Slovenian Independence War

Slovenian Independence War - 1991 (Slovenian Independence War).

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The basics are now in place.

The objective of the Yugoslavian player is to take all the border points and the airport.

The shooting down of Yugoslavian helicopters with commandos in them is not in place here, but I might add that later. Currently there are no air mobile or air transport rules.

In immediate point of interest its this wars proximity to mainland Europe, Italy shown to the West (Trieste) and Austria to the North. Although not a full out war, it was fairly near to home (Nederland/UK).

Essentially Slovenia declared its independence from Yugoslavia and Yugoslavia essentially refused to accept that and moved a lot of tanks into Slovenia to quell them but they didnt surrender. There were no major battles although there were some skirmishes. The Slovenians essentially engaged in guerilla type warfare although did utilise its standing terrirorial army. The heaviest fighting was on 2 July and that is around when the Yugoslavian Migs appear.

I am basing this on the rather interesting map on the Wikipedia article with all the swooshing arrows. However, I find it a bit hard to accept really, as it appears that entire army units were moving around. As such, im only using brigade units or lower as I imagine that these were the elements within those armys and corps that were moved. Even entire brigades are hard to believe. I will keep an eye out for a more accurate order of battle. For example, the 345 mountain brigade appears 3 times, twice with 1/ and 2/ suffixes. I imagine that that was 3 regiments from that brigade, but I have kept it as intended. However, i think that everything could be played down by an order of magnitude. For example, brigades are really regiments, etc. I suspect that the map was a generalisation. It doesnt include any Slovenian units for a start.

An interesting part of this war is the way that the Slovenians prapared 7 months in advance and elected to fight a guerilla war, ordering antitank missile systems with a policy of ambushing the Yugoslav tanks front and rear elements in strategic locations such as mountain passes, thus immobilising entire columns and hitting them with greater ease. They also prempted the Yugoslav reaction and secretly mobalised the antiquated home gaurd with which to fight them with.

I should also note that I think this map is far too small for this campaign, but I dont have bigger ones. Essentially the Yugoslavs moved to secure all the border crossings. They did not think though that the Slovinians would actually fight them. The map is very crowded and there really is no space for strategy or tactics really. The map really needs to be 3-5 times wider and proportinatly deeper, but its good enough for generalised placements.

Also, I dont think you can play this. I do have rules in the pipelines for irregular units which might suit this, but the Slovenians cant really carry out their hit and run tactics. However, I have upped their factors to make their small anti-tank and air defence units a little more powerful than a normal company might be. The small scale fighting for the border points should be interesting though. I dont think the players should follow attacks through, and instead accept the first outcome, for example, if a Slovenian is forced to retreat then they run away and the Yugoslavian player is content with having the hex. There are no battle fronts in this.

On another note, a major feature of this set up is that Yugoslavia starts with units in Slovenia. Thats because they were part of the same republic or federation. The YPA forces were the national forces. THe Slovenian forces were actually secretly arranged without Yugoslavia knowing and were based on their antiquated version of a home gaurd. I wont explain much more about that but its pretty interesting and is probably quite invloved. The fact that 97% of the people turned out to vote and the same number thereabouts voted for independence is telling enough. with that in mind its worth noting that when the Yugoslavian troops crossed the border, the people themselves organised spontaneuos resistance and put up barricades and blocked roads etc.

I also think the terrain needs looking at as it appears that most of Slovenia is wooded hill, but I havnt yet quite figured it all out.

see Wikipedia

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Units (Yugoslavia)

Units (Slovenia)