"Royal Marines in Helmand Province 15mm Batrep" Topic

All,

I've been using Ivan Sorensen's rules "Five Men at Kursk" quite a bit lately for skirmish gaming (not to mention his Five Men in Normandy and 5Core Company Command); a great set of rules 'as is,' but I just can't help myself when it comes to tinkering with rules. I've been looking at getting heavily into Vietnam-era and Modern wargaming, but I wanted something a little different. Being me, I wasn't exactly sure what all that entailed, but I definitely wanted to make it a bit more violent in order to take into account the greater lethality of modern warfare, as well as to better differentiate between modern, Western, professional forces and various hostile militia/insurgents. So, without thinking too much about setting and forces, and wanting really just to play a game to see if any of my ideas would work, I jotted down some ideas, grabbed the closest forces to hand, threw up a quick table, came up with a quick scenario, and got to it.

The next thing I knew I'd played three linked games and decided I should sort of retroactively come up with/turn this into another campaign. Put simply, I was having a great time and didn't want it to end. I hope you guys like this much as I do. So a quick background, which is only semi-historical (i.e., I'm taking liberties with the units and all town/village and hostile personality names are fictitious).

The time is May 2011, and the Royal Marines' 45 Commando has deployed for another tour in Afghanistan, this time to Helmand province. The area has been semi-quiet the past few months, but as we move from Spring into Summer the Taliban is becoming more active and the Royals are taking steps to counter these new enemy initiatives. The campaign will follow a Royal Marine rifle section during their missions in Helmand; I'm not going to do up a proper roster. Owing to the fact I'm rolling up forces for each side based on the scenario, it's not likely I'll ever have the entire section on the table at once, so you'll see various characters come and go, though I plan (as usual) on following a key, central group.

The scenario is this: a team from our Royal Marine rifle section is on a normal, foot mobile presence patrol, having left their base and moving east to west. About an hour and a half into the patrol the radio crackles; approximately two kilometers to their north a local Taliban commander, designated "Raven," has taken a force into the hamlet of Tashur, apparently on a tax collection mission. The Royals quickly huddle up, do a quick map study, formulate a plan of attack, and begin moving in that direction. HQ radios that no air is currently up, but should be in support by the time the Royals make the village.

Overview, north is up. The village of Tashur is at top, and the Royals will enter via the road at bottom center right. There are two craggy outcroppings (bottom left and bottom right) which may offer good vantage points, though the one in the southwest (bottom left) is not reachable as the river is deep enough to be not fordable. The road is hardball though heavily potholed, and there are a few fields and trees spread throughout.

The Brits are, from left to right: Pvt "Gimlet" Grabowicz (SA80), LCpl "Sparks" Anderson (SA80), Pvt "Jonesy" Jones (SA80 w/UGL), LCpl "Knocker" Dawes (top center, Minimi), and Corporal "Corp" Choudhry.

Sorry for the crappy lighting…

Sparks and Knocker have gotten up top on the eastern hill; Sparks is on the radio while Knocker makes good use of his Minimi. To see how the first fight went, please check the blog at:
link

Well, what a fight! That was a tremendous amount of fun! Quick, bloody, decisive, a bit heroic, it really felt right to me, like what I want out of these games. As I said, I'm writing after the fact, but at the time I wanted to see if this really worked the way I thought and I ended up playing two more games. And yes, I'm very happy with them, and will get the batreps out as quick as I can, and hopefully play some more this weekend (baseball is over, so no reason I know of that it won't happen.

V/R,
Jack

Good work. I've got a load of those Flytrap Factory Royal Marines and haven't painted a single one yet.

Like the sound of those rules too.

Jack,

Great job as always!
Joe

Great stuff! Looking forward to trying out the rules.

Will – Thanks man, and get to painting!

Joe – Glad you liked it; even worked in some Platoon Forward ;)

Badgers – Thanks, I appreciate it.

V/R,
Jack

What did you change or tinker with? We have changed the grenade rules to make them more useful, it normally deviates on a 2-5 moving that number of inches in a random direction, we changed it to deviating only on a 6 and random distance/direction. Also his FiveCore 3rd ed rules work quite well with moderns. You should try it.

Kevin,

I'll put my changes out in a bit (when I get time, and after talking more with Ivan). And forgive me; I love Ivan, but can't keep up with all the different versions! Which one is 5Core 3rd Edition? Is that Five Men at Kursk? That's the base set I'm using.

V/R,
Jack

Very nice indeed.

However, referring to the most junior rank in the Royal Marines as a "Private" could be dangerous to one's health; the correct title is "Marine", as in Marine Anderson.

The fire team would be 4 men rather than 5.

Aberrant,

Thanks man, glad you liked it, and I did not know that the most junior rank is "Marine," very interesting. Just to be clear, there is no rank of "Private" in the Royal Marines, or is there a Private rank but they are referred to as "Marine"?

And I'm with you on the size of the fire teams, but I use random force generators where the number of men in the fight can be between five and ten, so I play with whatever gets rolled up (as opposed to actual T/O forces).

V/R,
Jack

"Marine" is the equivalent of the army rank of "Private" and is the actual rank used in the Royal Marines instead of "Private".

Op Herrick 14 in 2011 was the first time that 45 Commando deployed into a combat zone without me since the Falklands; this time I was safely tucked away at 3 Commando Brigade HQ.

Thanks, I can't believe I didn't know that.

And the first time since the Falklands, eh? So you were there in May 02 for Snipe then; I did a bit of walking around with you guys for that, that's when I got the beret at the end of the post.

V/R,
Jack

So you were there for the farce that was Op Snipe? Walking around just about sums it up! That and drinking tea with the locals.

Op Condor was marginally more entertaining; at least we got a big boom out of it.

What unit were you with?

E-mail me at bigjackmac (at) hot mail (dot) com

V/R,
Jack

QC,

The rocky outcrops were bought off eBay. They appear to be aquarium equipment dressed up a bit.

Regarding the rules, I hadn't really intended this as a batrep, much less a full on campaign, I was just testing out the rules. The mods are here:
link

V/R,
Jack