The Wargame Wednesday Blog: Battle of the Bulge 18th and 62nd Volksgrenadier Divisions, 14th Armored Group and the 106th Infantry Division

Starting Positions

Introduction for this series here. This post discusses the terrain, some items considered during scenario design and a Q&A with the scenario designer.

The 18th Volksgrenadier (VG) Division holds my right flank and was opposed by the 14th Armored Group (AG) and the 422nd Regiment of the ill-fated 106th Infantry Division (ID). The 62nd VG Division is on my left and their jumping off positions are west of the German town of Prum. The armored Führerbegleit Brigade (Führer Escort) is in reserve behind the 18th VG Division, ready to exploit weaknesses in the American line.

Link to a map showing the initial attacks on the 106th ID from Hugh M. Cole's The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge.

The image above uses satellite imagery to show the importance of the Losheim Gap on the course of the battle.

More after the jump.

Terrain

Hugh Cole discusses the battlefield and I've selected some of his text for context.

Page 43. The road network:

"The road net in 1944 was far richer than the population and the economic activity of the Ardennes would seem to warrant. This was not the result of military planning, as in the case of the Eifel rail lines, but rather of Belgian and Luxemburgian recognition of the value of automobile tourisme just prior to World War II. All of the main roads had hard surfaces, generally of macadam. Although the road builders tried to follow the more level stretches of the ridge lines or wider valley floors, in many cases the roads twisted sharply and turned on steep grades down into a deep ravine and out again on the opposite side. The bridges were normally built of stone."

"The normal settlement in the Ardennes was the small village with stone houses and very narrow, winding streets. These villages often constricted the through road to single-lane traffic. Another military feature was the lone farmstead or inn which gave its name to the crossroads at which it stood."

Pg 46. Geography:

"The geography of the Ardennes leads inevitably to the channelization of large troop movements east to west, will tend to force larger units to "pile up" on each other, and restricts freedom of maneuver once the direction of attack and order of battle are fixed. To a marked degree the military problem posed by the terrain is that of movement control rather than maneuver in the classic sense."

"What the German planners saw in 1944 was this: the Ardennes could be traversed by large forces even when these were heavily mechanized. An attack from east to west across the massif would encounter initially the greatest obstacles of terrain, but these obstacles would decrease in number as an advance neared the Meuse."

"This is mountainous country, with much rainfall, deep snows in winter, and raw, harsh winds sweeping across the plateaus. The heaviest rains come in November and December. The mists are frequent and heavy, lasting well into late morning before they break. Precise predictions by the military meteorologist, however, are difficult because the Ardennes lies directly on the boundary between the northwestern and central European climatic regions and thus is affected by the conjuncture of weather moving east from the British Isles and the Atlantic with that moving westward out of Russia. At Stavelot freezing weather averages 112 days a year, at Bastogne 145 days. The structure of the soil will permit tank movement when the ground is frozen, but turns readily to a clayey mire in time of rain. Snowfall often attains a depth of ten to twelve inches in a 24-hour period. Snow lingers for a long time in the Ardennes but-and this is important in recounting the events of 1944-the deep snows come late."

Game Design Considerations

The Campaign Series game engine allows a change of visibility on a turn by turn basis. In practice, most designers keep visibility the same for the whole scenario but in this scenario, visibility changes on a daily basis (every 6 turns). My preference would be greater granularity of visibility throughout the six turn day (e.g. fog in the mornings) but fog can be localized, especially in valleys and gullies but visibility settings are universal across the map.

Changing road and field conditions are harder to emulate. In this scenario, snow covers the ground throughout the game but conditions during the battle changed from mud to snow to frozen ground and back to mud. It is possible to change the ground conditions but that would require every player to manually update a game file. In the interests of playability, snow stays on the ground throughout.

A scenario designer always has to weigh the trade offs between realism, playability and the constraints of the game engine. Changes to one aspect can have second or third order effects on the others. For this scenario, the designer has come up with the following compromises:

Realism

Changing visibility on a day by day basis, an improvement over fog throughout the entire game.
6 turns per day. Lots of controversy in the Campaign Series world over how much time one turn represents. Over the years I have developed the following rule of thumb in that for smaller scenarios (up to the battalion level) each turn can account for a smaller period of time, even down to 20 to 30 minutes but for larger scenarios, 6 to 8 turns can equal the historical pace of an offensive. Without getting into a long discussion the bottom line is many daylight hours are spent in coordination, resupply, regrouping, taking cover, etc. Some days it takes a while to motivate oneself to go job. Imagine the time needed to motivate a squad or platoon to charge a machine gun nest. A good argument for 6 to 8 turns per day in this scenario is the blue driving route line from the Google map. A modern driver can expect a 30 - 40 minute drive from the scenario starting point at Weckerath to St. Vith. In a battle that saw the decisive defeat of the 106 ID, it took the Germans three days to reach the outskirts of St. Vith.

Playability

Elected to keep the terrain as snow throughout. Not very historical but by changing movement rates any game balance achieved in this version will be thrown off.
Scenario start at first light. A lot of dramatic action was missed (initial German artillery bombardment; German searchlights illuminating the battlefield by reflection from low lying clouds; some Volksgrenadiers caught advancing in the open because of that illumination, and initial engagement with the 14th Armored Group at Krewinke) but the way night combat is simulated by the game engine was unsatisfactory.
Subject for next week's post and the OOBs but the organizations are pared down a little. Example, battalion level HQs are not included in the game along with smaller caliber mortars (especially the American 61mm mortar which doesn't make the trade off between game management and effectiveness).

Next Week

I'll go over the OOBs for all units mentioned in today's post and also will discuss the fighting at Krewinkle as the scenario starts after this engagement.