Kharkov '43, Krasnyy-Liman or Bust AAR

[MikeC]

I wanted to open this forum for an AAR for a PBEM game of Kharkov '43 Gold 0130_2, Krasnyy-Liman or Bust. I don't want to give away any intel, so I'm not going to post any screen shots of the game yet. But I did want to report on something that happend early on in the game.

A batallion of the 35th Guards  had crossed the Zherebets River, just north of Torskaya on turn one. It encountered two panzer units, under 10 vehicles apiece, so about company strength. Divisional artillery managed to disrupt one of the panzer units early on turn two. So the guardsmen were poised to assault the panzers, with what I thought was a reasonable hope of success.

I hit the travel mode button to deploy the guardsmen, and noticed that I had just put the unit INTO travel mode. HORRORS! The neat column of troops drew opportunity fire from the tanks, took about 20 casualties, but was farily unscathed. Their full movement remained and they had good fatigue. No harm, no foul, I thought. But when they deployed to make their assault, they drew fire. More dead guardsmen, but this time disruption. No assault on the fascists this turn.

Under my breath, I cursed my fat fingers, my cursor, my mouse, and computer games in general. This wasn't the first time I had fat fingered a button. I've also hovered the cursor over a hex contemplating the "perfect"  move, when a batallion jumped to the wrong hex. Simple errors that these "stupid" games would not allow me to correct.

But after considering what had happend, I realized that this is a great simulation of a real-life military operation. What offensive goes off completely according to plan, with each element precisely following orders and the commander's intent? SNAFUs are part of every military operation, and that's exactly what happend to these cyber troops on the banks of the Zherebets.

Cardboard and paper wargames have detailed mechanisms to produce this kind of foul up. Wargamers must crave this degree of simulation. So the next time something similar happens to you (or me) in game, savor the flavor it adds to the game, and chalk it up to a more accurate military simulation. Our SNAFU mechanism is, quite literally, at our fingertips.