"Operation Dragon Forge, Fight #1" Topic

All,

AKA, Unit 101's 1st Fight of Operation Payback (part of Cuba Libre, my alt-history blog where Cuba was liberated by democratic patriots in 1990)

Following the debacle of Operation Pay-Off, Cuba's President decided revenge was on the menu, and established Unit 101 to be the instrument of that revenge, wherever it may take them. Working closely with Cuban Intelligence, they'd begun the task of figuring out who was behind the bombings in Cuba, and who had conspired to ambush Cuba's delegation in Morocco. HUMINT sources pointed to a sheikh in Morocco with ties to certain, nefarious individuals, who might shed some light on the situation.

Major Villanueva: "Load up, boys, we're heading back to Morocco."

It's 0300 on 5 July 1990. Unit 101 has entered Morocco, and linked up with Cuban Intelligence on th ground. They shared their source's information, pinpointing The Sheikh. Major Villanueva decided on a hard hit, going straight at the target.

Overview of map, north is up, The Sheikh's compound at bottom right (southeast). Unit 101 will land at top left, assault the compound, capture The Sheikh, then exfil via the road at bottom left, where they will be picked up by helo. The board is 2' x 2', buildings by Crescent Root, vehicles by Peter Pig.

I'm playing these fights using Ivan Sorensen's rules "Five Men at Kursk," modified a little to make them a bit more modern and deadly.

Opposing forces, with bad guys on the left and good guys on the right. On the right is the entirety of Unit 101, though they will not all be participating in this fight. Unit 101 is composed of:
Commander
Platoon Sergeant
Two five-man teams
1 Sniper team
1 Machine Gun team
*Most of the troops are 15mm Khurasan, but the shooters have two Battlefront figures, and the sniper and MG teams are Eureka.

The bad guys are: infantry from Flytrap Factory (Taliban) and HVT from Rebel Minis.

The Blackhawk pulls to a hover and the team jumps out. To see how the full batrep, please check the blog at:
link

Team 2 successfully completed it mission of capturing The Sheikh, ten Tangos down, no serious casualties for the Cubans (very lucky casualty rolls). Now the team has to get him to the extraction point. Which, of course, is the next fight, coming soon.

V/R,
Jack

Very nice compact little table.

It looks very "lived in", like it could be an actual place.

Out of curiosity, any particular thing in mind when you choose whether to do FMAK versus regular Fivecore or have you largely switched to Kursk?

Nice write up Jack. Love the buildings

Thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate it.

John – the buildings are Crescent Root, pure awesome and pre-painted.

Ivan – for skirmish I go with 5MIN for WWII and Vietnam, where the pace is a bit slower and fire less accurate (at least in my mind), while I go with 5MAK (with every man acting and reacting each turn, more firing dice per man, and 'return fire' mechanism for modern.

My modern skirmish fights are quick and deadly, based on the idea that insurgent forces are choosing the ground and are engaging at point blank range to nullify Western supporting fires, or Western SOF is conducting a scalpel strike because the mission or ROEs mean supporting fires can't be used.

I'm not saying Western supporting fires don't exist in my little world, just that I don't play those on the table as Western supporting fires mean the game wouldn't be very interesting.

Having said that, I've been reading through the awesome batreps on the 'Big Force on Force" blog, and I'm getting a hanky for some larger, near-peer modern fights with plenty of vehicles and air/arty.

V/R,
Jack

yeah, for this sort of man-to-man level, I think you have to play out the battles where the heavy firepower just isn't practical or available.

Otherwise, it can get a bit dull :)