Red Barricades

Many of you know Ol' Vettie is a huge Mech Warrior fan. Heck I have an entire blog devoted to MW. Well guess what? MechWarrior aint the only game in town for the old guy.

You see, many years ago, I was a big “war game” geek. Yeah I said geek. Not only that, but I had some friends and buddies that were War Gamers too. Huntsville had a “club” that was devoted to playing war games. Once a month they would have a meeting and play games from about 7.00a Saturday morning until sometime Sunday night.

I played many different war games of all varieties, from Civil War battles to World War I games to World War II games to Modern Day warfare and even some futuristic games. Of all those I played, I seemed to like WWII games best and so did the group of guys I hung out with.

Avalon Hill and Victory Games were two of the big publishers back then and between our group, we probably had every WWII title those companies released. Heck, we even went to “Cons” like AvalonCon where the game company sponsored tournaments. We got a couple of rooms and made the 3 day event like it was Woodstock or some political convention.

During that time frame, one of my best buds and I decided to try this game called Squad Leader. It was a tactical level game of WWII where the counters represented single vehicles and squads and even single men (leaders). The game was rated as a 8.5 to 9 (on a scale of complexity) but it had a programmatic scale of rules. That is, you learned a few rules and you played a scenario that used those rules. Then you learned a few more and you played another scenario that had all the first set of rules PLUS the ones you just learned. This went on until you had all the rules learned Then, Avalon Hill released “modules” adding more stuff (nationalities) and more specific rules. The first of these was Cross of Iron adding some serious rules for the Russians and Germans. Next came Crescendo of Doom adding the European forces (Brits mostly) and finally, G.I. Anvil of Victory that included the Americans.

It was about this time that Avalon Hill decided to consolidate ALL the rules from those modules and clarify them into one rule book. In doing so, the game became quite a bit more complex and they even had to redo the counters to account for some of the new rules. The result was a game called Advanced Squad Leader.

Let me clarify a little something here. Advanced Squad Leader is not a game per se', it is only a rule book used for playing ASL Modules. The group that I played with most of the time decided we needed to move in that direction. For it's day, ASL rulebook was very expensive (25$) and the supporting modules were roughly just as expensive. To get started, you needed ASL Rules and a module called Beyond Valor. This gave you a complete set of rules and ALL the historical Russian and German (including Finns) units that were seen in combat in WWII. Let me remind you that ASL did not include Air Forces altho Planes are in the mix, it is mainly a ground combat simulation.

So we bit the bullet and we continued to bite with each release of a new module. The group of guys I played with changed some over the years, but a core group of us STILL play. Yes, I said we still play. The new rulebook is on its 3rd edition (and yes we have kept up) even tho Avalon Hill long ago sold out to Hasbro. A friend of ours, who also shares a love for this game called ASL, bought the rights to publish ASL and anything old and new generated from it from Hasbro. You may know the guy. He was an All-Star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox (as well as many other teams in his past). Curt Schilling is the guy and he formed his own publishing company to keep the game afloat. MultiMan Publishing now is the release point for all things ASL. We thank you Curt.

There is a small group of us now, that continue to play on a weekly basis. In fact, we just embarked on a new (another) Red Barricades campaign. This game was released back in the mid 1980's. The campaign reflects the German attack into Stalingrad during 1942 and more so revolves around the Nazi effort to take over the ordinance factory known as Krasnaya Barricady, or simply The Red Barricades ordinance factory. This is a re-creation of the actual Nazi campaign to push the Russians out of the factory and into the Volga, thus shutting down a major source of supply for gun barrels for tanks and anti-tank guns. The actual campaign lasted 30 days, from Mid October thru November.



Prior to the release of Red Barricades, all the ASL scenarios had been (relatively) small encounters lasting only a few game turns, somewhere between 5 and 12. The numbers of units used would depend on the battle or skirmish being represented, but would generally be a small number of units depending on how long (in game turns) the scenario was. These were “based” on actual battles, but usually represented only a small part of a battle or the prelude to a larger battle.

The group I played with (and I am sure we were not the only ones) sent a letter (no email in those days) to Avalon Hill suggesting some rules changes and, more importantly, suggesting that they do some sort of campaign game. The reason for the request was pretty simple. In a typical ASL scenario you had just a few game turns to meet victory conditions. Additionally, you had just a few units to accomplish victory (or to keep your enemy for doing so). A single mistake, or a bad set of die rolls could cost you the game. Many times it was decided early in the game OR it came down to a mad, unrealistic rush to get the victory condition (whatever it was, capturing a building or multiple buildings, inflicting X number of causalities, or exiting so many units of the game board.) Altho these were quite fun, it had that unrealistic feel to it. In the war, there weren't that many times that a leader would continue to send men (squad after squad) to their death just so some could leave the area, no most were fought with some bit of conservatism to save that tank or that squad for the next days battles. We often did DYO (design your own) scenarios that were “campaign like” so that you could “save” forces from the battle to use in the next one.

Obviously the designers were already on that train of thought. AH released a “Historical Campaign Module” that did all the things we were looking for. Red Barricades recreated and actual battle from day 1 of that battle through the very last day of the battle. Each 'scenario' represented 1 day of fighting. Things that didn't die got to stick around for the next day of fighting and so on. The victory condition was that the German Forces had to take over the entire map in 30 days of fighting and the Russians had to stop them to win.

The game is much more complex than that, but in a nut shell, the Nazis attack the factory and the Ruskies try to keep them out. The map is a 44” by 22” hexagonal grid overlaying a “fly by” picture of the actual battlefield taken from WWII photos, then obviously enhanced some to make things a little more clear for the players. The Order of Battle is taken from historical records of what actually fought in the battle, in other words, if it was there, its in the game. Players make “purchases” from day to day based on “what was there” and what they had previously bought. This means if only 3 Sturm Companies appeared in the entire battle, the German player can never buy more than 3 Sturm companies, but they could buy less. To make it more fun, each players purchases may not be a FULL company. They may be depleted, meaning they only get part of a company but they cost the same and the only control a player has over this is a die roll depending on some modifiers (based on historical events and actual game play events).



Anyway, as I said earlier, we have started a new campaign. Its 2 teams of 2 players each. Representing the German forces will be my old friend Ron who has been playing since the original Squad Leader game days, and my old friend Phil who joined us in playing war games some 18 years ago (maybe?). For the Russians, it will be a new comer to the gaming world, a friend of all of us Hugh and of course, Ol' Vettie. One of our plans is to use this (or maybe a new one) blog to keep up with the day to day (we meet once a week) battles. To list what each team bought for battle and to get their current battle strategy going in to the daily battle, note any changes of strategy and finally to get their point of view once the battle (daily battle) concludes and then repeat this for the next day and so on. Not really a series replay, but more so an overview of thoughts and ideas from both points of view. When we can, we might add some pictures of the battlefield so you readers can see where we are and what it looks like.

Let me know what you think and especially if there are any “gamers” out there, let me know your favourite game. I know Battletech got its beginnings (it still is) a board game.

W00t!