Skirmish Sangin Co-op: Rescue SNAFU!

One of my gaming also for 2015 was to campaign something. Really. Anything. Frostgrave started but then fizzled. Since moderns really seem suited to campaigning and a gaming buddy and myself have been trying to work through Skirmish Sangin and build up our modern figures, terrain, etc., it seemed to be a great place to start.

We had also been kicking the idea around of a co-op campaign as opposed to one side taking ISAF and the other insurgents. There is a set of user created solo rules on the Skirmish Sangin forums by user neal5x5 (link). These worked quite well in fact, albeit too well for the insurgents in this case, but that was due to some bad luck on our part (see below).

SirRep: Taliban activity has been on the rise in the region and intelligence agencies have recommended all delegates evacuate the area. Three UN delegates remain in the local hotel. ISAF force in the area have been ordered to clear the hotel and escort the delegates via truck to the local airbase for extraction.

Two USMC fire teams (each with a Veteran fire team leader, Avgerage Grenadier (M4/203), Avg Gunner (M249), and Avg asst. gunner (M4) roll into town - fire support team (Collarin) in the HMMVV (w/.50) and extraction team (Ridolfo) in the Unimog.

Collarin exits the HMMVV and directs Hawkins (M249) to cover the south (across the ditch), while Miller (M203) covers the road leading west and Cabell mans the .50. Ridolfo and his team disembark and breech the first level of the hotel. No contact in the first level. The delegate will run out on his own to the Marines waiting in the street.

Using neal5x5's solo rules, the first of four Unconfirmed Encounters (UE) proved to be nothing. In and out - no big deal, boys. Not so fast. The second UE revealed was a 1/2 Force Confirmed Enemy Group (CEG). As you can see below, you can pack a lot into 550 points of Taliban. The combatants were randomly generated using the table found on page 4 of Free Scenario No. 3 - Hearts & Minds USMC in Afghanistan.

The now confirmed Taliban force is placed, but the USMC will be first to act in Combat Phase 6. Fire Team Leader Collarin uses 2 AP to positively identify the near Taliban - a veteran of the Afghan wars, wielding his trusty AK47. Collarin fires and misses.

It's a miss that nearly costs him his life. In the ensuing Combat Phase the veteran fighter aims and returns fire at Collarin; just grazing him, but enough to cause minor injuries. Miller, seeing the leader drop, suffers a morale test on his next activation. Cabell, manning the .50 on top of the HMMVV, is also targeted. He is not so fortunate. Cabell is shot at by the sniper who critically wounds the rifleman. 

The two SAW gunners return fire and lay down some serious cover fire.

Due to the serious nature of Cabell's injuries, the decision is made for the HMMVV to immediately return him to base. Unfortunately, the driver fails his ability roll trying to navigate along the berm and ends up in the ditch.

FTL Collarin seeing the situation deteriorating fast, hops in the passenger side and jumps up on the turret, only to find that on Cabell's last round misfired and he never had a chance to cleared the round. Instead the driver tries to reverse off of the ditch and get the hell out of Dodge.

The M249s were starting to get things to a manageable situation. Until, the third UE made a move that landed it within 18" of the Marines. A '10' is rolled. A full size CEG appears.

Situation Normal just got all f*cked up!

Hawkins is hit and seriously wounded. Miller tries to provide first aid, but fails. By this time, the Marines inside the hotel had all three delegates in the truck, but were not going to leave any man behind. The Taliban, now with favorable numbers, continued to press.

A rifleman from Ridolfo's team tries to administer first aid to Hawkins. He is also unsuccessful. Shortly after, one of the two new Taliban snipers targets the driver of the Unimog and confirms a kill. Time is running out for the Marines.

By now, the two Marines on the ditch take turns popping up to a knee, just to find two fighters snap firing on them. They take down a couple this way, but they can't stay in this position any longer. Miller tries to drag Hawkins to the truck. The sniper targets him and fires - Miller is critically wounded! Ridolfo, kneeling near the front of the truck is now going to have to drag both of them to cover. Pesci crawls back toward the driver side. He is going to have to climb up and move the driver to get this rig moving.

Unfortunately, this is where we had to call it a night. It was our first time using a combat vehicle and the home brew solo rules, so there was plenty of looking up. Despite the dreadful outcome, a good time was had. We've discussed either picking it up here - or some alternate version... perhaps Ridolfo's team was able to drag Hawkins and Miller back to the hotel where they regroup and attempt to hold down their Alamo while waiting for some air support. The other option is to chalk it up as a loss and move on; perhaps even hitting re-boot since this one was such a cluster from the start and never really closed out. We shall see...

Mid Year Review

Here we are in early August; seven months now behind us in 2015. I was instant messaging a fellow gamer the other day and we were joking about our backlog of miniatures to assemble/paint/get to the table. It made me think back to the end of 2014, just before New Year's, when I had compiled a list somewhere of my top 10 things to do in 2015. For the life of ke, I couldn't remember where I had placed this list electronically.

 

Well, I managed to find said list, buried in a comment on Facebook in our local historical gaming group. I don't recall if this was meant to be an ordered top 10, or just a list of 10. In any case, here it is... or was:

 

If I had to put my huge laundry list of unfinished projects/things I'd like to do in 2015 into a list of 10, I imagine it would look something like this:

1. 15mm Polish 1st Armored

2. Play Battlegroup

3. Blitzkrieg Germans (for Historicon BA tournament)

4. Attend Historicon

5. Warsaw Rising figures (28mm)

6. Attend more local events; in paricular Catawba Military Gaming Society events

7. At least assemble the moderns to get some walk throughs done on some of the available rulesets

8. Japanese and/or USMC (28mm)

9. Pacific terrain

10. Campaign something - BA, CoC, Battlegroup, something. PTO, Normandy, Blitzkrieg,  something.

 

Seven months later, here is my situation report:

1. I did start working on #1. I have a handful of Sherman Vs, a Firefly, a Crusader II AA, a Sherman ARV recovery vehicle, three Bren Carriers, and 30 infantry - all in various stages of completion.
2. I did get to play two games of BattleGroup at Historicon. I would like to play some more, but part of that relies on making more progress on #1. We do have a BattleGroup Kursk game planned, which of course does not require any of my Brits modeled as Polish.
3. The Blitzkrieg Germans aren't moving lightning fast off the hobby table. I did get the vehicles assembled and even used them in a local game, but I never did get them ready in time for Historicon. In hindsight, I may have faired a little better in the tournament if I had.
4. I was fortunate to attend Historicon for the second year in a row. I'm hoping that trend continues.
5. I've really been slacking on #5. It remains high on my want list; however, finding time with all of the others things has been hard. A part of the lack of motivation may also come from the lack of Bolt Action games I've played this year. I imagine they will go hand in hand - if I get the partisans further along, I would be more likely to get in a game of BA.
6. I'm 0 for 7 on this one as I've not attended a single monthly meet up.
7. #7 is going well and there has been a strong push on the Skirmish Sangin front of late. Even earlier in the year, I managed to finish up what insurgents I have and we played some Flying Lead, Hearts & Minds.
8. I did at least get most of my USMC done for #8. There are still a few vehicles left to do and possibly some more plastic figures, but I did compile a list and completed the modeling, painting and basing for it. The Japanese on the other hand... Only a few plastic figures have been assembled, and even then, I don't know to what level of completeness.
9. I have started on #9, but haven't followed through yet to have a complete (or even a partial) game board.
10. Sad to report that I have not participated in any campaign games to date. There are some campaign rules in Skirmish Sangin's Despatches No. 1, so perhaps that will see the light of day.

So there you have it. The list of goals set out at the start of the year and where I stand to date. If you find yourself struggling to complete your own laundry list of tasks, I highly recommend making a list. I had not gone back to it at all in those seven months, but as you can see, just writing something down can have a lasting effect and may help you stay the course.

 

 

Skirmish Sangin SitRep: Patrol

Setup

The free scenario can be found on the Skirmish Sangin blog here: Patrol

I picked this scenario as our first due to the low model count. I swapped the 4 Royal Marines out for 4 US Marine Force Recon I already had painted. We put out the 5 least suspecting insurgent figures I had as the farmers. The board set up looked like this:

Using the top of the image as north, the patrol was to start at the poppy field in the (lower left) southwest corner. Compound 1 was directly to its north. Compound 2 was to the east. Compounds 3 and 4 were to the north and the Blackhawk represented the extraction point. The building to the northwest was were the farmers (and dicker) were congregating.

Aerial reconnaissance shows a quiet village. Perhaps too quiet.

Bravo Company is tasked with infiltrating the village from the southwest and inspect the four compounds (one not visible here). Farmers are in the area. ROE say the Marines cannot engage unless fired upon first.

SitRep

"Hitman, this is Hitman 2-1 Romeo. Over."

"Hitman 2-1, this is Hitman. Standing by to copy. Over."

"Hitman, we have a military aged male on a cell phone at the north edge of the village. Requesting permission to engage. Over."

"Hitman 2-1, this is Hitman Actual. Permission denied. You are only to engage if fired upon. Proceed with mission. Over."

"2-1 copy. Hitman 2-1 is Oscar Mike. Over."

The Marines move up to the first compound and inspect the premises. No Taliban presence here.

The Taliban dicker calls in the Marine position and two Novice Taliban are called to the area armed with AK47s. One rifleman from Hitman 2-1 breaks away from the team and heads toward the crowd of farmers wanting to confront the man with the cell phone.

The gunner and fire team leader head east toward compound 2. But arriving from the west are two insurgents who come in, guns blazing, forcing the forward rifleman prone as they pin him behind some rock formations.

The Marine grenadier runs to the edge of the compound wall looking to provide some covering fire. Gunner puts his SAW to good use - first putting a light wound on the dicker and then later forcing the nearest insurgent threat to retire to the farm building.

The fire team leader initially fails to spot the once retired insurgent, but eventually does and then calls in the .50 cal fire support, call name Assassin.

"Assassin, this is Hitman 2-1 Actual. How copy?"

"Hitman 2-1, this is Assassin. I got you loud and clear."

"Assassin, we have an armed insurgent that has taken refuge in the northwest compound. Request fire support on target. Over."

"Hitman 2-1, this is Assassin. We're waiting to be cleared hot. Stand-by. Over."

The bunkered down insurgent fires his AK through the window at the Marine grenadier who has run up to join the rifleman behind the rocks. "F*ck this sh!t". The veteran grenadier launches a Forty Mike-Mike at the building. The grenade is slightly off its mark and hits the southeast corner of the building. The blast takes out the unconscious Taliban rifleman and further injures the dicker, who is now unconscious.

Before he was knocked unconscious, the dicker had successfully made one more call for support. Arriving from the east was a suicide bomber. He was making a b-line for the Marine gunner who was readying to clear compound 2. A snap fire by the fire team leader dropped the insurgent, who fortunately was not armed with a dead man's switch.

"Hitman, this is Hitman 2-1 Actual. Compounds cleared. Over."

"Hitman 2-1, bring it home. Copy?"

"Solid copy, Hitman. 2-1 Actual, out."

All in a day's work.

Skirmish Sangin US Delta Team A Review

Here is a video review of some of the items available through the Radio Dishdash Day of the Rangers KickStarter.

If you are unable to view the video, or would like the narrative with still shots, continue reading below.

Finely detailed, 28mm figure. Black wash applied to really make the detail 'pop'.

 



Clamshell plastic packaging and foam piece to protect figures. Four figures come in this package for about US$14.

 

 

Some flashing was present on the inside of the legs of two of the figures. 

 

This was later removed with a hobby knife.

 

 

How they compare



The Radio Dishdash figures scale well with other 28mm figures. Seen here are 28mm Marine Force Recon (and insurgent figure) from Eureka Miniatures.

 

The Radio Dishdash figures are more of a true to scale figure than a "heroic" scale figure. 

 

Here in a similar pose, you can see that the Delta figure is slightly taller, a little more slender, and has a gun that has a smaller barrel. Both units are based on the same type washer.

Summary

Overall, these figures are very crisp and will scale well with your existing Eureka miniatures. You can eventually find them in the Skirmish Sangin store, but currently they are available (at a discount) through the Day of the Rangers KickStarter.

G&G Rating

Historicon Wrap-up (Exhibit Hall walk through)

 Walking through the Exhibit Hall...

Impressive board for the Normandy invasion. I am still not sure how they interact with the center of the board.

 

BattleGroup open gaming

Miniature Building Authority's modern board - used for several games. This one was a zombie apocalypse game. It looked like fun and talking with a friend who was playing in it, he agreed.

 

A Pacific board worthy of fighting over.

Skirmish Sangin set up on the MBA board. Colin Phillips, the game's designer, was in the States to GM. I had already committed to another 7pm game, so I was unable to sit in on this one. A gaming partner did register for this one and he said it was good. One step closer to getting Sangin on the table in Charlotte.

 

Not something you see everyday... Well, not something you see at every Historicon. Saw this running between the Sangin table and my 7pm BattleGroup game. It was "The Sound of Music" done as a miniatures game. Hat tip to these guys for going all out.

Skirmish Sangin acrylic counters

I had seen on the Skirmish Sangin forum that they would be releasing some acrylic counters at Historicon and was intrigued. While I've scratch built terrain, I've never been one for making my own counters - I have a couple print and play games sitting on the sideline to prove it - and there are a lot of counters in Sangin.

Unfortunately, they had noted that they would not have the 50 morale counters at Historicon; only the 50 action counters. When I arrived at the booth on Friday, there appeared to be two boxes remaining. I quickly grabbed one for US$20, along with some other tidbits, including a pack of their new Deltas (currently featured in their Day of the Rangers KickStarter) and some of the former Crescent Root middle east buildings now cast by The "ART" of Wargaming.

You can also pick up all 100 counters through the KS; and I highly recommend that you do. They add a nice touch of form and function. Form in the sense that they do not detract or hide your tabletop.

G&G rating:

Here are some photos of the counters in use:

Empress Miniatures - .50 cal HMMWV

One of the items that I picked up at Historicon was a .50 cal Humvee for modern 28mm skirmish gaming. I already had a technical (with MMG) for the insurgents, so I thought I would add some mobile firepower for the ISAF forces.

The kit itself was fairly straightforward to assemble. There was some excess material on the inside of the tires that needed to be removed with a hobby knife, but other than that, there was very little flashing.

My biggest dilemma was where to put the .50 cal. Looking at the image provided on the box (visible in the background), I was thinking about mounting in the rear firing position. I had a couple reasons for wanting to do this - (1) most folks would probably mount it forward facing, so it would differentiate my model from others and (2) having recently watched Blackhawk Down (on the car ride home from Historicon mind you), I noticed that while making the drive to the crash site, the gunner was typically firing in the rear arc after having already passed the target. There was also a triangular shape in the driver/rear side of the cupola that seemed to be similar in shape and size to the base of the .50 cal mount, so I thought that would make for a good mounting point. After gluing it on (of course), I noticed that the hinges for the roof hatch were on the driver's side which meant that positioning the gun there would prohibit the swing of the hatch. This bothered me, so I popped of the gun mount and resorted to gluing it facing forward. Oh, the best laid plans...

How it compares

Here we can see the scale comparison between another Empress vehicle - the technical with SPG-9 - and my first technical - a Stan Johansen miniature. The Empress vehicles are listed as 1/50 scale models. The Stan Johansen model may be closer to 1/56 for 28mm. As you can see, they're pretty comparable and there shouldn't be any scale issues with them being on the table at the same time.

Summary

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the .50 cal HMMWV kit. A buddy of mine had picked up the weapon station HMMWV kit at Historicon as well and he was not happy with it. Perhaps it's the difference in kits or he was just unlucky. This kit was pretty smooth. It'll set you back a pretty penny, US$32 was what we paid at Historicon. There will certainly be cheaper options out there - perhaps even 1/43 scale die-cast if you plan ahead (settle on that scale for vehicles and be consistent). There was a die-cast model on Amazon recently for under US$15, but I don't think that would scale well at all with these figures. I've already made that mistake once before - bought a 1/48 scale plane and set it next to some 1/56 scale tanks - and plan to not repeat it

G&G Rating

UPDATED (7/28/2015) Skirmish Sangin, Maalintii Rangers, Historicon, and Kickstarter, oh my!

Skirmish Sangin, Maalintii Rangers, Historicon, and Kickstarter, oh my!

Just caught wind of the Meeples & Miniatures podcast with Colin Phillips of Radio Dish-Dash.

Catch the podcast here:
https://meeples.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/meeples-miniatures-episode-149-radio-dish-dash/

There's mention of the latest Battle Book, Maalintii Rangers, which is an add-on to Skirmish Sangin and will be released at Historicon.

Sneak peak over on the Skirmish Sangin blog:
http://skirmishsangin.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/sneak-peek-at-maalintii-rangers-day-of.html

Also mentioned is a possible Kickstarter campaign where we'll potentially see figures, vehicles, and buildings.

UPDATE (7/28/2015): The KickStarter campaign is now live! As of 7/28/2015 it is beyond its funding goal and on track for some stretch goals.

I picked up the Skirmish Sangin PDF on the drive home from Historicon last year. Unfortunately, a year has past and I never did manage to get it to the table. I did eventually get all of my insurgents forces painted and a few USMC done - as seen in a previous post. At that time we utilized Flying Lead and its Afghanistan expansion, Hearts & Minds.

This year at Historicon, Colin himself will be in attendance. I am hoping to catch a demo game of Skirmish Sangin on Friday to get the juices flowing and hopefully convince a local gamer or two to partake in a few games this year.

Blackhawk down in Afghanistan - Quick demo AAR

After spending some time working on terrain and painting up a few hundred points of Insurgents and Marine Force Recon, the time had finally come to try out Flying Lead and its expansion Hearts & Minds. Unfortunately, an unpunctual horse farrier (yeah, I had to ask too) meant my gaming partner for the evening was not going to be able to make it.

 

I wanted to try the system out and perhaps walk through and find some of the gotchyas before we met up some time next week. Below is a brief AAR of a couple impulses:

 

Scenario:

I had recently picked up a 1/60 scale model of a Blackhawk helicopter, so I placed it in the center of the (roughly) 42"x42" table and figured I'd play this akin to the Top Secret scenario from Bolt Action, but in this case, the Marines were fighting their way to protect the downed pilots and the Insurgents would be looking to grab a hostage or two.

 

Setup:

The four Force Recon Marines would start on one table edge.

The Regional Leader and Tier 1 RPG gunner started in one building. The Local Leader and a Tier 2 Fighter started in the other building. And the three remaining insurgents started off-board. I would randomly determine which of two table edges they would come in on - if they passed their Quality check first.

 

Lists:

 

Photo Report:



 

Tier 1 Insurgent fires an RPG-7 at hillside and whiffs

 

After seeing an RPG whiz by, UGL Operator fires a 40 Mike-Mike at the building hitting it spot on.

 

PKM Gunner was just out of Short range, but was still Shaken. Tier 1 RPG gunner was not so fortunate...

 

Tier 1 RPG gunner was knocked down and Out of Action. PKM Gunner was later shot and also knocked Out of Action (represented here by two Bolt Action 'DOWN' dice)

 

Three Marine specialists overlooking the crash site. LMG gunner fires on the local Taliban leader in the building and takes him down (KIA).

 

Summary:

The action moves along nicely. Not too many modifiers to remember.

I do need some more trial time though. It's hard to tell after just a couple impulses, but it seems as though the special forces are just too easy to get 3 actions every time. The four of them are all Q3. But, with H&M adding personal comms to all of them, they all get their Leader's +1 to Q when they are within 2x Long range of him. This meant they were successful on anything but a '1'. But who knows, it could have been a whole different outcome if that RPG would have at least hit the dirt.