"Welcome to the Panjwayi, where the rules are made up and the die rolls don't matter!"
I ran my Afghanistan game twice at Hotlead. Of course committing to a game when you aren't sure what rules to use is not a good idea. But with
FUBAR and
Black Ops as a basis and some ideas from
Chain of Command (3 activations per unit per turn, d6 to move) I had a one page outline to work with. The rest would be role play and free kreigspiel as the players ran parts of the Canadian team (a reinforced platoon) against me, who was both the Taliban and Call Sign 0 (Battle Group HQ).
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| Me on the right trying to think |
To be honest, setting out my game was mainly an exercise in showing off. And I took some pleasure in guys who had been there saying it looked really good.
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| Saturday night layout |
For the scenario I went with the searching the village for a bomb factory that I had played earlier with the Mad Padre and Patrick. The village layout changed and I gave the Canadians more assets to accommodate more players. Perhaps too many assets, as the Coyote patrol and the Leopard added a considerable amount of firepower!
Interestingly enough, in the first game, the players took more hits, but also achieved more success. An ANA fireteam had gotten shot up and were moved to a casualty collection point behind the HQ LAV. Nobody swept the pot field or established a perimeter. So I snuck a cell in the pot field over and opened up, putting an RPG into the open back of the LAV! The Lt. was wounded and the signaller was killed and several ANA were killed. But meanwhile they had taken 10 prisoners, found the bomb factory (my suicide bombers sallied out to no effect) and they captured a mid-level commander whom I had forgotten to move before his compound was surrounded by LAVs and troops!
In an example of pure role play, they were taking fire from a grape hut and naturally the rifle and 25mm fire was having little effect. So they rolled up the Leopard and on it's next turn it used all three activations to fire HE into the structure. All the Taliban inside were quite thoroughly dead, but I didn't tell them and kept dropping wound and suppression markers inside as they kept up the small arms fire until they cautiously crept some ANA up. "I want to spot inside" Rolls a '2'. "There's too much dust and smoke you don't see anything." Again. A '2' with the same result. Finally he throws in a grenade and storms in to find gore smeared rubble.
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| Friday night, firefight with grape hut on right of pic |
The second game featured the Canadians using the ANA up front as ablative armour. They also totally neglected to spot for IEDs or even ask what my IED markers beside the road meant. So considerable panic ensued when 7 of them detonated at once! Little damage caused, but got them thinking. But then my Taliban HMG opened up from the roof of the bomb factory and the Lt. called in for support. I rolled as CS 0 and got a '6'. Support on the way. But what? Rolled a '3'.
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| Second game, RPGs and IEDs going off everywhere |
Earlier, the player playing the Lt. had talked about his time in Afghanistan with a training mission and he mentioned the desired mix of air support. Apparently with Dutch F-16s, British Apaches and American A-10s overhead you can get whatever you want on the target. So with the '3' I decided a British Apache was inbound.... roll a die... one turn out. (and here's me without my Apache model done yet!).
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| Engineer bison takes a mobility kill from an RPG in the pot field |
So the players held back and the Lt. said "Make that building disappear." I had him roll 20 dice at a time (I figured 10 per missile, 2 missiles per activation), then rolled a die myself as I pondered the results. By the second salvo I figured the building was destroyed and the munitions inside were causing secondary explosions. I told them they could see a lot of unarmed fighting aged males running through the grape fields to the south and smoke was coming from another compound where they'd find the remains of a destroyed and abandoned mid-level HQ.
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| Game over! |
Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, so mission accomplished. But maybe I should add a second page of rule notes for indirect and air support and anti-tank fire....
