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Operation Unthinkable - a Two Hour Wargames NUTS! campaign

I am currently playing a NUTS! campaign, with each player (two of us) contolling a section as part of a whole platoon.

The setting is a 'what if' Soviet invasion of West Europe towards the end of WW2.

This 'what if' has always interested me and I know both Churchill and Patton contemplated this scenario, with Churchill going so far as to have "Operation Unthinkable" drawn up: Operation Unthinkable wiki link



Author Colin Gee has also written a number of novels on a Soviet attack on the West at the end of WW2, so this is great inspiration for the campaign setting: Red Gambit novels link

With this in mind, we are playing a low level operations campaign with British vs Soviets.

We have a British platoon as the basis, and support units to help out.


Each player has a Star to control, and we each take control of our own section, and the third section and HQ come in to play as needed, as do the support troops. 

The map below is the basis for troop deployments, with our platoon being a small cog in the machine that is the British 2nd Army: Second army link

The enemy units will primarily come from the Soviet 49th Army. Historically the end of the war found the 49th army on the Elbe River in the vicinity of Ludwigslust where it encountered Second Army (United Kingdom). List of Soviet armies from WW2

This sets things up perfectly for my campaign.






















As we are only playing a Platoon level game, the campaign map is small, and I have drawn one up using the campaign system from the Great Escape games book "Operations and Objectives".

I have also created some cards depicting each member of the platoon, and skills or attributes they have and equipment cards to use a reminder of what each one can do.

The red and blue magnets on the white board are being used for British postions and for Soviet blinds on the map.


Each hex equates roughly to the playing area for each game.





4 comments:

Simon Quinton said...

Sounds fun dude. Good to see you posting again :)

Shelldrake said...

Cheers. Between work and hurting myself/illness it has been a bit of a struggle to get any hobby time in.

colinmnash said...

Good to see you back Shelldrake. I've also been reading the Red Gambit series and am planning to game it myself!

Captain Darling said...

Cool looking idea...I've always fancied doing a Patton vs the Soviet army late 1945 small unit campaign using TW&T