kept our gunners busy for a little while but we soon made short work of them. The little '+10' tag you can see in the first pic below is rising up from a killed BTR, like the ghost leaving the body. I think this represents the points we earn from its destruction. Neat but I wish such 'gamey' displays were provided instead as post-mission stats.

 

 

 

OK, I had been rattled,  but I was still in business. Time to get back on top of the battle. I ordered the Hotchkiss SPz to leapfrog our concealed Leopards, and off he went. These light recce vehicles are definitely worth their weight in gold in W:EE, surprisingly survivable and most effective at spotting bad guys you might otherwise just bump into.

 

 

I was still on course for my final objective. Whatever way this mission was going to end up, I wouldn't be long in finding out.

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Alle menschen werden bruder...not

 

 

As planned, I couninued a cautious advance, swinging my axis from north to east as we came around the far side of the industrial zone. My intention was to hook around to the river, staying north of the small town. The aim was the same - to locate and destroy enemy forces, by fire and movement. Initially, this went much as planned, the first victims being a cuuple of T-55s we caught and smashed in a treeline.

 

 

Wasting no time, I resumed my methodical advance. Moving up and around the northern edge of the industrial zone, we were soon skirting the edge of the town of Grafhorst, with tension rising steadily. Where where they?

 

 

 

As you can see in the screenshot below, W:EE's urban areas are small but beatifully formed. As with the equally-luscious rural areas, the level of detail and the quality of the textures really are top notch; they would not be out of place in a modern tanksim.

 

 

Naturally, I had better things to do, than admire all of this visual bounty. Alternately moving the Hotchkiss and my three Leos - another one of which had been damaged in the last shoot-out, incidentally - I continued to work my way around the northern environs of the town. The 'click unit-click fire position' sequence makes tactical movement - bounding overwatch, call it what you will - a pleasure to execute in W:EE. It really is a rather good way of practicing this drill, so important in real life. Real armies used to employ little models and so-called sand tables for this sort of thing. W:EE's fantastic landscapes and simple mechanics make a great substitute, whether you play from a bird's eye view or for a greater challenge, get down into the weeds to get a tank's-eye view. Marvellous stuff and the experience of practicing this drill in (virtual) action, with such excellent units and terrain, is on its own enough to make W:EE a big winner, in my books.

 

 

The area just north of the town turned out to be clear of enemies, but the ground to its south was to prove swarming with the beggars. The first indication of this was a T-34-85, spotted briefly between the buildings. I moved my Leopards into the town, to come up upon his left flank.

 

 

 

We temporarily lost sight of the T-34 but on emerging from the town's southern buildings, the first thing my Leopards saw were some dismounted enemy infantry in a cornfield. These we duly engaged, with satisfactory results.

 

 

 

At that point, our fortunes rapidly took another nose-dive. There were two, not one, T-34s in the treeline and nosing further out, we got into a close-range fire-fight with them. We killed them both but during the engagement, were caught in a crossfire from other enemy units - a T-55, if I recall right - hidden at the other end of the treeline. That engagement cost me another Leo knocked out and another, damaged. I pulled back my surviving tank, whom I was determined not to lose in a shoot-out with enemy firing from good cover.

 

 

Instead, I pulled back and swung around towards the river. From there, I went south then turned north-west, to come at the enemy in the treeline from roughly the opposite direction. Once in position for an assault, I rather incautiously pushed in with my Hotchkiss and my last Leo at the same time, but on widely-spaced axes. I was relying on 'swarming' him from behind...even if two AFVs make a rather small swarm.

 

 

At one point, I thought this was going to cost me at least the Hotchkiss, for he very quickly started taking tank fire!

 

 

However, my Leo got the last bruder while he was thus preoccupied. It was a close run thing, but my last primary objective had now been achieved.

 

 

I decided to call it quits there, rather than risk my last two AFVs mopping up the enemy HQ, which was a purely secondary, 'bonus' objective. No need to be greedy. The victory I had won would be sweet enough.

 

 

...and in conclusion...

So...overall, what did I make of Wargame: European Escalation, then? Well, I absolutely loathe the unlocks; the fact that, of all that lovely kit, you can play with practically diddly squat, until you fight your way to it (which I believe you can do, by earning these Command Star thingies, via either single or multi-player). Yuk, yuk, yuk. They binned this with the follow-on Wargame:Airland Battle, thank goodness; but they really ought to patch W:EE similarly, putting consideration to customers over purely commercial considerations.

 

The on-screen aids are in general, too numerous, too informative and too inflexible, in that it seems you can neither reduce nor toggle off/remove them.

 

The AI has some rough edges, notably the occasional Banzai charges. Can AFVs or troops use smoke dischargers or grenades? Haven't seen that, yet.

 

One of the worst aspects is the Forward Operating Bases. I haven't seen much of these so far. But they constitute forward supply bases which can help keep your units POL'ed (fuelled), 'bombed up' and therefore, fighting. Whether they should be so close to the Forward Edge of the Battle Area as to appear on W:EE's maps, is another matter. Worst of all, their appearance is ridiculous. This isn't Afghanistan or Vietnam. But the W:EE FOBs are walled, permanent-looking encampments. They're reminiscent of the permanent bases in Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, with the addition of prominent towers at each corner, which look like a combination of a minaret from a mosque and a mobile phone mast. They are truly awful. If we must have such supply bases, they should be rendered as irregular, camouflaged supply dumps; stacks of oil drums and crates, all under camo nets, with some suitable field defences and maybe a few trucks visible. Some tents and an inconspicuous rod-style radio antenna or two, maybe. I'm not going to disgrace this mission report with a screenshot of a W:EE Forward Operating Base. In the context of this game, set where and when it is, they are beyond awful.

 

From all of this, you might think I am, after all, rather lukewarm about W:EE.

 

Not at all. I love it.

 

I think it's great. I haven't played many PC wargames but thanks to its refusal to offer the player a chess game variant with every single unit able to be (or needing) micro-managed, I find W:EE much the best of any I've tried. My negatives are dwarfed by the things I love. The battlefields are a wargamer's wet dream. Likewise, the units, both in their extent and in their rendition. I wish there were fewer 'gamey' elements but what these features do, they do well, in terms of aiding playability. Above all, W:EE provides a great 'sandbox' to practice and carry out military-style exercises in miniature. The limited control over individual units is largely compensated for by appropriate AI and the resultant ability to play without micro-management is a not a curse, but a very considerable blessing. The other plus is that W:EE unit management is very easy to pick up - simplified, rather than simplistic. It helps, if you already have a smattering of small-unit tactics and some prior knowledge of Cold War weapon characteristics. Much as would help with any wargame, in any era.

 

It's early days yet but on my experience so far, my verdict is simple. For the past, present or would-be future Cold War virtual warrior, Wargame: European Escalation is, in my modest but honest opinion, a dream come true.

 

[Dave63 13]

Based on your AARs, I picked it up the other day!

[jeanba 1,920]

I am trying the third mission of the campaign : it is very tough, I think I did not call enough reinforcement at the beginning and then dispersed myself attacking and trying to hold 2 positons at teh same time.

I will retry with a more massive attack on my main objective 

[+Swordsman422 61]

Having always been a fan of late Cold War conflict potential, I am loving these reports and have started playing ALB again!

 

A warning about this campaign... Try to save as many units as you can. The very last mission is a real teeth-grinder without having everything you can possibly throw.

 

Also, just as urban areas are terrible to push through, if they are unoccupied, it can really shock you how well a few well-hidden squads of infantrymen can hold off an armored column. If you can make use of the towns, do so. Just keep your tanks well out of them.

 

 

When I finally got to the Able Archer campaign, I went a little crazy and saved any time I did anything, so that should I lose even a single unit, I can go back and retry that last few seconds. Almost all the campaigns have downer endings. Bruder Gegen Bruder was probably the only one that didn't.

Edited June 11, 2015 by Swordsman422

[33LIMA 972]

Good to see the interest is there...well, here, as many others already seem to be fans of this series.

 

I probably need to replay the first battle as the win cost be dearly...assuming lost tanks aren't recovered unless burned out (at least one was, though). Difficult missions plus losses being cumulative sounds a bit too steep a hill to climb. Unless you thrive on climbing steep hills.

 

I don't like missions with 'excessive' challenge, where it becomes a CoD-style replay fest to find a way to get the unit which blocked you last time. Even if I win, I want a campaign which doesn't generate a loss rate that would have brought a real army to its knees...and end up like Pyrrhus, observing ruefully that another victory like the last one will be the end of us all. I like to bring my boys home....most of them anyway, even if they have to walk because their AFVs are all wrecks :) We'll see how this goes. If there's a difficulty setting or 'cheat' which dumbs down the (enemy) AI or reduces his numbers, I may try that. A mod to replace the dreadful FOB model would be great. Even painting those towers with transparent textures, and replacing the walls with barbed wire coils, would be good. Must Google 'W:EE' and 'mods'.

 

I may try Airland Battle after this. I can live without the fast jets and don't really fancy the Scandanavian theatre, but 'most/all units unlocked from the get/go' is a big plus. In the meantime W:EE looks like it ticks most of my Cold War wargame boxes...provided I can progress.

 

those who have played W:EE before, am I correct in thinking that even in the 'Solo/Skirmish' mode, you are restricted to the units you have unlocked? You'd think they'd let you have free rein there. If not, it's a pity if no-one has found a Skirmish mode unlock 'work-around'....

[+Johan217 5]

It's currently 50% off on Steam (€4,99).

 

33Lima, you did it again. First you made me buy all the Graviteam stuff, now this! Love reading your reports, they are often much more informative than reviews on other sites.

[33LIMA 972]

It's currently 50% off on Steam (€4,99).

 

33Lima, you did it again. First you made me buy all the Graviteam stuff, now this! Love reading your reports, they are often much more informative than reviews on other sites.

 

Vielen dank, Johan, I just hope you like them!

 

I just played a few minutes of W:EE mission #2 and wow, it's a whole new ball game.

 

First I realised that I could unlock a really decent amount of stuff with my small tally of Command Stars from mission #1 - so maybe unlocking is not as much of a grind as I had feared (not to mention the 'grinding' is actually fun). The unlockable content included some BAOR stuff so naturally I grabbed Chieftain, Spartan and Scimitar. plus some more Bundeswehr stuff including infantry. And having kicked off the mission, I realised that clicking top left, I can order up and deploy many of these units, up to the points total displayed up there. It's a bit like the printed 'Army Lists' you could get for hardcopy wargame rules - within the units available to you, you can choose a force up to the total points allowed for the mission. Stuff is beginning to make sense, now.

 

But having greedily maxed out my points, suddenly I realised I had a lot more platoons to control - from two to about eight. When our initially German force won our first objective, I suddenly found that the three Chieftains of the 9/12th Royal Lancers that I had to link up with, are now under my command - I can fight with Chieftains, already!!!! Woah, yeah!

 

 

 

 

Of course, I went completely mad and acted like a little kid let loose in the proverbial chocolate factory, just throwing all this new kit about the map - Chieftains, Leopards, Scorpions, M113s, even a couple of M42 SP AA guns and more besides. Organised confusion, but somehow we crushed the enemy T-34s and T-55s and beat up their FOB - which looks somewhat better, blackened by a goodly dose of death and destruction, a NATO special delivery.

 

 

Managing more than a couple of units at once is whole different ballgame...well, not different, but bigger. I'm going to need to calm down, organise my force and then push it forward in an organised manner. Maintain my balance, as Monty might have put it. Same drill as the previous mission, just scaled up a bit. Oooh, I think I'm gonna have some real old fun with W:EE!

 

This is how I feel right now; having a Deutsche Wochenschau Moment, volume turned up, player set to loop:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkCUvbkXGL0

[jeanba 1,920]

I made the third mision : "highway to hell"

The second is a milk run compared to the third.

I must have restarted 3 or 4 times :

Make battle groups with a nice variety of units and plan well your advance.

[33LIMA 972]

I know I said I'd likely wait till I'd played some more W:EE and that I wasn't that interested in the more northern theatre, but Wargame:AirLand Battle is in a Steam sale for £2.99 so I'm installing it now!

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/222750/

 

No patience, some people, but another bargain is another bargain!

 

PS installation of W:ALB completed, just spending some time in the visual armoury, admiring all the kit. As with W:EE the Chieftain turret is a bit crude, possibly a compromise to cover early and later, Stillbrew versions...

 

 

...the Canadian Leopard C1 looks good but doesn't have the angular, welded turret...

 

 

...and the Saladin armoured car has a Saracen radator in front! But such quibbles aside, the variety, as with W:EE, is most impressive and the rendering generally very good. The Soviet kit is a veritable recognition manual-full of classic Red Army hardware, from tanks to IFVs and everything in between.

 

 

 

 

 

...and now in W:ALB I can see them, and hopefully employ them, without having to do all the unlocking. Sweet!

[+Gunrunner 320]

33Lima, if you plan on being a mostly skirmish player (non-campaign solo games against AI) and continue playing it as a wargame rather than a RTS I recommend Red Dragon as it introduces variable speed, allowing you to slow the game down when things get hairy (the AI player can micro-manage whole divisions, but I found you can at best manage a regiment, basically sacrificing the units you are not micro-managing, unless you use the variable speed to pass your orders around the map that is).

 

I just wish you could import EE and ALB european style maps into Red Dragon (and a few hundred more naval units).

[33LIMA 972]

Thanks Gunrunner, tho I do like and intend to play campaigns, that is EXACTLY the sort of thing that I think I'd like to see. The Warpac -v- NATO side is what I'm really interested in but with some ship action, Red Dragon might be a good alternative.

 

In W:EE so far, things often happen a bit too fast. This might be fair enough to an extent...except that I'm still seeing enemy light units especially - who should really be much more circumspect - simply appear and instantly charge you, regardless of losses. In the second mission of Bruder Gegen Bruder, for example, some crazies in 2-3 BRDMs or something similar rushed us (heading, as if by magic, for the M577 command unit whose presense in sector Echo enabled me to claim it!), dashing straight across the fields of fire of two M42 SP twin 40mm guns whom I'd positioned in a hedge to overwatch the HQ. The 'Dusters' should have shredded the light armour but they only got some and the survivor(s) got my M577.

 

The other factor is that, as you say, the AI does its battle drills (from Combat Appreciation by the commander(s) on the spot, to issuing even quick orders, to action) VERY fast...and can do that for multiple platoons simultaneously.

 

Evidently, since they've built a 'brake' into Red Dragon, Eugen are learning and adapting, as they develop the series. It'd be good if they patched W:EE to bypass the unlocks and add the brake, and W:ALB to add the brake.

 

In the meantime, I'll try adapting to the situation in W:EE and W:ALB, for example by keeping moves short and staying concentrated, maximising mutual support and interlocking fields of fire. And if that's possible now, pausing the action, if I want to admire the vehicles, take screenshots or just catch my breath!

 

 

Regardless of such issues I'm still finding W:EE is a Cold War wargamer's delight! What I'd have given for something as good as this, 20 years ago!

 

 

 

[+Swordsman422 61]

33Lima, thanks to you I am now modding Wargame again. My current project is intended to remove card count restrictions, and to have each card represent a company of tanks, IFVs, or logistical trucks (12), platoons of support vehicles (4), flights of helicopters (4), or elements of aircraft (2). Ammunition counts for the main guns will be accurate, i.e. 42 rounds for the M1A1 instead of 25, 36 rounds for the T-80BV instead of 20, etc, so that they are slightly less dependent on logistical support. I'll also decrease some unit costs.

 

My main goal will be for players to create decks that would reflect real world unit orders of battle. Typically you don't see an armored btn. composed of several different types of tanks, or a recon unit with different classes of vehicles.