A new Campaign, Part 1: Preparations

White we still have quite a bit of back history to fill in, Jono and I decided to begin the Campaign of 66941 with a attempt by Raesharn forces to break the deadlock imposed upon them by Kiivar's army just as late autumn morphed into the winter of the previous year.


The Raesharn-Omez High Command began by assaulting the centre of the front towards the city of Nazpu, which point had formed the high water mark of the Raesharn 'Operation Redbeard' the previous summer.
The rather bad photo, badly touched up, of the map is roughly how the the thing will look once the playing pieces of the respective armies have been prepared. The plan is to run the campaign on this map, with specific battles being settled by representative small scale actions as a table top wargame. Whenever the map play has to be suspended, all we have to do is photograph the thing for setting up next time.

The sector of front was held by a platoon of the 83rd Shing Wong Infantry Regiment, supported by a squadron of light tanks from 17th Wah-Hey Armoured. A dedicated composite battery of 1x15cm and 2x10cm howitzers gave artillery support. The Infantry platoon's two sections were each divided into 4-man fire teams, with an anti-tank rifle assigned to one from each section. It was also reinforced by a heavy machine gun and a medium anti-tank gun on either flank, and an infantry gun covering the centre. The front was covered here and there by barbed wire entanglements that covered rather tenuous mine 'strips'... Kiivar High Command had intended to garnish the whole position with anti-tank obstacles and extensive minefields, but shortages had left much of this work undone (I couldn't find my stuff). So, beneath the barbed wire, the engineers has placed a line of anti-tank mines - a slender enough defence, as it turned out.


Much weakened by earlier fighting, Raesharn units had not fully been made up to strength as the winter rains gave way to spring sunshine. The Raesharn had available a weak regiment of tanks (2 squadrons of two medium tanks apiece) and a rather attenuated battalion little more than company establishment; a troop of cavalry; some anti-tank guns, and a battalion of 4 artillery pieces.

The local Raesharn commander probably felt that his forces were none too many for the task, yet, as this action was to show, the outcome of battle is apt to be unpredictable.
(to be continued)