"Operation Pay-Off Batrep 3" Topic

All,

It's 22 June 1990, and things are really, really not going well for Major Villanueva and his men. They are in Agdir, Morocco, where they were charged with escorting The Ambassador to a meeting, but there was no meeting, it was all a ruse that led to a complex ambush. That was at noon; it's now about 1245. Villanueva and his men have been in a firefight for roughly forty-five minutes now, and they have suffered a whopping 11 of their 16 shooters becoming casualties (though The Ambassador is safe), and they have killed almost sixty enemy soldiers. They got off the 'X,' out of the kill zone, by fighting their way approximately 100 meters to a building where they are hoping to hole up and wait for a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) made up of Moroccan Army troops and vehicles (this was coordinated prior to the operation beginning) to come in and save their bacon.

But Major Villanueva has been on the radio with the QRF commander, Captain Mohammed Massaquoi, at the head of a convoy consisting of a company of infantry supported by a platoon of tanks, and things are not looking good. First, comms suck in the built up area. Second, the maps suck, and the meeting site is in a very inhospitable (to the Moroccan government), congested area, so both the Cubans and the QRF are having a hard time figuring out exactly where they are and communicating it to the other. Lastly, the Cubans are not the only ones under attack; the bad guys are also attacking the QRF. So effecting a linkup between two forces not used to operating with each other, in areas neither is particularly familiar with, with spotty communications, under fire, is proving to be quite a task.

In our last fight, Major Villanueva again split his force, with an advance element clearing the way to a building near the QRF, and the rear element protecting the casualties and moving up once the coast was clear. But things went horribly awry, and a seemingly endless wave of bad guys flowed in, making very good use of RPGs to pound the Cuban position and small arms to cut them up in the narrow streets. The initial Cuban push was forced back due to casualties; Major Villanueva quickly re-organized the lead element, not to continue the assault to the destination building, but solely to recover the Cuban casualties and and fall back to the current position. But Mouse, a team leader, was confident he could move his men southwest and secure the destination building, and so he pushed his shooters forward. But they were chopped to pieces, with three casualties falling within about three minutes and 20 meters of each other. Ultimately, one final push was made and the Cuban casualties were secured, but they had to fall back to the original position, still occupied by Major Villanueva.

At this point water, medical supplies, and ammo are running low. Many of the wounded are fading, and some have actually passed out due to loss of blood, and the casualties actually double the number of able-bodied operators. Hope and time are running out, and Major Villanueva floats his final plan, a desperate, last ditch effort to get out of this jam by linking up with the Moroccan QRF. Major Villanueva works out it out with Captain Massequoi: the Cuban force cannot move as a whole as there are simply too many casualties. Major Villanueva will lead several men forward to affect the physical linkup with the QRF, and the QRF will detach a force to travel back to the Cuban position, secure the casualties, then return to the QRF's primary position before exfiltrating the area.

Major Villaneuva and Mouse push ahead on the right flank, but find themselves outnumbered and bogged down in a fierce firefight. Will they be able to affect the linkup? Will anyone survive this disaster of an Op? Cruise on over to the blog to find out:
link

That was the first time I'd ever played scenarios designed for Force on Force with anything other than Force on Force, so I think I've got a decent handle on how to make it work for what I'm doing, though initially I was trying to do too much. I've also decided that, with Special Forces fights where they're drastically outnumbered, I'm going to do the casualty roll immediately when an SF guy goes 'out of the fight,' so I know whether he's dead, heavy/moderate/lightly wounded, etc…, to decide if I want to keep him in the fight or not (albeit, in a reduced capacity). I'm also going to go with Ivan's recommendation for rolling to see if a recovered 'man down' is now a 'walking wounded' troop.

So that wraps this up for a bit, and Cuba Libre for a bit. I think I'll be heading back to 3mm Hakuna-Matata, just for Nik, though just saw FSN request KG Klink. Too many projects ;)

V/R,
Jack

that was a cool campaign. Now you're going to play 3mm? Wow…that's small. I am eager to see the minis and terrain. ben

Great campaign!

May I ask where you got the Force on Force scenario? I'm very interested in finding some of those.

Ben – Thanks man, and don't worry, I'll be coming back to this for "Operation Payback." You can check here to see what I've done so far in 3mm:
hakunamatatawars.blogspot.com

5Cdo – Thanks man, glad you liked it.

Josta – Yeah man. This group of scenarios is called "Lawyers, Guns, and Money," and I got it as a PDF when I bought some troops from Rebel Minis. Rebel Minis has another PDF of three scenarios called "Operation Dark Star," and I've got that too. I've also got some hardcopy books I bought from Mark at Scale Creep.

I'm a huge fan of PDF scenario books, and Ambush Alley is supposedly going to put some more out in the future.

V/R,
Jack

great fight ! ..just read 'em all through !
… horror day for the SF.

? maybe a while since they rezeroed their weapons ?
..but 60+ bad guys with RPGs is a lot of bogeys.

…was wondering if this was about to be a 'Mogadishu scenario' night-time ending …glad the QRF made it during the day.

Jimmi,

Hey man, how the heck are ya? Thanks for posting, glad you liked the batreps. As you noticed, quite a butt-whoopin', but not to bad, I suppose, as (with some lucky casualty rolls) most guys made it out to fight again another day.

And yeah, apparently they had bad dope on their guns ;) And no way these guys could have lasted to nightfall. If they did, I suspect it would have been a 'split up and everyone make your own way home' type of deal.

Still not ready for Dai Do in 6mm; got lost of other stuff I want to get to, but part of that is back to Marines on the DMZ in 15mm, want to give Ivan's (Weasel, here) 'No End In Sight' rules a try for that. Also waiting on Joe's 'Grunts Forward' as scenario fodder for it.

V/R,
Jack

Great stuff Jack. And your modeling puts me to shame

Joe

Thanks Joe, I appreciate it!

"And your modeling puts me to shame"
I do alright on the figures themselves, but you do too. Regarding the buildings, I've got one word for you: pre-painted.

V/R,
Jack