New Scenario: Central Front 1989 (NATO vs Warsaw Pact)

[THW]

G'day everyone,

It's taken more than 10 years of chipping away at this, but it's finally at the stage where it's ready to pass on for your enjoyment. I'd like to thank Bill Lott for making the excellent map, as well as doing a lot of playtesting over the years.

Date: May 1989
Unit scale: Brigade, Regiment, Battalion
Map scale: 10 km
Turn length: 1 day
Turns: 29 (1 turn cease-fire, 28 active turns)

The exact details of why the Soviet Union decided to go to war in the spring of 1989 are uncertain. Maybe the Communist leadership could see the crumbling of their empire, and decided to stake everything on a last desperate effort to hold onto power. Maybe they thought that they had to overwhelm the West before NATO became too powerful and attacked them in turn. Whatever the reason, the result was the same.

Preparations for mobilisation were begun almost immediately, but kept deliberately low-profile, to avoid alerting NATO. Western intelligence agencies picked up some of the signs, but not enough to justify a higher alert state. Full Warsaw Pact mobilisation began only eight days ago. It took NATO three days to assess the situation, longer for political leaders to be convinced, and for its own mobilisation to begin. With less than a week to mobilise, a number of NATO countries are still scrambling to get into position.

US reinforcements have been arriving for some days, but many units are still enroute. Air Force wings are preparing to reinforce the 2nd and 4th Allied Tactical Air Forces in Central Europe, as well as Iceland, Norway and the Mediterranean.

The Poles, East Germans and Czechoslovak peoples are not enthusiastic about the war. But a mixture of propaganda, nationalism and fear of the secret police has meant that enough reservists have reported for duty. However, the Warsaw Pact generals know that only victory and success will keep these troops fighting for long. Defeat, or even a drawn out war will see these countries withdraw from the conflict, and their armies put down their weapons.

A high-intensity, conventional war in such a densely populated area as Central Europe will have terrible consequences for the local population. While this might harden the resolve of some, it will test that of others, including many of the politicians in charge of their countries. NATO’s weakest point is likely to be the willingness of national leaders to watch their people become casualties as their homes are destroyed and their country devastated, live on colour TV.

NATO intelligence analysts have noted that the mass movement of Warsaw Pact forces across Eastern Europe has stopped, and a calm has descended along the border from Lubeck in the north to Passau in the south. Rather than breathe a sigh of relief, the consensus is that the Warsaw Pact forces are simply carrying out a last round of maintenance checks prior to combat. The war is about to start.

[THW]

A few points about this scenario.

There's a wealth of information in the player notes for both sides. I strongly recommend you read these. Pay attention in particular to the bits concerning surrender locations, EEV and the theatre options.

The Warsaw Pact start this scenario losing. As the Warsaw Pact player, you'll have to be hyper-aggressive, just like the Soviets would have been.

The scenario is not really set up for PO play. It will take a lot more knowledge about the scenario editor than I have to make this so. I gave up when HQ units insisted on deploying into the front line.

The Warsaw Pact war plan is based on the book "Inside the Soviet Army" by Victor Surarov. This puts four Fronts in the first echelon (with 57 divisions) to try and make a break somewhere in the NATO line. Following this are the second echelon (another Front with 15 divisions) and the third echelon (a Group of Tank Armies with 8 divisions). The Soviets have opted for a light approach in Scandinavia (no invasion of Finland) and prioritisation of the Western Strategic Direction over the Southwestern (aimed at Austria and the Balkans). So assets assigned to the Southwest may be made available.

NATO is still mobilising, with REFORGER, British Territorial, Dutch and Belgian units still arriving at their war positions. The Soviets are mobilising faster, but their units are less proficient due a greater acceptance of half-trained units.

The East German, Czechoslovak and Polish forces may withdraw suddenly as the EEV counter rises past certain thresholds.

The West German, French, Dutch, Belgian and Danish units may withdraw suddenly if certain 'surrender' locations are occupied by the Warsaw Pact. Guard these well.

Supply is going to be a big issue as the scenario progresses for both sides. Attrition of key equipments will also be a huge problem. Don't expect your armoured units to be very armoured by week 3. A lot of NATO armoured units have had light infantry battalions added to their TOE to give them some combat effectiveness by the second half of the game, or light infantry brigades have been added to that nation's orbat.

In the back are some notes specific to each side, explaining the rationale for the deployment of each, and the key formations. There is advice on how to approach the scenario, but feel free to ignore. There's nothing wrong with the NATO player trying to strike for Berlin after all

Otherwise, I hope you enjoy this.

Cheers,

Tane Woodley
New Zealand.

[cathar1244]

Thanks Tane.

I realize how much work goes into scenarios, especially the large ones. Part of you is imprinted in this work.

Cheers

[THW]

ORIGINAL: cathar1244

Thanks Tane.

I realize how much work goes into scenarios, especially the large ones. Part of you is imprinted in this work.

Cheers

Thanks mate, part of me is, a good part I hope

There will always be more to add to this, the problem with doing this scenario is that I could only do it in fits and starts as the rest of my life took priority. It's a bit disjointed still as a result, but at some point you just have to stop polishing and just get it out there.

Apologies to those of you who offered to do playtests when I asked back in 2020 and then never got a reply as I submarined away from this forum. I hope this scenario is a fun one for you.

[george420]

Hi THW, the link seems to be broken, I am using Firefox, thanks.

[BillLottJr]

Tane,
There is no attachment.
Bill

[cathar1244]

Is it even possible to attach files at the moment?

I tried to upload the .zip for this one but it was not in my comment.



Cheers

[Zovs]

It was working over the weekend, but today its not.

[cathar1244]

central front 1989 release.zip

(1.24 MiB) Downloaded 113 times

Looks like attachments working for the moment. This was the version I downloaded in January.

Cheers

[r6kunz]

Thanks for the Scenario. Today it downloads and opens fine.
A question about the initial turns:
T1 Pac= chose TO options, no movement or combat. End turn.
T1 NATO= ditto
T2 is now NATO turn, full movement, etc
T2 Pac
is that correct for T2 NATO?
cheers

[THW]

G'day,

Apologies for the late response. The first turn is meant to be a ceasefire, to allow players to make any last minute adjustments to their lines, or to start redeploying if they don't like where I've placed forces. The fighting proper will start on Turn 2.

Is everyone's version working, or are you still having issues? What in particular might those issues be, so I can fix the bugs if there are any.

Cheers.

[tjasian]

Hello - sorry to resurrect an old thread. I am starting to play through this hotseat against myself and love its depth and detail. I am getting random crashes however that don't seem tied to an event or turn. Sometimes it'll happen while I'm scrolling around the map, sometimes as combat is being resolved, sometimes as I'm setting up moves.

I was running the expanded database (Josant's v. 5.2), stopped doing that, and still get crashes. Fortunately, I've gotten good at hitting F9 after every divisional move.

Is this just due to the size of the scenario, or is there something else I should look for?

[cathar1244]

Is this just due to the size of the scenario, or is there something else I should look for?

One suggestion that has merit is to turn off location name display on the map. Less memory is consumed that way. If you want to know the name of a city on the map, put the mouse cursor over it and it should display at the bottom of the screen.

Something about location name display seems to eat memory in TOAW and then never release it, which leads to a crash.

Cheers

[StefanKreis]

Great scenario. Thanks for Polish Army.

[cathar1244]

Anyone having crashes to desktop with this scenario may wish to consider running the Wise Memory Optimizer while TOAW is active. It will clean up RAM ... and may prevent the crashes caused by lack of "garbage collection" by TOAW.

WMO is freeware and can be had by searching on the internet.

Cheers

[Zovs]

Anyone having crashes to desktop with this scenario may wish to consider running the Wise Memory Optimizer while TOAW is active. It will clean up RAM ... and may prevent the crashes caused by lack of "garbage collection" by TOAW.

WMO is freeware and can be had by searching on the internet.

Cheers

No.

But I know which game your avatar came from and I love it! I still have that old SPI game.

[cathar1244]

Anyone having crashes to desktop with this scenario may wish to consider running the Wise Memory Optimizer while TOAW is active. It will clean up RAM ... and may prevent the crashes caused by lack of "garbage collection" by TOAW.

WMO is freeware and can be had by searching on the internet.

Cheers

No.

But I know which game your avatar came from and I love it! I still have that old SPI game.

Zovs,

"No" what ? Did you try to run WMO with TOAW ? I've done some testing with it and it was reducing the memory consumption by TOAW without ill effect on the game's function.

Cheers