BATTLE 01: Iraq vs. US Army, Meeting Engagement
Visibility: 2
Length: 22 turns
The first encounter for the rag-tag Iraqi force is a night battle against the United States. Every expectation is that the Americans will have night vision for a fair number of its units - whereas the only Iraqi units with night vision are the HQ unit, and the sniper...
The map and positioning of VPs is straightforward: there exist no elevation higher than 10. Three VP clusters are in a vertical line; the top one is on a mesa or plateau, but close to plateau's edge from my troops' point of view, the middle one is right in the middle of a plateau, but there is a small village right there, and the bottom one is on flat ground, but with a small ridge just to the West of it. These terrain features, as well as the low visibility, will prove crucially important.
My troops set up in a line, with each Peoples Army company assigned one VP cluster, and each company is backed by exactly one of each type of support weapon - one HMG section, one RPG section, etc. This will of course result in many of these support units being out of contact with their platoon leaders, but these types of command and control problems are to be expected with this bunch. The HQ keeps the weapons platoon with its three mortars and three pickup trucks in reserve.
Because of the low visibility, there never was a moment where my troops would have a good overview of the enemy advance. It turned out that the Americans decided to attack only the middle and lower objectives; the middle objective was attacked by a platoon with 10 night vision. All of these factors proved decisive. My troops in the south achieved basically a "reverse slope" situation. They sat right behind the low, single-hex ridge, and as the U.S. troops crested the ridge, the Iraqi soldiers would be able to get a first shot against them at point-blank range. Because the U.S. troops had no vision advantage, they could not take positions further away on that ridge to provide supporting fire.
In the middle, the U.S. infantry squads had night vision - but because there were a few buildings to completely block all vision, they could not fully utilize the advantage. Nevertheless, there were situations where the Americans were able to shoot the Iraqi infantry with complete impunity, inflicting punishing losses on the green Iraqi troops. In turn, the Iraqis would rarely begin a turn with more than 1 U.S. unit visible. The village was briefly captured by the U.S. infantry.
What turned the tide? Certainly not the HQ or the three mortars, as due to the low skill, their fire was slow in coming and scattered, hitting both sides about equally. Instead, it was the support weapons, and in particular the HMGs and AGLs that, when Z-fired at the areas where invisible shooters were firing from, were able to pin and suppress the superior American troops. The numerical advantage of the Iraqi troops (cost-wise, a Peoples Army platoon is worth about one American vision-10 infantry section) could then be used to advantage, as the Iraqi troops, even when advancing blind, would not get shredded before they closed to 1-2 hexes. Realizing the difference these weapons were making, I moved the AAMGs and the two HMGs from the weapons platoon to provide further support - but then their pickup trucks got decimated by American ATGMs, with vision far superior to anyone else on the battlefield. Nevertheless, in the end, the superior numbers took their toll, and Iraq was able to capture all the VPs before the time limit ran out.
End result: Iraqi Decisive Victory