"A question about WGR 1950-2000" Topic

I have not played this rule set but I assume the fact that it has remained popular for so long means it must be pretty fun. I am curious though since it was written during the Cold War and a lot of information about Soviet era equipment and Soviet style military organization (mostly in the form of limitations) has come out since then. How accurate is the game from a historical aspect given what we know now.

It can be a little jarring when you go back and read military and economic assessments from the Soviet Union pre Afghanistan, Gulf War and Soviet collapse and you see how much the West overestimated Soviet capability. Not to say the Soviet Union was not extremely powerful militarily and economically, just not as much as the West thought.

The game mostly only deals with equipment, not tactics and doctrine, so it may have fared better than expected.

There is considerable evidence that the "export models" of Soviet kit that fared poorly in (for example) the Middle East were far below the quality of the versions the Soviets used in their own forces.

Do a websearch of "monkey model" for more information; Alternatively, imagine if the US exported F-15 fighters with J57 engines and the avionics of the F-101 in the 1980s.

Getting back to the tactics & doctrine IIRC the rules for allowed actions varied a great deal based upon what the normal infantry tactics were for a unit. If memory serves Soviet infantry were better than (most) US infantry, although US cavalry & marines were better than most Warpac forces. Perhaps that reflects the (perceived?) legacy of the American-Vietnamese conflict as much as anything.

If we talk about "monkey models", then the worst samples were delivered to Iraq, Egypt and Libya, because the local regimes were very bad for the Communists (Saddam Hussein, for example, even for some time stopped calling in Pravda a comrade, which is very symptomatic).
For example, air conditioners in Iraqi tanks were installed very poorly (welded so that the workers were more comfortable installing them, and how Iraqi tankmen would live in a tank – there were few people worried about). The T-72 came with deliberately weakened frontal armor (without any sand and ceramic inserts, at the level of the early T-62), and ammunition was delivered as old as possible. USSR also refused supply to the Libya Tu-22 missile carriers or Tu-22M, and only conventional bombers were delivered.
Of aviation, this particularly concerned the MiG-23 for the Arab countries – it is in itself very difficult to fly the aircraft, and given the downgrated and poor training of the Arab pilots (again, they were prepared by a very simplified program), just turned into a flying coffin.

Of course, even if the Iraqis had state of the art equipment, their tactical skill was so poor, it'd hardly have mattered :-)

I think that the "monkey model" argument gets overblown. Yes the export models were ranged from fair to terrible, but still Western intelligences routinely over estimated Soviet military hardware. You cannot fault them for this. First off it is better to assume the worst in the world of intelligence. But the bigger issue was that the Soviets were notoriously secretive with their military equipment's capabilities, even among the Soviet armed forces branches information was withheld. As Russia adopted more modern equipment the Soviet hardware from the 70's and 80's became better known and in general was considered good, but not the terror which was perceived during the cold war.

More importantly was the culture of "Dedovshchina" in the Soviet armed forces. This was the rough (and sometimes barbaric) treatment of recruits and laziness of higher ranking soldiers, which produced unmotivated and poorly trained personnel with low morale and a huge disconnect between officer and enlisted. The consequences of which were shown in Afghanistan and later in Chechnya.

Right, but we need to separate out equipment and troop quality questions.
After all, a T72 (f.x.) is a T72 regardless of whether we put an elite crew or a conscript crew in there.

WRG doesn't really address the latter much at all, it just wasn't a big factor in the games of that era.

So the question is what specific equipment is too good and what is too poor, based on real-world examples.

Even in cases where gear hasn't seen each other on the battle field, the US army did quite a bit of testing with captured equipment, Isby's "Weapons and tactics of the soviet army" references those tests quite extensively, typically compared to the M60.

It's worth bearing in mind that the WRG combat system is fairly simple.
Depending on range, gun and target, attacks typically either kill automatically on a hit, kill on a 4+ or kill on a 6.

So there's not a ton of wiggle room to work with.

I think you may want to condider reading a much wider range of sources than wargaming books.

Isby's "Weapons and tactics of the soviet army" isn't a wargaming book.

I think I lost track of who is addressing who.

Thank you Weasel, that clears up a great deal about WGR for me. Shame the game does not take into account training and experience more. At times it can be hard to distinguish gear from the man behind it. There are loads of example of military equipment that was phenomenal but not "user friendly" so in the hands of rookies it was garbage but in the hands of skilled users it could be devastating (For example the T-64 was a much superior tank to the T-55 but required much more training for the crew and maintained teams so there "in field" performance did not reflect the technical advances).

If I recall correctly Soviet tanks were often overestimated with the range and speed of target acquisition under battlefield conditions. What was the cause? The gear? the crew? The maintenances? Probability all three to some degree. Interesting side thought, most games today model equipment and troop quality, but neglect how well maintained and supplied a unit is, which has a huge real world impact. I suppose at some point it becomes too many cooks in the kitchen in terms of rule design.

Personally I think this version (1950-2000) sucks giant green weenies. I played, and liked, the 1950-1975 and the 1950-1985 but the morale rules were a completely dud to me and I'm the Barker translator locally.

Until DBMMvX this was the worst thing from Phil and I'm not sure it's still not the worse. Been so long I've forgotten everything but the dislike

I remember the great sens3 of anticipation when we heard the 2000 edition was come g out, and the great sense of disappointment when it arrives. Back to the 1985 edition for us. Still enjoy playing it 35 years later

Zookie's point about supply and maintenance is a good one. Even being low on water is a HUGE issue for troops. So if you've had scant water for a day or two you will definitely perform worse than your well hydrated comrades.

Force on Force included a modifier for this. If your force was "Well supplied" (I think that was the term used) you got an extra die in combat. If you were "Poorly Supplied" you got one fewer dice.

I have incorporated those variables as a morale modifier (normally this unit would be Veteran, but today they are trained because they have been out of supply lately).

WRG WW2 and Modern rules have been my prefered sets since being introduced to them in the mid 70's. Still prefer the Armour and Infantry 1925-1950 but updated with suggestions by Ian Shaw,combining the"To Hit" chart from the 1950-75 modern set and adding the the spotting chart from the 1950-85 modern set.

While the "Knock-out Chart" for the 1950-2000 and its WW2 sister set are much more detailed, the rules for the various movement modes and other and morale states etc have made them no longer viable as a fun pick-up and play set as the earlier editions were.

For what it's worth I'm currently looking at "Sabre Squadron" as my go to rules for company/ battle group size games.

Western "intelligencies" lovingly copied their information from school textbooks on Basic military training (I do not know if there is such a thing in the US or Great Britain at school. In general, this is something like an extended Duck and Cower). In any case, those US Field Manuals on the Soviet Army, which I saw on the Internet, were copied somewhere 50% from there and from the journal Technika Molodezhi (something like the Soviet "Popular Mechanics"). Soviet "intelligencies" worked in approximately the same way – the reference book "The military balance" was being translated, and – and voila, the book on Western armies is ready.
So if you want to learn something from Soviet techniques / tactics, etc. – it is much easier to find real information on the Internet (at least in the same Wikipedia). The same as that printed in books before 1992 – as a rule, complete garbage.

If we talk about dedovschina, this phenomenon began to appear already under Gorbachev (and, in principle, until the very end of the USSR, service in the army was considered very honorable). And yes – this concept is very stretchable. The Hartmann's treatment in the "Full-Metal Jacket" is a very-very typical example of dedovschina. By the way, it is not clear that such a bad thing was demonstrated in Afghanistan.

T-64 in control is very simple, even easier T-55. And it's very easy to shoot from it. Now if it broke down – then yes, there will be problems (primarily with the engine). In general, the concept of "complexity" for Soviet tanks is applicable only to engines – everything else for three months can master even.

Dedovschina was in place long before Gorbachev, I was reading about it's effects on the Soviet military in the '70.

Again, what does this mean. That's the problem. You can mean by this, for example, the fact that young soldiers are being driven by old-timers on all sorts of errands. This is dedovshina (actually, this is what it is, if we start from the dictionary definition of this word). Or beatings with feet. This is also dedovshina, but of a different kind. The form of dedovschina can be considered a community, unequal position of soldiers of different lengths of service, cries of a sergeant, etc.
Specifically, cruel actions until the 1980s were isolated (and were distributed mainly in construction troops – a sediment bowl for re-educated criminals), and were severely punished (up to the KGB). Then, when suddenly everything became possible, and the threat of a very real war began to disappear, it began to flourish.

In general, this is a problem for both sides – to look for fatal flaws where they do not exist. I have never met in Western literature the opinion that the general fraud and the desire to do everything for the holiday undermined the fighting efficiency of Soviet soldiers and the Soviet Army as a whole. At the same time, it is very common in the USSR and Russia to make a wrong judgment that the US Army's combat capability is undermined by the fact that they serve only under the contract. Different approaches, different mentality. All this is actually very interesting.

Well, to strongly not go away from the topic – about ammunition. The most modern ammunition for the T-72 that was delivered to Iraq was 3BVM-9 (armor penetration – 170 mm for 2000 m, adopted in 1976).

The 'monkey model' has a long history. British gun makers were churning out cheap, nasty 'Birmingham gaspipes' for the African market back in the 19th century.

@Usman: There's a difference between what old Gunny Hartman does and deliberate abuse of your troops. Plus, that's also basic training, not the training you get in your actual unit.

Remember that Gunny Hartman says that his mission is to weed out all the non-hackers (that is, all the people not suited to be a Marine).

So he is going to be hard on people, to make sure that they will be able to hold up if/when the shooting starts.

But a senior NCO in a combat unit shouldn't be doing that, we already know that the troops will be able to do their job.

What I was reading about related the kind of ill treatment as described by Zookie.

Few years back, the Danish base on Greenland became rather infamous for the incredibly disgusting hazing rituals they enacted on new recruits, so it's certainly not limited to the Reds :-)

Hello, Lion in the Stars!
I do not argue. Hartmann just do a pretty soft man, and Pile asked for it. In general, we usually have conductors in trams shouting much worse than Hartmann.