[GZG] Vehicle and Unit ID

Mr. B said:

"Most games also freely give out the information as the position and
unit
type. The players will know that Unit X is on the hilltop and dug-in, or
that Unit Y is located at the edge of the buildings.  Also it is rare
that squads are mistaken for platoons or companies for squads, and even
more rare would armor units be mistaken for infantry."
---------

I once ran a double blind game that did this excellently in two regards.
It was a
coalition attack in PGW2 (the first US visit to the sandpile) on a small
port town
defended by Iraqi forces. the US had UK support. M1s, Bradleys,
Challengers, etc. going in
against a few T72s and BMPs plus lots of infantry. 

The Iraqi player was smart. I gave him a small quantity of land mines to
use, but he asked
me "Is there any reason I can't plant fake mines and post mine signs
along the barbed
wire?". My reply... noooo not really. So he did that. This totally
bamboozled the enemy
commander into mounting his entire attack along one flank (because he
thought the entire
front line was mined) in an area about 18" wide on the board. (He could
have, with minor
difficulty, driven right up the center... but he didn't know that). The
defender, of
course, setup his few anti-armour capable units on the flanks to engage
the enemy if they
tried the flank sweep. 

One one hill, which became the allied advance's first objective, he
deployed a single jeep
with a 106mm recoilless to spot for artillery. The allied forces, led by
abrams and
armoured scout vehicles (the version of the bradley for cavalry scouts)
came cooking up
that front... the tanks started to drive around the hill into the flank
of town. Then came
the cav scout vehicles. And, while calling artillery down on the tanks,
the jeep decided
"Why the heck not?" and plugged away at one of the bradley's with the
106. I don't even
recall if he penetrated, but the hit and the inability of the allied
commander to spot a
single well concealed 106 made him think an entire infantry company was
deployed on that
hill, so he deployed 4 abrams and the 4 CFVs plus later another 4
Bradleys full of
infantry and all of their gropos to attack this hill. Every so often the
jeep would pop
off a shot, there would be some spotting rolls, the allied forces would
fail to spot, and
the Iraqi artillery would rain down. 

In the end, the entire allied attack went nowhere thanks to one well
planned but simple
deception (the mines) where the allied commander didn't even recce it to
see if it was
true and on one small unit executing a provocation which then caused a
cascade deployment
of an entire company to counterattack. (And the Iraqi player had plenty
of time to move
*all* of his armoured reserves to positions to engage the very obvious
allied thrust, had
it ever made it around the hill with the 106). 

So, double blind games with detailed spotting rules can make this kind
of stuff happen,
but that's rare, I admit.

Tomb
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