"Accurate 1980s orbats, TOEs, equipment quality..." Topic

I'm mulling over dabbling with 1/285 as a change of scale. Rather than just defaulting to WW2 with different unit sizes it has occurred to me that it could be fun to do something different. The 1980s are now longer ago than WW2 was when I got into wargaming so I thought, what about 1980s NATO vs WP. As a bonus I have a couple of mates who are ex-forces and would probably play, knowing what ought to be done…

One of the reasons I wasn't that into modern era back then (when it was the current era) was that a lot of information about forces, equipment, capabilities etc was unavailable, and this applied to both sides. So the composition, balance and capabilities of your forces must have been based substantially on guesswork, inference and deduction – unlike WW2 where all that stuff was out there. An example of this I came across was a 'Tank Battles In Miniature' series book about the Arab-Israeli Wars. Written in the 70s, it described various hush-hush Israeli vehicles and noted that wargamers 30 to 40 years hence would be lucky, because all this would be known. Reading said book 40 years on, most of the hush-hush Israeli tanks mentioned did not in fact exist!

Nowadays I guess 1980s NATO and WP are not secret any more, so you could presumably do an action on whatever scale works in 1/285 scale that used correct forces, has accurate weapon and vehicle performance, and so on.

Is there any rule book or primer that sets this kind of information out, to the level of detail where you can go and buy the stuff you need? 'Tank Battles In Miniature 1980-89', as it were? I have had one or two rulesets recommended which look OK for my purposes, but I don't want to go blow £30.00 GBP or whatever to find a title doesn't include this (to me) essential stuff.

Thoughts welcomed!

Frankly nowadays you can probably find almost all this online. May need a few attempts with different terms, then when you find a site or two a lot of digging on those will probably give you what you want. Also on Groups.io there is a group just for TOEs.

Look at the links on the left side of this web page: microarmormayhem.com

These were the standard references at the time, long out of print now and expensive when you find them. Try your library system for "Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army" and "Armies of NATO's Central Front" both by David Isby.

This is a great resource for the end of the Cold War state of the Soviet military : ww2.dk/new/newindex.htm

No longer an active web-site but this had a lot of good information: coldwargamer.blogspot.com

Google for FM 100-2-1 , FM 100-2-2 , FM 100-2-3 will give you PDFs of the US Army's books on Soviet tactics and organization.

The AFM series manuals will give the same from the UK Army point of view. I don't have a link for these.

Fistful of TOWS might be what you need but it's not a cheap investment if it misses your ideas.

My friends and I play Team Yankee in 1/285, using the same inches as the 15mm rules and have a blast! There's no "clutter" because using the same measurements looks great with the little guys.
It was easy for us to get into it as we all had collected GHQ stuff for years. I picked up a bunch of stuff from C-in-C before the move to Canada.
If I had the opportunity to start again, I would strongly consider the 10-12mm world with the rich selection of N scale scenery.

Modern Spearhead might be what you are after? Full OBs, reasonably detailed stats, includes rules for electronic, chemical and tactical nuclear warfare.

Plays pretty much like the WW2 version with platoon size elements and battalions as manouvre units.

The contemporaneous US and NATO publications were reasonably accurate on Western equipment and MTOEs, not so much on the Pact side. These two websites have some of the best information I have seen (including the experimental Soviet OMG "corps" formation from the late 1980s:

link

link

One other thought- you might consider Frank Chadwick's "Combined Arms," basically CD 2 for the modern era. A single paperback, used, platoon scale in 1/285. It predates the fall of the Wall, so it includes some obvious boo-boos (180mm gun battalions), but it has fairly complete OOBS for NATO and the Pact, with specific OOBs on line divisions and no divisional units up to front level. I can't imagine how much money and space you would need to game an Army-sized operation, but the game gives you the data to do it. They also updated the system in some of the "Command Post Quarterlies" published in the 1990s, and one of them has a bathtubbed scenario for the "Late, Great Unfought World War III."

When in the 1980's? we have lists out in the period 1986 to 1990. However while the lists are valid for any game and things like vehicle specifications can be tracked back to agood approximations of thicknesses of RHA, the lists are based on Maneouvre Group rules that are not optimized for 1/3oo play and are most definitely not just a standard variation on one side then the other side moves.

I wholeheartedly recommend the actual data links given here, far better than any list including ours as you can get exactly what you want at a cost of time. Our rules were set up so you did not need to buy army lists you could start from scratch and build your army from available data, but to our surprise we sell more lists than rules, go Figure. I an hoping to get our first 1981 to 1985 lists out next week.

Go look at the samples and free stuff on WargamesVault to get an impression of whether it's of any use at all.

link

My personal bias is for 1/144 not 1/300 if you are mulling then give them a look. We have 1 guy who was a cold war warrior. He still beats us despite not knowing the rules, one of us just interprets what he wants to do and he still gives us hell.

Best of luck in your adventures.

look for micromark army lists. covers most armies

Look for anything for the period by Stephen Zagola. As a testament to his accuracy, while in NCO leadership school at Richards-Gabaur AFB in 1975, my required Military Briefing was on the Soviet ZSU-23/4 and it's Gun Dish radar system operating microwave frequency it worked under. I included reliability issues. During the next break, I was accosted by an NCO that was in military intel for discussing classified information! I whipped out my "Soviet Armor" book by Zagola and said, "It can't be classified as I bought this book downtown in a bookstore"! My copy disappeared before I graduated. I since acquired another copy and shortly afterward the USAF enacted a program that bolstered handling of classified information. Pretty sure it was NOT because of my presentation to the class but have always wondered how much more classified info was leaked on our potential enemy back then in unclassified publications. The US Government Printing office makes all sorts of related information available to the public for the asking or minimal charge for printing it. While seemingly unclassified info on it's own is unclassified, put several unclassified factoids together and all of a sudden the conclusion arrived at might be classified!

"Enola's World's Major Armies 1981" published by Enola Games (US) and Navwar (UK) which might be useful. Most NATO armies, Middle East, Asia, USSR, Switzerland, and more.

link