"Are you skilled at ambushes?" Topic

Are you sneaky enough to pull off surprise in your ambushes?

ROFLMAO !! Thanks for sharing, Bashy !

I do recall a sneaky ambush during a night patrol exercise in the Ashdown Forest training area when I was in the cadets back in the 80s – classic "L" arrangement, caught the targets completely off guard, expended many, many thunderflashes and hundreds of rounds of 7.62 blank, didn't worry too much about the terrified yelling and apparently nothing fired back, then bugged out, back to the transport and back to camp for tea and buns. Then our quarry turned up a few hours later, said they had avoided us but were impressed at the sight of a firefight taking place ahead of them, which they avoided. Turns out there were a bunch of regular RAF trainees on a night exercise who had got lost and were in the wrong exercise area. They had one hell of a story to tell (plus they scattered and it took several hours to find them all!). So actually probably NOT skilled as we shot up the wrong people :)

LOL !!!!!

Yes, the L Shaped Ambush properly executed can be very effective. But like many tactics & techniques it takes training and practice, etc. And any ops at night can be particularly challenging …

However, I think that Feline got a "GO" on this ambush … The Canine a "NO GO" for reacting to an ambush poorly …

Not to to mention the time as cadets in the late '70s. When training at a near by Boy Scout Camp. We almost "wiped out" a Girl Scout troop. Having an overnight camp out.

As the Point Man on a night recon patrol. I fortunately saw long blonde hair coming out of a Scooby-do sleeping bag. Quickly realized they were not the OPFOR we were looking for ! And "stealthfully" withdrew the patrol …

I tend to sneeze at just the wrong time.

While training an infantry battalion in Senegal, I had a company commander set up a perfect L shaped ambush, then took a position to observe their execution. Before half of the OPFOR entered into the kill zone, one of the ambushing troops' cell phone went off and blew the surprise!

From that point on, I made the Company Commanders responsible for collecting all cell phones during field exercises.

(It was really a well concealed ambush, too!)

I ran an ambush scenario for my gaming group and then at a convention some years ago. It was set in the Traveller universe. An Imperial Marine platoon (4 squads, as I recall) had to walk across the table to a crashed Zhodani reconnaissance drone. Two Zhodani squads were hidden buildings in the middle of the table.

A good time was had by all.

Once a long time ago back in the service in advanced training the recruit platoon I was in was to be the victims in the L ambush of the 82nd airborne. Unfortunately the leader of the 82nd threw a copy of the ambush in the waste paper basket where one of my platoon found it. We went to the Ump and said we wanted to mine the location for the ambushers. The ump smiled viciously and had us stay in bed that night and went out to tell the platoon of the 82nd they had all been blown to smithereens.

I saw a similar cat on dog ambush where the cat (someone elses) ambushed my dog, a huge Alaskan Malemute.

Not pretty. Not much left of the cat. The Malemute went around with a smug look on her face for days.

Oberlindes Sol LIC

What rules were you using?

Yes, in ROTC prior to active duty we conducted many field training exercises. Too many to count. I preferred the L ambush to the V.
Then once on active duty, I had scouts and infantry assigned to my Cavalry unit. The infantry ambushes were much easier and part of our SQT trading than the scout often set up using M113 and M551 vehicles.

Same here … the "L" was like the standard. Again, can be very effective, as we were trained to execute it.

Stephen M: StarGrunt II, with Hyperbear's StarGrunt statistics for Traveller weapons.

I have been told I am an expert.

Context: Apparently at work, asking someone basic background questions about the rationale they use to justify a decision is an ambush.

I was an observer of one of two platoon ambushes that were one night at Camp Grayling MI. The one I observed was ok, the other one absolutely nailed an ambush of a boy scout troop on a night hike.

I was told it took them HOURS and HOURS to find all the very scared boy scouts. Good news is no injuries other than scrapes and bruises, I expect those now young men are still telling stories.

One of my favorite movie ambushes:

YouTube link

The plot of that movie would be a good RPG with some nice miniatures skirmishes.