"Modern Middle East Batrep: Operation Payoff, Pt 1" Topic

All,

Operation Pay-Off is a series of three fights based on Ambush Alley Games' scenario book, "Lawyers, Guns, and Money." Of course, in this fight the Ambassador and his escort is about to be ambushed, their vehicles disabled. The mission of A Squadron is then to move the Ambassador to the hotel at bottom right, set up a secure perimeter, and attempt to establish comms with the outside world (a Quick Reaction Force). The first fight went so long I'm actually breaking it into two separate battle reports.

The table, 2' x 2', north is up, with the three-vehicle convoy already parked in front of the cafe at top left. The hotel/rally point is at bottom right. The good guys (A Squadron) have sixteen men in four teams to protect the Ambassador. The bad guys start with four five-man teams on the table, and every time five of them are eliminated they are reconstituted as a team and re-enter the table at a random location (a 'hotspot' in Ambush Alley/Force on Force terminology).

Things are heading south quick. The ambush is sprung, and insurgent team pops up on a roof and launches an RPG. To see how Part 1 turned out, please check the blog at:
link

Stay tuned. This weekend we should be able to finish this game, and I'll get it posted as soon as I can.

V/R,
Jack

Can you summarize your use of the yellow blast markers and the colored beads? Great report.

Looks like a super intense battle with a lot of back and forth.

Very nice "street" look to the game too. You can smell the camel dung in the air!

Everything generally leans towards "Kursk" style activations becoming the norm. I sort of wanted to already do that for a while now, and make the current sequence the optional one.

Steve – thanks man, and certainly.
The orange 'tracer' and rocket trails show shooting, while the mini explosions show the impact of fire.
Yellow beads show pinned.
Red beads show suppressed.
White beads show knocked down.

Ivan – thanks buddy, it's been a real nail biter, we should get it finished this weekend.

We're playing four teams for each side, and each team has a card in the deck (Bolt Action style, not IABSM style). You pull a card, then roll a dice, activating a team 5MIN style. It definitely works, but it's slow (compared to the fact most of my games usually take 45 minutes to an hour). I think this fight was 2 1/2 hours already.

I didn't go 5MAK style as I figured it would be too much to track. I should have known this was a bit too ambitious even the way I'm playing it, with so many troops on the table. I need to give your platoon hack a shot.

My problem is I wanted a fight where we knew the operators intimately, but then I put 16 of them on the table. Even I'm not immune to putting too much on the table ;)

So I'll finish up this fight (Part 2) playing the way I started, but then scenarios 2 and 3 will either be your new platoon stuff (I haven't even given them a good look yet, so busy with real life), or I'll break the scenarios in two and play 5MAK style like I did for the Royal Marines.

But right now I just need to get worry about getting the Ambassador to the hotel, and without getting my troops too beat up.

V/R,
Jack

Thanks Jack. So the mini explosions are just for a visual effect?

Steve,

Yep, just to help readers of the batrep see where rounds are impacting, and to visualize the weight of fire (I.e., if there are three mini explosions next to a team, they've drawn quite a bit of attention that turn).

And I think it looks cool ;)

V/R,
Jack

Your table looked great.. its sounds like its still 'anybodys Win" at this point.
Im not familar with the "Kursk" activation style, but if your 2 & 1/2 hrs into the game and its NOT completed, might I suggest you look at either;
Changing your activation sys. for the following games. OR simply reduce both sides by the same number or units.
i.e. where the allied force had 4 FT's, reduce them to 2 and the Insurgents, had 5 reduce to 3.
Again, just some food for thought to help 'step up' the game time.

PTG,

Thanks man, and the issue is certainly in doubt!

Ivan has put out the skirmish games '5 Men in Normandy' and '5 Men at Kursk,' where the former rolls an activation die for the whole force and the latter roles an activation dice for each troop.

For the rest of this game, and the following two, Ivan has just put out some platoon-level modifications and I believe I'm going to go with them.

V/R,
Jack