"Black Hawk down" Topic

Yesterday, I watched Black Hawk down for about the 5th time.
The inevitable happened.
I started thinking about gaming it.

I'm thinking about rules, scale of figures and how on earth to do the scenery.
There must be someone else has been down this route already.

I reckon 10mil minimum scale and 28mil max.
15mil or 20mil are maybe most practical options.
28mil seems a bit big – there'll be technicals and hmmmvs.
10mil seems maybe a bit small but I could maybe re-use terrain with my monster-that-ate-sheboygan game.
The shed-load of buildings and ruins presents several issues. How to make all the flippin things and still look good whilst practical for figure placement.

Any flying choppers would be smaller scale.
If they're even on table.

The brief blurb I read about Ambush Alley seems to describe quite a small table and few figures.
I would have thought a rather larger scope more interesting.
By which I mean the 4 vehicle "convoy" travelling across some of the table to get to a crash site and relieve the force there before it's crushed… kind of scenario.

Any thoughts?
Other than I must be barking mad even thinking about taking up yet another genre.

15mm or 20mm, there are plenty of die-cast choppers you can find. Also a large range of figures in these scales (especially 20mm).

I would then suggest using THW's Chain Reaction 3 rules (available for free off their site). We use them for modern African rebel scenarios and they work great….

ambush alley in 20mm .. solves all your problems !!

just buy a few buildings , a few helos , a few vehicles .. 30 odd rangers , a bag of delta force and 50 odd locals and you're there :-)

check out the ambush alley site for thier forums …

Ambush Alley even has a campaign supplement based on Black hawk Down, called Day of the Ranger. You can play it with a fewfigures up to at least a couple of platoons plus support in my opinion.

Fits your needs perfectly.

A couple of buildings?
I was thinking more in terms of at least a 6 by 4 table.
The game would have to start with the relief convoy almost next to the downed chopper if you only have like 10 buildings, wouldn't it?

Or do you have two tables and some sort of multiple generic encounter resolution for the relief force?

Interesting that ambush alley would work for larger than I originally realised.

I think any chopper on table would be a crashed one.
So plastic, unless someone does a metal crashed black hawk.
I have an idea how big a 20mil chopper will be and they're BIG. Lying on it's side with hacked up blades was my outline plan.

Have to take a look at chain reaction.

These loads of 20mil figures?
Which figure ranges are you thinking of?

Thanks.

Liberation do all the 20mm figures for Somalia… and very nice they are too.

The D-Boys are some of the nicest figures in the whole Liberation range.

Add them to Ambush Alley and the 'Day of the Ranger' supplement and you are sorted…

BTW, I play AA on a 6 x 4 in 20mm… It works fine on bigger tables.

I'm going to do it in 28mm
halving the number of vehicles and men on the ground, somalis are going to be recycled from a pool of ~100+ =)

Brittania makes a crashed 28mm black hawk.

I'm slowly going the 28mm way after getting some TAG Rangers that are great figures. Probably also do 20mm as well at some point.

AA is the way to go. Chain Reaction is also good, but the chrome on AA is pretty sweet.

15mm BlackHawks and Littlebirds: link

For 15mm modern US infantry, QRF, Peter Pig and Cannon Fodder should cover you. Try the Peter Pig AK47/African ranges for Somalis

Geoff
quickreactionforce.co.uk

Three years back when we first went to Historicon, someone had a beautiful setup to play this scenario. He even had blowing dust clouds for when the choppers were coming in low.

Darn, Geoff beat me to it.

Another recommendation for Ambush Alley and Day of the Rangers with the 15mm stuff recommended by Geoff.

That's a lot of 15mm buildings on a 6 x 4 table, but it will look brilliant.

That's the main advantage of 15mm over 20mm – you get a bigger area to work over.

We also have the Hummers and trucks for the convoy. The BlackHawk DAP will come over the summer (hopefully!) for those post-BHD games :-)

In 15mm you can get platic model kit Blackhawks that are pretty cheap. The one in the linked pictures cost me less than 3 bucks. I'd feel bad 'crashing' a nice metal one from QRF but had no problems doing it to the kit.

Jake

picture

picture

"That's the main advantage of 15mm over 20mm – you get a bigger area to work over."

I dont see much difference myself.

Certainly my 15mm games for Sci-Fi will be run on the same size table as 20mm.

This may just be due to me liking big tables with plenty of room to move though, rather than the size of figures!!! ;-)

I did it in 28mm on a 5' x 6' table. We used house rules and later Ambush Alley. I have been happy with the games Ambush Alley gernerates. For figs check out MoFo Miniatures (Gripping Beast) or The Assault Group.

Ed G.

I started thinking about gaming it.

How would you make a game out of it? The Somalis never had a chance…
-Kle.

Victory conditions.
I would suggest the Somali (warlords) side won.

You see the more casualties the US inflicted the better for the Somali leaders. Up to a point they wouldn't realistically reach.

The US couldn't really win if it lost almost anyone, unless the mission was successful.

With two choppers and 14 personnel lost, the mission would have had to be hugely successful for the US to win.

Did the US mission succeed?

20mm game, approx 6x4 table , mostly Liberation figures,
link

If I was starting again, I would seriously consider 15mm for price, availability of figures and equipment and storage!! I am so committed to 20mm now tho' in terrain especially that it isn't an option.

Why not N scale (10-12mm)? Inexpensive, still enough detail to distinguish who has what, more room on the table, easier to transport, selection sufficient available to do the period, etc. are all reasons to not ignore the scale.

Tom Dye
GFI

Well I've not completely ignored 10-12mil. If I was to go for fireteam sized bases then it'd make sense.
Like I said somewhere back up the thread:
If I could also use the buildings for my 10mil monster-that-ate-sheboygan project then that'd be a plus.

Or with my 20mil ww2 stuff. Not a lot of flat topped low white houses going on in NWE though.

6 by 4 is more the sort of minimum size I was considering.
On Sunday I ran a game at the club on an 8 by 10 table.
That'd be a lot of little houses.

I suppose the first question is do you want to start a new scale (assuming 15mm is new to you)?

Assuming that you don't want to expand scales:
As said, Liberation makes some gorgeous 20mm (judging by how much of their stuff shows up on the AA forums and the quality of the paintjobs), and there's a good quantity of relatively inexpensive 1/72 plastics for your helos and Hummvees.

Just think: All those buildings gives you an excuse to expand your WW2 forces into the desert (hey, I like the conflicts in N. Africa)!

<<How would you make a game out of it? The Somalis never had a chance…
-Kle>>

in ambush alley the idea is to deny the ''first world'' forces their objectives and do as much damage to them as possible … so kinda like all modern ''colonialesque'' warfare … ??

Add to that leaders staying alive and profiting in terms of power or money and you have the real life aims of most warlords/insurgent leaders.

Victory conditions.
I would suggest the Somali (warlords) side won.

Sure, but how satisfying is it for the side playing the Somalis to say "Hooray, we won! We killed 3 of them, and they only got 1800 of us…"

You see the more casualties the US inflicted the better for the Somali leaders. Up to a point they wouldn't realistically reach.

The US couldn't really win if it lost almost anyone, unless the mission was successful.

With two choppers and 14 personnel lost, the mission would have had to be hugely successful for the US to win.

Did the US mission succeed?

Sure. If we'd kept running that exact same mission for a few years, Somalia wouldn't be an international headache, today.
-Kle.

Matakishi was working on this last year…
matakishi.com/mogadishu.htm

"Sure, but how satisfying is it for the side playing the Somalis to say "Hooray, we won! We killed 3 of them, and they only got 1800 of us…""

Pretty darn satisfying if the success of Ambush Alley is any indication. It certainly a lot of fun for me.

You're still not getting it mate.

The "score" wasn't 14 vs 1800.
It isn't a simple as US vs the whole of Somalia.

There are warlords forces and there were innocent Somalian bystanders.
The vast majority of forces were innocent Somalian bystanders.
Killing them is bad.

Bad like using a few A10 warthog to take out an armed gang robbing a bank in New York.
2000 dead.
You're thinking.
"We won, We beat New York!"
But you weren't fighting New York.

"Matakishi was working on this last year…
matakishi.com/mogadishu.htm
"

Oh, I like!!
Multiple figures to a base eh.
Not really thought about that.

Might have to reconsider 28mil.

Ambush Alley, Day of the Ranger and 12mm Minifigs – all you need to know :-)

link

This was a small test game – we have a 6x4 full of the buildings and it is all very cheap to make. The 12mm figs are ideal for skirmish when using the Ambush Alley mechanics as the figs represent the 'unit' (fireteam) rather than needing individual 'characters' – the ground scale looks better I think.

I think Matakishi plays Crossfire almost exclusively, which determines how he bases stuff.

However, that crashed blackhawk looks really cool…

I had pretty much decided on 20mil.
Then I saw Matakishi's stuff.

Hey,
Someone told me Matt Eversmann was giving a lecture at Historicon this year.Maybe you could ask him about it.
Pete
OOOppss see your in the UK.Sorry.

Always interesting to talk to veterans.
Thanks for the thought.

With BHD I think you're probably better off doing scenarios which are inspired by the history rather than replicate it.

You're still not getting it mate.

The "score" wasn't 14 vs 1800.
It isn't a simple as US vs the whole of Somalia.

There are warlords forces and there were innocent Somalian bystanders.
The vast majority of forces were innocent Somalian bystanders.
Killing them is bad.

This is the sort of thinking that leads to failure. It worked just fine in WW2, it would have worked just fine if we'd kept it up in Somalia.

Innocent civilians aren't the ones who are firing AKs at us, they're the ones who are running away. We didn't shoot 2000 people in the back, therefore they were the enemy.
-Kle.

Somehow I doubt they were facing a 2000+ strong army. Just because they are facing you, or even armed, doesn't make them the enemy.

The normal problem is identifying exactly who the enemy is in a situation where carrying a gun is as normal as carrying your wallet, and no-body wears a uniform. The issue is, as always when there are non-combatants living in the middle of a warzone, that there will be collateral casualties. I don't think anyone has ever denied that Somalia resulted in non-combatant casualties, but I suspect that the active combat force was smaller than the figures may indicate.

Most certainly, but to paraphrase Dave Drake a bit: Anyone who is pointing a weapon at a trained soldier gets moved from 'not one of us' to 'enemy' instinctively, with typically fatal consequences for the weapon-holder, and sometimes the difference between 'not one of us' and 'enemy' gets really blurry to the trained soldiers (when they've been screwed by their own side too many times).

However, we're wandering into Blue Fez territory here.

Matakishi does beautiful work, no doubt about it, but a better question for you, AONeill, is: How much space do you want the scenarios to take up?

Playing in 20mm on a 4x6 table gives you a field some 100x150 yards truescale, while 28mm gives a field roughly 80x120 yards. 15mm on a 4x6 table gives you a 140x210 yard battlefield.

I'd recommend 20mm. Use Matakishi's techniques to make them look good, but stay with 20mm. If you wander through the AA forums, I saw someone who'd made a 'fastrope' flight stand for a plastic Blackhawk out of some florist's wire, looked absolutely stunning. I am stealing that idea for my moderns.

Yes the magpie in me loves big figures.
But 20mil is more practical and when I (inevitably) branch out, there's more vehicle kits available.

If the raid was successful? Well the US forces achieved all of its goals. Yes they lost a lot of men which in the long political run was bad. A "perfect" case of "winning the battle and losing the war".

All the talk about casaulties are irrevelant when you think about somalis. Then, nobody cared about how many got killed, now noone cares how many got killed. What mattered was that alot of US soldiers died and were treated badly after death. The Somali warlords lost the battle and lost it badly, but "won" because of the US losses and body draggings. After the battle the somalis ammo supply, especially for RPG:s was almost up. If the US had continued to raid the warlords the resistance would have been much less and decreasing all the time.