Blood on the Snow - Sino/Soviet Border Clashes

[MarkSheppard]

First scenario in the series is up; centering on the March 2, 1969 border clash between Soviet Border Guards and Chinese troops.

You will need MBT version 4.0 for maximum compatibility.

Two things in this ZIP:

Scenario 260: The Scenario Itself utilizing a reduced map for faster playability.

Map 350: Large map (260x160) of the Area, summer.
Map 351: Large map (260x160) of the Area, Deep Winter; frozen river.

Scenario Description:

Damanskiy 3/2/69
China Defend vs. Soviet Assault
Date: March 2, 1969
Location: Damanskiy Island, Ussuri river, USSR

On the night of 1/2 March 1969, a large number of Chinese soldiers occupied Damansky Island, which straddled the Russian-Chinese Frontier. Initially, this incursion was overlooked at first, because the Russian Border Guards did not notice anything. It was not until around 10:40 AM that the lookout at Nizhne-Mikhailovka reported about thirty armed men crossing from the Chinese side of the river to the island.

The commandant of the post; Senior Lt. Strelnikov, assembled a group of about 32 frontier guardsmen and reached the island around 11:00 AM. Around 11:10 AM, the Chinese decided to open fire on Strelnikov's group, killing most of them in the battle that followed.

As this scenario starts, the remnants of Strelnikov's group are huddling along the shoreline, as the reserve group, headed by Senior Lt. Bubenin, approaches the island at around 11:30 AM.

In the resulting battle that followed; the Chinese were driven off the island, but they would return later.

EDIT: Playability suggestions appreciated.

EDIT II: Rebuilt it many times before I "got the hang" of using the scenario editor; lol.

[hoplitis]

Short & sweet! How do you want my comments delivered?

[MarkSheppard]

Just generalities.

I originally was planning to use the 260x100 map, and have the Reinforcement group race across the frozen river from the northern side of the map; but two problems made me rework it so they start relatively close:

1.) AI Problems
2.) Moving those BTRs across the river can get tedious.

There are two more possible historical scenarios from this map:

1.) Another skirmish on the island, which involved the use of four Soviet T-62s; the Chinese managed to hold the island this time; and they captured a T-62, which was used as a study aid for their own tank development program.

2.) The Third and final skirmish on the island; I'm not really thinking about doing this -- because this is essentially what happened -- The Soviets bought up all kinds of artillery, including a BM-21 GRAD unit and simply plastered the island in a hurricane of fire, and then walked onto the wreckage -- something like 600~ chinese died in this incident -- what would be the fun in bombarding an island for two turns and then walking over the survivors?

[MarkSheppard]

By the way, this map was made using the MicroDEM/Fred Chlanda Map Editor detailed

HERE

[hoplitis]

OK I attached a .doc with my comments. (massive spoiler alert )

[wulfir]

MarkSheppard said:
EDIT: Playability suggestions appreciated.

- - SPOILER WARNING - - - - - - - - - -




The scenario works fine, just played it through defending the border of the Motherland. Lost 18 troopers to 119 Chinamen. Urahhh!

IMHO using the smaller size map instead of the full 200x160 for this scenario was the right decision.

The Chinese lack of AT weapons gives them little chance vs the Soviet BTRs. If you want to even things out you could add some type of inf-AT weapon, like say a AT-mine, RPG, Satchel charge etc to one or two of the Chinese sections -

but as far as I'm concerned that's not neccessary as players will not know what awaits them in the treeline anyway.

I looked at the 200x160 map. It's good. You could maybe add some other types of grass, rough hexes etc to get some variation in the looks.



Regarding the third battle for the island, you could use the actual events as a basis for the scenario but alter some things like maybe the size of the battle, artillery involved, objectives etc to get an interesting scenario. Think of it as freedom of the artist...