About Blackhawk Rescue Mission 5:
This is a serious war game for dedicated tactical war gamers. It blows Eugen’s “War Game” series out of the water! This is billed as a “military grade simulation”, and that is a true statement. You are maneuvering real U.S. Army, Russian and Ukrainian MTOE units. There is no picking and choosing of “decks” with arbitrary numbers; there can be no helicopter spamming here or artillery snipers masquerading behind support decks and no superhero special forces squads to fly into a spawn location. This is no gimmick warfare. You succeed or fail based on fire and maneuver according to sound tactics. I am a career infantry officer and a graduate of the Army’s Command and General Staff College. I started my career in the mechanized world, so I know and understand the heavy brigade fight. What struck me immediately were the mission briefings. They were simplified operations orders with doctrinal tasks and purposes! There were specified tasks to subordinate units! And then I looked at the developer’s notes and saw the reason why; many of the scenarios were created by men with rank and the same training and understanding as myself. This game isn’t some computer nerd’s cinematic concept of combat. As one reviewer noted, “If it can be seen, it can be killed.” By way of comparison, I’m going to beat up on the beloved “War Game”. Eugen’s research with “War Game” was superficial, and there are clear biases in the game towards Soviet/Com Block equipment. One of the most frustrating things about “War Game” is the requirement to have scout units to detect anything. Whether by design or by mistake, this is fallacious. Many of the scout vehicles used in the late Cold War as recon vehicles were exactly the same as their counterparts in mechanized battalions. Scouts screen, guard and conduct reconnaissance to fight for information and/or to gain and maintain contact. They aren’t meant to be randomly dispersed with tank and infantry units just to let the latter “see”. Almost all of the armored vehicles in “War Game” are incapable of acquiring targets at range and engaging. This is ridiculous, and in “Combat Mission” the tanks make full use of their optics. Optics make an even bigger difference for variables, such as night, low visibility and bad weather. Eugen didn’t take any of this into account. They seemed to have been stuck on “Russian tank, big gun, win battle” without considering Soviet deficiencies in training, commo and advanced optics. Furthermore, Eugen seemed to regard infantry as superfluous cannon fodder. Tankers fear infantry in the tree line with good AT weapons more than they fear other tanks. In “Combat Mission”, grunts in the tree line are formidable and difficult to detect.
