Dreaded D

Last Tuesday at Enfield Gamers Rich ran myself Charlie an Mr Christian through a game of Skirmish Sangin. Each of us ran a pair of Delta operators looking to snatch one of Bin Laden's lieutenants as he left the local Al Jezeera office. Rich ran the Taliban with great gusto


A quiet street in downtown Durka-Durka-Stan

 Allowed to deploy as we wished, other than the Al Jazeera compound (bottom left) we, eventually, settled on the two main buildings and the corner of the street on the far left feeling the need to cover the options if our man didn't take the obvious route to the car park (top right)

The game had been billed as roleplay-esque and it proved to be so. Nice simple percentile based with plenty of sensible modifiers giving plenty of scope of action. The need to spot targets and not assume line of sight adds to the roleplay element.

Dreaded apparently!!

Being Dreaded D we had elite stat lines but still needed a good slice of luck. Charlie's boys almost got spotted early doors as one the Tallys wandered in to his building. Thankfully he managed to drop him silently and Tango 1 though slightly spooked continued on his way.

Our luck continued as the GO order was given. Myself and Mr C capped the escort while Charlie jumped, literally, on Tango 1. Our silenced weapons and clean kills meant minimum noise or fuss. Even Rich giving himself the chance of accidental fire couldn't produce the gunfire that might bring his reinforcements running.

Insurgent goats??

Taliban reinforcements advance up Ram-a-Dang-a -Ding-Dong Street

 Eventually a local on a trail bike got suspicious and rang the local Tally hotline. We completely failed to spot him and Rich's dice managed to convince the Warlord picking up the call that it was almost a second invasion force.

By this time we'd bundled up Tango 1 and fallen back to the car park to await pick up.....

......repeatedly!!

Only to get shot....





A couple of waves of Taliban came on from random entry points and a proper firefight ensued. Locals and goats legged it as Al Jazeera waved a couple of cameras out of the office window and started to broadcast live to the nation. Not quite the real time info we were looking for!

As such target identification and acquisition became crucial. As a Black Op we had no rules of engagement, or support assets, but it didn't take too much brainpower (even for Yanks) that civvy casualties live at 5 weren't the best idea. 

Fall back to car park for pick up by SUV

A 40mm parting gift via UGL delivery!

Taking fire, but thankfully no hits the SUV Cav turned up just as the Tally boys made a concerted effort to rescue Tango1. Bundling in to the vehicles as they stormed the car park we made our exit covered by an exploratory UGL round. Thankfully it found it's mark rather than overshooting into the Al Jazeera offices.

We screeched away to a text-book success, other than the local press coverage. Hacking T1's phone we now have a location for the main man himself!

A good fun game, we'll definitely be playing through the follow up mission. Skirmish Sanguin played well giving us a good feeling of free action. Luck was definitely on our side and it will be interesting to see how both we and the game copes with more figures on the table.

Stay tuned..........

 

This is the Modern World....

Lots of off centre photos recently so here's one on the left rather than the right. Variety and all that.

Said photo, and that below, is of an Afghanistan 2010 game that Rich J put on at the club this week. Rich wrote the Afghan supplement for Ambush Alley, and I've enjoyed a number of games played with it, but this week was a bigger, 6"x8", game using FUBAR, primarily to see exactly how quick-play they are (approx 3.5 hours!).




As I've mentioned previously general gaming opinion is fairly split as to wether it's "Okay" to play some of the more modern periods, especially those that are ongoing.

Personally, I don't have any problem doing so but each to thier own.

One group who definatley don't have a problem was the RAF group running an Afghan game last weekend at Warfare and they'd actually served there! In fact, for them it was another way to raise awareness. I remember going to Salute the year that Black Hawk Down had been released for a glut of, highly enjoyable, Somali gaming and any number of companies releasing Somali ranges at that time.

You could argue that it was a far more limited action and /or a classic elite vs mob conflict but it seemed, to me at least, that it was more acceptable due to the lack of humanitarian fall-out transmitted into peoples living rooms a la HD.

It's worth noting that a lot of Afghan rulesets are supported and played by serving soldiers, whilst also making contributions to Help For Heroes, which has to be applauded. Whoever thought something so nerdy could be such a potntial force for real good! Personally I was busy across the hall with the Bullz taking on Ian's undefeated and greatkly feared league leading Amazons. These were my first two rolls with the blocking dice!!Mainly through the power of the Tackle skill, thank you Nuffle, the scoreboard was unbothered in the first half, despite me rolling an awful lot of pushbacks and a rapidly filling KO box, which was also shortened by a pitch invasion.

Recieving a touch-back at the start of the second half, Yusuf the potentially unstoppable actually was making great use of Break Tackle for a two turn score. I awaited the Amazon back-lash. Which fortunately, for me, never got going due to three quick female casualties, including a death, one of these from a fan-thrown rock!

4 versus 7 was never going to be easy and Ian almost got the score, ably assisted by more push-back rolls, only to be felled at the last! Rarely was a 1-nil win such a tense affair.

Thank god it's not real eh?.... eh?

It's only a game.....

.... so put up a real good fight! I'm gonna be snookering you tonight. Dah da da, dah da dah!!

No-one else remember that one? Snooker game-show with Jim Davidson and John Virgo? No?

Thursday night saw the shed being properly christened as N21's premier wargames facility. Rich and Shaun popped round for an evening of Flying Lead.

Its been far too long since the three of us got together but the easy banter soon returned over a fish and chip supper.

Thankfully, so did my recollection of the rules.

Rich is the hallowed author of Flying Lead, available through Ganesha Games, using the Songs of Blades and Heroes core mechanics.

As we were drinking MY tea around MY gaming table I was fully expectant of receiving a good kicking across the table. Its the RULES don't you know :)

Rich has worked himself up a lovely set of figures and scenarios for Afghanistan 2010 and production values were as high as always.

As I'm sure Rich's attire suggests we're quite an irreverent set of gamers looking for a good game. We like to play the period rather than the rules, "feel" being all important.

I've always found it interesting how different gamers and groups feel differently about playing certain periods and forces for reasons of ethics and taste.

We were all once engaged in a very large WWII Normandy tank hunt during a weekend's gaming at a village hall. The caretaker popped by and, genuinely interested, told us about his time as a Sherman gunner fighting his way through the bocage.

We all felt like naughty schoolboys caught doing something bad. He went home to bring back sheaf's of photos loving the fact that we were interested.

Discussing a possible Pegasus Bridge game, the idea of using real squad lists was excitedly suggested. When we caught up with ourselves we rejected the idea as too close to the knuckle. How would you feel firing "your" MG-42 at a "real" soldier.

Yet playing an SS unit is absolutely fine to many, popular if anything. To me it seems to be a matter of abstraction. I've wandered past an Israeli vs Palestinian West Bank game at a show thinking "that looks great, but surely that's a bit keen?". I find the conflict of particular interest but don't know if I could actually game it. Each to their own!

So, on to the game.
1s are particularly important within Flying Lead. Every figure has a quality rating between 2 and 5, lower is better. When activated you can choose to attempt 1, 2 or 3 actions. Each roll equal or under gets you an action. Any roll of snake-eyes ends your turn.

So, playing percentages means doing the easier, less important stuff first but how much fun would that be?
So, our scenario saw a British "brick" patrol holed up with two casualties, one walker and one on a stretcher, whilst the local Afghans close in.

Shaun took the Afghans whilst I had the Brits and Rich supervised.

I had a Viking patrol rolling onto one table edge with Shaun taking the other three. It would be three turns until the guy on the stretcher became critical and dice would be rolled for him.
Remembering my way back into the rules during the first turns I relied on my elite status and "2" rated leaders, going for three activations from the off.

Three turns in and three sets of snake-eyes saw the Afghans closing fast whilst the Viking had stalled.
With the enemy at the gates I actually decided to starting thinking about what I was doing. Thankfully Lady Luck intervened.

Another feature of the game are a deck of Fog Of War cards. Roll off at the beginning of each turn and if you double your opponent, receive a card. Shaun had had three in three turns and the curse of the host was being fulfilled!

At this point the lad on the stretcher had been put out of his misery by a grenade blast and the brick leader, dubbed "Wales", had been dropped by AK fire. The Afghans were a revolting unwashed mass!When I FINALLY got hold of a FoW card it gave me two more draws resulting in a Hellfire strike from a UAV and an off table sniper strike.

Immediately used, four Afghan fighters were caught in the open by the Hellfire ,and sent scurrying, whilst the sniper force the Afghan commander co-ordinating the attack to seek some immediate cover.

This was the turning point with my dice finally balancing out their initial poor performance. Shaun's had been exemplary and became merely "average". As always, the cav arrived in the nick of time, aggressively clearing out the cowering Afghans with grenades and burst fire.

Three plucky Brits were medi-vaced out in the back of the Viking whilst the Afghans melted back into the local population. We ran through the victory points to discover that I'd somehow grasped an unlikely victory. Thanks be to off table support!!

An excellent game all round. The mechanisms all work slickly and the core rules can be applied across a number of periods.

I rather fancy doing so for AWI and cracking my Royal Welch Fusiliers out of their carry case.

Good stuff :)