Black Ops in San Theodoros

We played this game using Osprey's Black Ops rules. The scenario was cobbled together just before the game.

New oil deposits have been found in the tiny South American country of San Theodoros. The Presidente, Alejandro Caliente, looks like he is going to grant concessions the Blue Lotus corporation. The international community is not pleased, and various powers intervene, in particular the British. This has nothing to do with the long-standing British South-American Petrol's interests in the area, but nevertheless Royal Marines land and start to take control of vital assets.

Presidente Alejandro pleads with Blue Lotus to get him to safety, and they contract the Implement firm of private military contractors (who many be looking for a new marketing department).

Late at night, a four car convoy heads to a seduced airport, but are warned of a roadblock ahead. The cars pull up, and consulting a map shows the airport can also be reached cross county, that being the far end of the table in the picture below.

Everyone piles out of the cars. The portly figure of Alejandro can be seen next to his assistant Veronica, (rumoured to account for 0.8% of the aid budget). Also running to the front of the car is the president's trusty personal bodyguard, Hector.

 

The fugitives have a few choices here.  They can get back in their cars and drive across the bridge or they can sneak across country. Not knowing if the bridge is guarded, Hector chooses the latter course. He can be seen leading the way here.

 

The river line is guarded; four militia from the San Theodoran Independent Territory Syndicate (SHITS) are patrolling back and forth.

 

The party slows down to sneak silently through the dark woods.

Near the bridge, someone has built a lookout. Inside it, is a Royal Marine with a GPMG. Getting to the airport is going to be harder than expected.

The party sneak up to the river and prepare to cross (crossing the river makes noise)

So the party could try to sneak across the river and deal with the militia, or... lie low till the Royal Marine in the watchtower is facing the wrong way, and come out with all guns blazing. Yeah, lets do that.

The unfortunate militia, and the British Tommy in the watchtower are cut down in a blaze of close range fire, they never stood a chance. The noise wakes up Sergeant Weasel, who rouses the rest of this squad. Turns out they were all in the huts furthest away from the bridge, and a team of the PMCs, led by Hanson, keeps them suppressed there for the rest of the action.

Seeing this, Hector rushes the presidential party over the bridge in the other direction, and behind a small guardhouse.

The guardhouse was guarded by a single Royal Marine, who tosses a grenade out the window, injuring Hector.

The PMC's medic rushes over and lays suppressing fire though the window, before checking Hector. He is wounded and won't make this fight but will thankfully pull through. We can only hope Veronica paid his health insurance premium.

One of the PMCs escorts the rest of the Presidential party towards the awaiting airplane, and freedom. Seargent Weasel has not given up yet. Dodging intense fire from three sides, he makes it to the house in a bid to detain the president.

The PMC however covers the doorway with fire from his Minimi,and el Presidente makes it to the airport. His last words before boarding a Blue Lotus Jet was "I wil return"

I was pleased with how Black Ops handled this scenario.

We did make a couple of house rules, and cannot understand how you handle suppressing fire aimed at an area. If anyone knows I could use a tutorial.

Bonus points to anyone who can spot the references to which fictional character.

Oscar Sierra Charlie in Soviet held Afghanistan

This was our second game of the modern and near future skirmish rules, Oscar Sierra Charlie (OSC)  from Evil Bear.

This game was a clash between a Soviet Spetsnaz (level 6) squad and Mujahideen freedom fighters somewhere in Afghanistan in 1983. Both sides rolled the 'command' scenario.

 In the lower half of the picture below you can see the Soviet deployment point is the back half of that BTR-70.

True to form, the Mujahideen are deploying out of the camels at the top of the picture.

And for no particular reason is a sniper trying to shoot out of my window.

The Spetsnaz deployed first hoping to dominate the primary objective (The rocket launcher)

With the flowing moves that OSC does so well, a Mujahideen fighter advances to cover the same ground, not noticing that Vladimir had sprinted up to 'double tap' him from the rear.

Learning the lesson, the Mujahideen positioned sniper to dominate the road, there he annoyed the Soviets for the rest of the game.

The Spetsnaz continue to spread out.

But a brave Mujahideen runs up to fire an RPG into the compound. One feature of OSC is the noone carrying an RPG lives for very long, as he is promptly shot down in a hail of AK fire.

 Nevertheless, his sacrifice rattles the Spetsnaz in the compound. They never really regain their composure for the rest of the skirmish.

The Soviets continue to use fire and movement to cover the objectives.

In desperation, they try to make a lunge for that ammo box; this solder was lucky to survive that one. The Soviet sergeant was not so lucky.

The Soviets are still trying to outflank the Mujahideen, and are gunning them down in huge numbers. If we had not added a new rule (see below) the skirmish would have ended about now.. 

 Meanwhile, the two snipers have been having their own private battle.

 At last the Mujahideen are starting to dominate the open space containing all the objectives.

When suddenly, and most unexpectedly, a herd of cows goes wandering by. This opportunity is used by a Spetsnaz to 'snatch' a wounded chopper pilot.

The cows let him get the pilot back to base. 1 point to the Soviet union.

A wounded solder is also dragging a box of ammunition back to the BTR, but being wounded doesn't make it before the battle is over.

At the last moment a brave Mujahideen dashes through a hail of fire to claim the main objective for a Mujahideen win. 

Another great game, and we all agree that OSC has a great feel to it and is enjoyable at the same time.

We realised that for this game the points system wasn't working as the Mujahideen at level 3 and 4 only had one extra soldier. But we really didn't want to mess the simple point systems, so what we did is add a new Command Action.

New Action; Call for reinforcements.

A commander can select one solder from the dead pile. He then rolls a six sided dice, if the result is equal to or greater than the level of the solder, he is placed on the friendly deployment point. If the result is less than the level of the soldier no one turn up.

Our rational was that the lower the level of soldier, the more likely he was to have some friends nearby, while better a solder gets, the more likely he is to be behind enemy lines and cut off from support.

We agreed this fixed the point system neatly and I think we will have this a permanent house rule.

I hope the evil bear doesn't mind too much.

Spectre operations beta rules playtest

If the number of painted miniatures is anything to go by, I have an abiding interest in post-war and near futures games set in Africa (I don't do present day conflicts, its too confronting).

 

Clearly, I don't have enough figures though, because I signed up for the Spectre Miniatures Kickstarter to get some more.

 

To go along with the cool miniatures, Spectre are producing some rules, currently in beta. Now these rules are quite close to a set I produced called "Combat Stress". However, I stopped developing these as I wanted to play the rules, not be responsible for writing them.

 

My hope is that the Spectre Operations, can fill a gap between Flying Lead (which can only handle a squad), and Battlefield Evolution. Anyway, Mr. Wong and I decided to give the rules a playtest

 

For reasons I will explain later, this report, is very short, but as far as we can judge from an early beta, the rules look pretty good.

 

Having said that, I have suggested a few ideas to the rule's authors that we tested out: these being:

1. Instead body armour making you a harder target, it subtracted one from the lethality roll
2. Instead of the shooter having to equal or exceed the defenders score to hit the shooter had to exceed the score (this made shooting elite troops harder)
3. Instead of a lethality roll of '1' being a 'lucky miss', we made it a 'light wound' causing two suppression
4. We didn't reduce suppression in the shooting phase. Actually we forgot, but this step seems redundant.
5. When Suppression exceeded command, a soldier panics. 'Panic' means they were moved by the opponent in his or her turn. A panicking soldier most both move 6" away from all enemy and end its move in cover, or else gain one more suppression.

At this stage there is only one scenario, which is for some militia to get a high value asset to safety while being pursued by some special forces. The battlefield is shown below.

 



In the centre of this shot is the high value asset, the local warlord's family. The militia fighter in the red beret is a Big Man. In these rules each leader adds 'Warlord Perks' to your force. Thinking about how to escape, I bought these from the Warlord List:

• Veteran Commander: which lets you seize the initiative
• Lucky: which lets your commander dodge a bullet
• Tip off: which allows you to see the enemy coming and rearrage your forces
• And four lots of Guerrilla Force: which lets Militia move though terrain without hindrance for a whole turn.

 

Here is Seargent McWongs force of near-future English (assuming the UK ceases to exist in September) special forces. I believe these figures are from Hasslefree. The 200 points in the scenario only allowed for four trooper to complete the mission of "neutralising the warlords family"; classy.

 

 

Here is another operator, quickly updating his Facebook status before going into action. McWong had a plan to win this game quickly, he used his Command Assets to enlist an "Airborne Sniper" to do the dirty work for them

 

 

In these rules the soldiers are What-you-see-is-what-you-get; that meant I could only give two of my militia grenades, so I had to use them wisely.

 

Mu plan was to set up small security teams, each with a big-man in charge, around the perimeter of the battlefield. Militia, don't fight very well, but I was hoping the volume of fire would supress the enemy to the point they became ineffective.

 

 

Here is my Warlord (who is also a very big man). If he looks confused, it is because he is; but in the end he decides the best way to get his family to safely is to move them through the laneway towards the long end of the battlefield.

 

Calling out to his family to dash across the open ground is met with the reply "are you crazy, can you see that helicopter over there?"

 

When you are protected by brave men like these though, what can go wrong?

 

'What can go wrong' becomes immediately apparent when the sniper in the helicopter takes a bead on the moving target and... misses the missus. Blimy!

 

Looks like the special forces will have to do the job after all and they start to move in; the problem is there are enough of the militia making their command rolls and going on 'overwatch'. Here we see an operator hit (and having two suppression 'rocks'). He will bleed out in four turns, and has not friends to help him, so he decided to run off table to get picked up by a Blackhawk. Fair enough.

 

He didn't count on cadre Macimbo however, who took the operator out as he made a break for freedom. 

 

What happened next was too horrible to photograph. All of the operators were supressed, except for the sniper, who my troops couldn't get a clear shot at. The sniper competed the operators mission by shooting the 'target'. In hindsight they should have gone through the building instead of the laneway.

The prognosis, both Mr Wong and myself liked the rules, they are fast and easy, and don't try to simulate 'battlefield friction' with convoluted game mechanics (FoF I am looking at you).

One criticism is that it was so easy to lob grenades. Perhaps Grenades and PRGs should need a command roll to 'prep' them before firing.

I will be interested in how these rules progress.










 

Memoir 74 in Africa

I have been using Combat Cards and Crossfire for my 1970's Africa games. However, after playing Chain of Command (CoC) I have been thinking about what is important to me, in gaming at the platoon level. CoC is one of the best sets of rules I have played, but for a club-night game CoC is just too long and hard. Partly this is due the time and the brain-bandwidth I have on weeknights; but it also has to do with my view of simulating platoon-level actions.

 

My impression of platoon-level skirmishes was that they often lasted no more than twenty minutes before one platoon or another gave way. My concern with CoC is that this little action is taking us three hours at least to play out, or about one sixth of real time.

 

So I started to ask myself "What game can I play in twenty minutes?" and the answer was to use the semi-boardgame Memoir 44' with my "little friends". Of course it had to be updated a little to Memoir 74'; but Memoir 74 had two other attractive advantages other than speed.

1. You can play two games in one night. This means the skirmish can be as unfair as you like, since at the end of the game you are going to cross the table and play it again from the other side. Seeking game balance, wargamers tend to be obsessed with finding the few instances of warfare that were evenly matched, but warfare is rarely so. In fact most actions at the platoon level had to decidedly unfair (or they simply wouldn't have taken place). Removing the need for play-balance removes the need for many rules to a large degree. It also removes the contentious requirement for a points system; instead players can just turn up with whatever they have got painted so far.
2. Scenario design. It is really easy to come up with scenario's for Memoir 74', in fact I find I can cook them up as I set up the terrain.

With all that in mind, here is a scenario I devised up in four minutes. It is set in the long suffering imagi-nation of Maroubra. A regular mechanised platoon has been ordered to attack the camp of the Maroubran United Marxist Peoples Squadron or MUMPS.

 

In the picture below, the regular platoon is seen on the left about to cross the river with a scout car and some Portuguese mercenaries  already across. The MUMPS base can be seen on the top left of the picture.

 

Here is the MUMPs base, protected by a watchtower.

 

 

There are a couple of small villages  between the river and the MUMPS base

You win Memoir '74 by either killing units, or capturing things, in this case there are three things the regular forces can capture within the base. Below (and directing the fire of an artillery unit) is General Macimbo, President for life of Free Maroubra

The regular government would like to capture and deport this catholic priest, who is lending the MUMPS too much legitimacy.

General Macimbo is to be found in one of the barracks huts.

In another is the third objective: General Macimbo's third wife, Kimba who has some very expensive tastes.

As confirmed Maoists (with the exception of Kimba), the MUMPS know that guerrilla's swim in the sea of the people. There are groups of civilians one in each sector and MUMPs guerrilla's (who count as French Resistance) can deploy out of these civilians unless regular troops are actually in that hex. The right flank has a group of people heading off to work.

The Left flank has farmers working, and some innocent looking children playing... mmm.

The centre has an equally innocent looking market.

MUMPS are not fools and are patrolling around their base in technicals, one on the left flank.

...and another in the centre

 

Meanwhile, the Maroubran Regulars are crossing the river at a ford.

While the Portuguese mercenaries scout ahead.

The Maroubran lieutenant has also deployed a sniper along the river's edge.

 

A regular Panhard 90 is on a  recon mission in the central sector

While the unconcerned locals haggle.

The Maroubran regulars strongest unit is a helicopter gunship manned by more mercenaries who have no ties to the CIA whatsoever..

It is busy buzzing the MUMPS base

Maroubra has been given some M113's. The M113s act as tanks with a strength of two, move three hexes and battle with two dice. They can occupy the same hex as an infantry squad. If the APC is ordered to move, the infantry can move with it for free, but they many not battle if the APC moves more than one hex.

Here is another one.

Here is the Maroubra command car (which can also resupply three time)

This Panhard 60 is used to give the platoon fire-support.

This is an attached squad of engineers already looking for mines,

The platoon on the road

The helicopter gunship in the air

If the MUMPS can cut off the Maroubran regulars line of retreat, they can stop the attack... maybe. There are three oil dumps that will give the MUMPS medals. One in the road...

When (or if) the Maroubran Regular forces get five medals they are in for a nasty surprise. They will arouse the  Cuban force from across the northern border. They can come in from anywhere near the MUMPS base. There are two regular squads, two tanks, a command car and a mortar unit.

These are the off-table guerrilla's who enter from the huts in the base, or from amongst the civilians.

Positioned in the base are two special weapons squads with machine guns and RPGs. They are alert...

...and ready

We played two games in under two hours; the regulars won both, but in both cases found it to hard to even get near the MUMPs base.