At 20220402 2251 ZT, DEFCON 3 has been declared for the Second Echelon of 1985: Deadly Northern Lights. Report for Duty by writing to INFO@TRLGAMES.COM if not yet enlisted.
1985: Deadly Northern Lights covers the Warsaw Pact offensive against the Nordic countries during the dramatic events of World War Three. Norway, Sweden, Finland and insular Denmark are in the cross-hair, facing the full might of Northern Fleet, Baltic Fleet and two Soviet Military Districts.
Basic information about the operation can be found at this link. In addition, this Second Echelon will be equipped with several updates and changes listed below.
Lines of Communication Map
The old LOC Charts have been replaced by the LOC Map used in 1985: Sacred Oil, covering the whole globe and allowing:
A more realistic handling of the reinforcements, both for NATO and Warsaw Pact.
A full integration with the Mutual Assured Destruction combined campaign, using two or more 1985 modules.
Operational Map Revision
The operational maps have been updated and the colours used for some terrains has been changed to make them easier to identify.
NATO Airbase of Bodø and Surrounding Areas
New Counters Layout
The counters have been updated using the layout introduced with 1985: Sacred Oil, with additional changes to cover specific aspects of the Northern Europe war theatre.
Additional counters to fully integrate with the other modules and with the 1985: Mutual Assured Destruction combined campaign:
Single ships for USN Carrier Battlegroups
USN Algol Class Fast Sealift Ships
NATO Atlantic Convoys
Updated Rules and Scenarios
The updated rules include the changes introduced by 1985: Sacred Oil, and the updated scenarios make full use of the new rules and LOC Map. Last but not least, both booklets have a new layout and have been reorganized using a (hopefully) more logical order.
1985: Deadly Northern Lights joins its smaller brother Less Than 60 Miles as a Charles S. Roberts Awards Nominee, in the Modern and Hypothetical Wargame category!
1985: DNL didn’t win, but considering our small print runs the nomination is a big achievement and we are really proud of it.
A big THANK YOU to the Grognards who voted for our monster!
From Soviet doctrine to chemical weapons, from air war to amphibious ops, passing thru REFORGER, electronic warfare & Polish revolts. How do you turn World War Three, the worst nightmare of 20th century, into a living room sim?
Anthony Morphet and Fabrizio Vianello offer some hindsight on the design process & the decisions to take.
From Comrade Counter-Admiral Joe Kussey, an in-depth analysis of the options available to Warsaw Pact for Operation Garbo – the invasion of Sweden.The document is also available for download at this link.
After playing Scenario #3 several times and invading Denmark, I thought I would take a look at the difficulties of invading Sweden. Invading Denmark seemed pretty straight forward – capture Copenhagen’s three city hexes and win the game. Because of the WP helicopter and air transport fleet, supply is not major concern in that scenario, unless WP loses Air Superiority over Copenhagen. Given the massive advantage of ground support vs brigades with a defense of “1”, it was just a matter of getting units into position and providing air support to the Polish Marines. Would this be the case with Sweden? After setting up, it is clear that this will be more difficult than invading Denmark.
Upon review, several things stand out. Unlike Denmark’s situation further southwest, Soviet airfields are more distant from Sweden, ruling out attack helicopter support until an airfield is secured and repaired. In addition, Soviet forces set aside to conduct the opening invasion are relatively light given the size of Sweden: 3 Air-Drop battalions, a Marine and a parachute brigade. This will make splitting forces risky. With no major geographic objective that could end the game (such as the fall of Copenhagen), Soviet forces will have to capture a ground to win. WP will need to fight on a broader front. In addition, Sweden also has a better equipped army and will receive NATO reinforcements.
No matter if you are in Leningrad Military District or AFNORTH Headquarters, a map is what it takes to successfully organize an amphibious invasion of Narvik or an airlift to defend Tromsø.
Planning Maps are A4 format with national borders, ports and air bases highlighted. Get them, or risk disaster.
The VASSAL Module for 1985: Deadly Northern Lights is finally here!
Being a monster game, we have a monster module. Due to size and security measures, we had to create zip files containing zip files. Follow these steps to create the module and start your Scandinavian campaigns:
2. Unzip the two files in the same directory. This will create two files named 1985 DNL.zip and 1985 DNL.z01
3. Unzip the 1985 DNL.zip file only. This will create the final 1985 DNL.vmod module by combining the zip and z01 files.
A big thanks to our Combat Engineer John Rainey, to our lead playtester Dominik Häufler and to the others who made this possible!
EDIT 20210827 ZT: Module has been updated to version 1.02, adding missing Convoy markers, Hide Pieces Button and more. You will need the latest version of VASSAL to use it.
