2020 · Southern Nagorno-Karabakh: the Araks plain, Jabrayil and Hadrut

Karabakh: The Southern Front

Your role: You command a motor-rifle battalion on the Armenian side, holding the southern stretch of the line of contact. It belongs to the Karabakh Armenian defence army (the 'Artsakh Defence Army', in the Armenian name): three rifle companies, an attached tank company and the battalion's air-defence platoon, with brigade artillery in support. The scenario runs from 27 September to late October 2020, from the Araks plain to the forests north of Hadrut. The decision points are composites, rebuilt at battalion level from public analysis and from both sides' official statements, which are treated as claims; the crisis branches are 'what if' situations. Place names follow the forms most widely used internationally.

Commander's intent: Slow the enemy's breakthrough on the southern plain, keep the battalion able to fight, and hold the roads and heights that lead into the mountains for as long as possible.

One decision from this battle · The morning the sky opened

Morning, 27 September 2020. Azerbaijani shells start landing along the whole line of contact. Your front is the open plain along the Araks, covered by the trenches and bunkers built up since 1994. Above the positions there is an unfamiliar sound: drones circling high, and loitering munitions that orbit a position and then dive. The forward company reports enemy tanks closing from south of Lele Tepe. In its fixed revetments the air-defence platoon's Osa and Strela-10 sit with radars on, waiting for permission to fire.