Post by abbysdad on Jun 29, 2009 15:54:30 GMT -5
American Sci-Tech (Chris) vs. Russian NKVD (Chuck)
American Detachment – Infantry Detachment
Elite - OSS Agent – Eccentric Millionaire Hero
Vet - Airborn Officer – Technician Hero
Reg - Combat Engineers – 1 w/Rifle Grenade
Reg - Combat Engineers – 1 w/Rifle Grenade
Reg - Combat Engineers – 1 w/Rifle Grenade
Green - GI Unit
Green – Robot Troopers
Special Orders: Parachute Drop, Artillery Support, Minefield
Soviet NKVD Experimental Detachment
Elite – Psi Officer (Clouded Minds only!) PPSH
Vet – Sniper
Reg – Psi Commandos - PPSHs
Reg – Psi Cannon Team 1 Psi Cannon, 1 SVT 40
Reg – Banshee Team
Green – Chumans – Giant target on unit.
Green – Forgot I had this extra option to use.
Special Orders: Didn’t take one!
We decided after the game that the moral of this story is that Chuck needs to stop putting detachments together when he doesn’t have his rule book! Otherwise, we’re interested in taking handicaps in future games just to see who could pull it off with a disadvantage.
Planned Scenario: The Last Patrol
We decided to play at least two games, the first where I was the attacker and Chuck was the defender and then reverse the roles for the next game.
The set-up consisted of a ruined building in the center of the board surrounded by two hills and three sets of forests. The forests were located off of the corners of the ruined building. And the hills were on the left side of the board at the edge of each deployment zone.
The building had two rooms connected by a long hall way, no roof/ceiling and a 5” perimeter of rubble that we considered pretty difficult terrain (1/2 movement). The entire piece was about 20x20 inches square. The rooms were divided by a single high wall. There were plenty of windows around the perimeter of the building but no internal windows.
Game 1: Chuck was attacker. I placed a single unit of combat engineers in the middle of the building and the robot troopers on the board. Every one else was placed into reserve for their parachute drop. Chuck placed his sniper in the tree line off the right hand corner of the building closest to his deployment zone and put the other squads at the front edge of his deployment zone.
Turn 0: I had my OSS agent parachuting in so there were no scouts. Since the Americans were the defenders I chose not to lay down any minefields because that would have been exceedingly cheesy IMO. Plus the Russians had better long distance weapons so if they stayed outside they could have taken shots at me outside of my range!
Turn 1: Psi Units move into position, all but the Psi Officer running to get close to the building.
Turn 2: Troops start parachuting in. Psi units move around to counter paratroopers.
Turn 3: One chuman looks at another chuman and asks what that whistling noise is. Moments later, only one chuman left. The glory of a satchel charge that hits with 1 inch of deviation! Incoming artillery barrage! Banshees and Psi commandoes are wiped out in artillery strike.
Turn 4: With the attacker’s army decimated and the monkey running off the board we called the game for the Americans.
Game 2: Chuck placed his banshee unit in the back room of the building. The other defending teams were placed around the building and inside the building.
This was different from the described scenario but made it very challenging to sneak in and take a model away from the defending team. I placed the OSS Agent in reserve for hidden deployment, the robot troopers and GI team at the front edge of my deployment zone facing the building.
Turn 0: Chris placed minefields outside of the building leaving a 6 inch corridor to maneuver around but not enough to permit easy exit from the building on Chuck’s deployment edge. The OSS agent was set-up in hidden deployment for a quick move into the buildings perimeter.
Turn 1: Chris wins initiative. The OSS agent moves towards the building. My Psi officer and sniper foolishly move outside the building to wipe him out. That fails. The robot troopers suppress the heck out of the psi officer and he gets ready to retreat inside the next turn.
Turn 2: Chris wins initiative. The chumans hear a whistling sound. It is thought that one muttered “Have you ever had one of those days?” right before the artillery strike hits home. All chumans are wiped out along with one banshee. The airborne officer parachutes into the same room as the banshee, unfortunately, the banshee has already activated. The third engineer team parachutes into one of the minefields.
Turn 3: Chris wins initiative. The OSS agent goes mono- a – banshee and loses combat. The airborne officer also attempts to take out the banshee. The banshee is victorious again. The Psi Commandoes start winging grenades. One hits and wounds the banshee that the two American officers are trying to extract. No one else is wounded in the exchange.
Turn 4: Chuck wins initiative. The banshee finally loses combat, but it takes the OSS agent, the airborne officer and a two man engineering unit to do it. A total of 14 AP were expended to knock the banshee out and drag her of the building. [Before anyone asks, yes we included the rules for being in the rear arc and the rules for ganging up on a model, they all either legitimately missed or failed to wound the banshee. Cursed dice, or unpainted models. You decide.]
More grenades are thrown. The only effect is one grenade bouncing back to the sniper and wounding him. Reminding Chuck that snipers are best with guns. The Psi officer and lone commando manage to take out 2 engineer units and the OSS agent. But it wasn’t enough to take the drive down enough to rout the Americans. Chuck almost won this round and came close to killing everyone who could have taken the banshee out of the building.
Turn 5: I win initiative. There are no living Russians within 6 inches of my models. With the banshee firmly in hand and ready to be passed a long a fireman chain of Americans off the board edge we called the game for the Americans.
Total BOOM! Count: 2 artillery barrages and 6 satchel charges hitting the Russians. 2 Russian grenades also hitting the Russians.
Conclusion: It’s pretty clear from the detachment lists that this wasn’t a fair fight from the start. Chuck was playing with one heck of a handicap. But he almost won the second game! It did give me a good primer on how to use my guys against some psi-teams.
The satchel charges were deadly. If the interior wall separating the rooms had a window the psi cannon team would have destroyed the Americans. But the two rooms divided everything up so it made it better for the piecemeal force of parachuting Americans.
Dropping in teams seems to be very scenario dependent. This is my third game doing it. In some cases, it is a huge advantage, in others; the opponent can just pick you apart unit by unit. The trick is to keep the right balance between the guys you leave on the field at the start and the models you place in reserve. The combat engineers were incredibly effective when dropping in. They were also very nasty as defenders.
Next time I’ll try setting up the satchel charges and retreating to a 12 inch distance so that the attackers have to either risk being blown up or completely re-direct their approach. The soviet guys were great! Even in small numbers. It will be fun to try this again soon with a more fair set-up. Both of Chuck and I had fun playing with toy soldiers for an evening.
I may have to change the name of my OSS Agent stand-in from “Lobster Johnson” to “Shrimp Murphy”. Anyone who takes more than two turns to KO a single woman when he has three other soldiers surrounding her and helping him out may not be cool enough to pretend to be that particular character from Hellboy.
American Detachment – Infantry Detachment
Elite - OSS Agent – Eccentric Millionaire Hero
Vet - Airborn Officer – Technician Hero
Reg - Combat Engineers – 1 w/Rifle Grenade
Reg - Combat Engineers – 1 w/Rifle Grenade
Reg - Combat Engineers – 1 w/Rifle Grenade
Green - GI Unit
Green – Robot Troopers
Special Orders: Parachute Drop, Artillery Support, Minefield
Soviet NKVD Experimental Detachment
Elite – Psi Officer (Clouded Minds only!) PPSH
Vet – Sniper
Reg – Psi Commandos - PPSHs
Reg – Psi Cannon Team 1 Psi Cannon, 1 SVT 40
Reg – Banshee Team
Green – Chumans – Giant target on unit.
Green – Forgot I had this extra option to use.
Special Orders: Didn’t take one!
We decided after the game that the moral of this story is that Chuck needs to stop putting detachments together when he doesn’t have his rule book! Otherwise, we’re interested in taking handicaps in future games just to see who could pull it off with a disadvantage.
Planned Scenario: The Last Patrol
We decided to play at least two games, the first where I was the attacker and Chuck was the defender and then reverse the roles for the next game.
The set-up consisted of a ruined building in the center of the board surrounded by two hills and three sets of forests. The forests were located off of the corners of the ruined building. And the hills were on the left side of the board at the edge of each deployment zone.
The building had two rooms connected by a long hall way, no roof/ceiling and a 5” perimeter of rubble that we considered pretty difficult terrain (1/2 movement). The entire piece was about 20x20 inches square. The rooms were divided by a single high wall. There were plenty of windows around the perimeter of the building but no internal windows.
Game 1: Chuck was attacker. I placed a single unit of combat engineers in the middle of the building and the robot troopers on the board. Every one else was placed into reserve for their parachute drop. Chuck placed his sniper in the tree line off the right hand corner of the building closest to his deployment zone and put the other squads at the front edge of his deployment zone.
Turn 0: I had my OSS agent parachuting in so there were no scouts. Since the Americans were the defenders I chose not to lay down any minefields because that would have been exceedingly cheesy IMO. Plus the Russians had better long distance weapons so if they stayed outside they could have taken shots at me outside of my range!
Turn 1: Psi Units move into position, all but the Psi Officer running to get close to the building.
Turn 2: Troops start parachuting in. Psi units move around to counter paratroopers.
Turn 3: One chuman looks at another chuman and asks what that whistling noise is. Moments later, only one chuman left. The glory of a satchel charge that hits with 1 inch of deviation! Incoming artillery barrage! Banshees and Psi commandoes are wiped out in artillery strike.
Turn 4: With the attacker’s army decimated and the monkey running off the board we called the game for the Americans.
Game 2: Chuck placed his banshee unit in the back room of the building. The other defending teams were placed around the building and inside the building.
This was different from the described scenario but made it very challenging to sneak in and take a model away from the defending team. I placed the OSS Agent in reserve for hidden deployment, the robot troopers and GI team at the front edge of my deployment zone facing the building.
Turn 0: Chris placed minefields outside of the building leaving a 6 inch corridor to maneuver around but not enough to permit easy exit from the building on Chuck’s deployment edge. The OSS agent was set-up in hidden deployment for a quick move into the buildings perimeter.
Turn 1: Chris wins initiative. The OSS agent moves towards the building. My Psi officer and sniper foolishly move outside the building to wipe him out. That fails. The robot troopers suppress the heck out of the psi officer and he gets ready to retreat inside the next turn.
Turn 2: Chris wins initiative. The chumans hear a whistling sound. It is thought that one muttered “Have you ever had one of those days?” right before the artillery strike hits home. All chumans are wiped out along with one banshee. The airborne officer parachutes into the same room as the banshee, unfortunately, the banshee has already activated. The third engineer team parachutes into one of the minefields.
Turn 3: Chris wins initiative. The OSS agent goes mono- a – banshee and loses combat. The airborne officer also attempts to take out the banshee. The banshee is victorious again. The Psi Commandoes start winging grenades. One hits and wounds the banshee that the two American officers are trying to extract. No one else is wounded in the exchange.
Turn 4: Chuck wins initiative. The banshee finally loses combat, but it takes the OSS agent, the airborne officer and a two man engineering unit to do it. A total of 14 AP were expended to knock the banshee out and drag her of the building. [Before anyone asks, yes we included the rules for being in the rear arc and the rules for ganging up on a model, they all either legitimately missed or failed to wound the banshee. Cursed dice, or unpainted models. You decide.]
More grenades are thrown. The only effect is one grenade bouncing back to the sniper and wounding him. Reminding Chuck that snipers are best with guns. The Psi officer and lone commando manage to take out 2 engineer units and the OSS agent. But it wasn’t enough to take the drive down enough to rout the Americans. Chuck almost won this round and came close to killing everyone who could have taken the banshee out of the building.
Turn 5: I win initiative. There are no living Russians within 6 inches of my models. With the banshee firmly in hand and ready to be passed a long a fireman chain of Americans off the board edge we called the game for the Americans.
Total BOOM! Count: 2 artillery barrages and 6 satchel charges hitting the Russians. 2 Russian grenades also hitting the Russians.
Conclusion: It’s pretty clear from the detachment lists that this wasn’t a fair fight from the start. Chuck was playing with one heck of a handicap. But he almost won the second game! It did give me a good primer on how to use my guys against some psi-teams.
The satchel charges were deadly. If the interior wall separating the rooms had a window the psi cannon team would have destroyed the Americans. But the two rooms divided everything up so it made it better for the piecemeal force of parachuting Americans.
Dropping in teams seems to be very scenario dependent. This is my third game doing it. In some cases, it is a huge advantage, in others; the opponent can just pick you apart unit by unit. The trick is to keep the right balance between the guys you leave on the field at the start and the models you place in reserve. The combat engineers were incredibly effective when dropping in. They were also very nasty as defenders.
Next time I’ll try setting up the satchel charges and retreating to a 12 inch distance so that the attackers have to either risk being blown up or completely re-direct their approach. The soviet guys were great! Even in small numbers. It will be fun to try this again soon with a more fair set-up. Both of Chuck and I had fun playing with toy soldiers for an evening.
I may have to change the name of my OSS Agent stand-in from “Lobster Johnson” to “Shrimp Murphy”. Anyone who takes more than two turns to KO a single woman when he has three other soldiers surrounding her and helping him out may not be cool enough to pretend to be that particular character from Hellboy.