Less Than 60 Miles – 2nd Echelon

Description

“The goal is to collapse adversary’s system into confusion and disorder causing him to over and under react to activity that appears simultaneously menacing as well as ambiguous, chaotic, or misleading.”

John R. Boyd, “Patterns of Conflict”

At 0400 Zulu Time, July 24 1985, three Warsaw Pact Armies cross the Inner German Border and advance at full speed into the Fulda Gap. US V Corps, supported by West German 5 Panzer Division, start executing OPLAN 33001 – the CENTAG Defense Plan prepared and refined for decades – to accomplish the apparently impossible task of stopping 4000 Soviet Tanks before they reach the Rhine.

Taking its roots from SPI’s Central Front and NATO: Division Commander, Less Than 60 Miles is the first module of the C3 operational series, focused on Command, Control and Communication and one of the five CSR Awards nominees as Best Modern Era Wargame. All the elements of modern mechanized warfare are covered: Chemical and Nuclear Weapons, Attack Helicopters, Engineers, Electronic Warfare, Counter-battery Fire, Ribbon Bridges, Army Doctrines, Reconnaissance units, Close Air Support coordination and more.

Several typical wargame mechanics have been reinterpreted, and both sides will fight three equally dangerous foes: the enemy, their own plan and time. Even a simple action can quickly turn into a disaster when facing an opponent using more efficiently the real key to victory: the OODA Loop theorized by John Boyd in the early ‘80s and used today as the basis for several military doctrines.

This second echelon is more an update than a simple reprint. Here’s a summary of the main changes:

• Rules updated with the most recent features introduced by The Dogs of War and Die Festung Hamburg.
• Counters with the most used Posture on the back side, minimizing the need for Posture markers.
• Revised NATO OOB, representing West German III Corps as a separate high-level Command.
• Revised mobilisation rules for West German Teilaktiv battalions and Heimatschutz brigades.
• Update of several US battalion designations, more exactly pinning the transition from the Combat Arms Regimental System to the US Army Regimental System.
• Several changes to the Warsaw Pact OOB, from Soviet Army-level independent tank regiments to East German pure tank regiments.
• Several small but significant changes to the map and scenarios.
• An expanded Field Manual 02-002 Battlefield Operations, covering Operational Procedures and Operational Planning. Start reading it immediately, before it’s too late.

Game Components