Next War Korea
This play through of Next War: Korea is part 2 of my attempt to play some of the next war games without US intervention. The US has a massive impact on any game, even without sending in land forces, due to its air and sea power, so what happens when that is taken away. In this scenario the US has withdrawn from Korea and the DRPK sees its chance to reunite Korea. Distracted by its own troubles China only offers very limited support. Japan provides air/naval support and the commonwealth limited support to Korea.
I planned to write a more narrative style account, such as I did with Next War: Poland. However this play-through proved to be a brutal war of attrition with few breakthroughs or maneuvers. As such, I will just provide a brief description.
I used the special rules for refugees, and the realism rules for North Korea (which weaken their massive army significantly.) and some others
Early Game
The North
pushed over the borders and slowly pushed the south back. The losses
were about 2-1 in favour of the South, but that is fine for the North
because they have a much larger army. When an area looked difficult
to defend the south would withdraw 1 or 2 hexes to another defensible
position.
Northern SOF were able to damage some southern
airbases but the southern air force was able to win the air war after
about 4 turns, however much of it was damaged so it could only
provide limited support. Northern missile strikes almost all
failed/were shot down.
Mid game
As the southern reinforcements started to arrive the north threw in its most elite units and chemical weapons to try and breakthrough bridges or difficult areas. The losses were now at a rate of about 3 to one. On the East coast the Northern attack failed completely and the middle was running out of steam, but 2 hexes of Seoul had been taken. The elite commonwealth SoF started to target northern supply systems and depots having destroyed the air defence system.
Late Game
The Northern push ran out of supply and then front line units. The south pushed up through the middle around the flank of the Northern push on Seoul and started to roll them up. By turn 15 almost all the Northern units had been destroyed, but the South losses had been massive. The south won by about 90 victory points.
He are some images as the game progressed.
