Yesterday we wrote another chapter in the history of Andreivia when Andy came over to give us both a chance to remind ourselves of the Arc of Fire rules and to playtest my alternative actuation system. The background to the game was as follows.
Southeast of Tcherbevan (in Andreivia’s Southern Hills region) the Küçük radar station stands on a low rise a little way south of the highway to Vani. Early in the civil war the station was captured by Andreivian Turk forces.
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The radar station seen from the north. The flag of the
self-proclaimed Andreivian Turk Republic flutters in the breeze.
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Andreivian Ministry of Defence sources have discovered that a hidden safe at the station contains vital information that could seriously weaken the government’s position in any post-conflict negotiations. As the Turks have not revealed the information, it is believed that they are not yet aware of the safe’s existence.
The station is within a No Fly Zone declared by NATO covering the corridor they control from the Turkish border to Tcherbevan. As such a bombing raid is not practicable even it could be guaranteed to destroy the safe and its contents.
The Government has ordered that a raid be mounted to recapture the radar station long enough to destroy the documents in the safe. This raid will be carried out by the Special Airborne Company, Andreivia’s elite special forces unit.
Andy played the Government force, high quality troops with Tac and Morale both a mix of 4s and 5s - the best in the game. I controlled the Andreivian Turk forces; actually made up entirely of foreign mujaheddin volunteers. These were mostly highly committed to the cause (Morale 4 and 5 with the occasional 6) but nowhere near as tactically competent (all units rated TAC 7). In addition I had plotted the starting positions of the mujaheddin before the game and decreed that they must start in confused mode.
Andy was given the chance to make a TAC roll by his HQ unit for each enemy unit. He succeeded with three out of four so I revealed the locations of three of the mujaheddin units before Andy chose his starting positions.
Andy launched his attack from a rocky outcrop to the west of the station. Two SMG-armed squads led the way accompanied by a bazooka team. Fire support was provided by the HQ's light machine-gun team.
As it happened neither Andy nor I could to get our respective medium mortar teams into position to engage the enemy. I think we both learned a useful tactical lesson there.
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| Mujaheddin mortar team |
Initially the mujaheddin were deployed outside the station but they rapidly took punishing fire from the Government machine-gunners. One squad was completely routed (a 'Destroyed' Morale result) before it could scuttle inside) and a volunteer RPG gunner was killed before he got a shot off from the roof.
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| 2nd Squad advances towards the radar station |
The paras' 2nd Squad and the bazooka team targeted the slit windows on the side of the radar station (a conversion of an old Airfix coastal emplacement) and managed to keep the mujaheddin machine-gun team pinned down. In hard cover and Defence Mode the men in the station were hard to hit effectively but sufficient casualties were caused to prompt a morale test on the defenders. An unlucky die roll saw them forced into Confused Mode and this reduced their cover modifier.
With the fire from the station dying off, the 1st Squad assaulted to front doors under cover of smoke fired by the mortar team (their only contribution to the action). A bloody hand-to-hand combat ensued. Both sides were reduced to just two unwounded men. The resulting Morale Tests saw the mujaheddin roll poorly and receive a Disrupted result. This led to the survivors surrendering to the Government Special Forces.
The activation system worked fine although by chance we never got to perform any additional activations using the "Dice Card" even thought there were some Elite and Aggressive units on both sides.
What I have decided to try is using different coloured mini dice to indicate both the Activation Number and the Mode of each unit. An order to
The Dice Shop went in this morning!
