Convoy Ambush (St Valentine's Day Massacre)by Dave McClumpha |
|
| System: | Stargrunt II |
| Sides: | Good Guys [?] - (played by Steve, Paddy and Len) |
| Bad Guys - (played by Brian and the other Dave) | |
| Forces: | Good Guys - Non-specific Peacekeepers in APC's |
| Bad Guys - Even less specific rebels/freedom fighters | |
The scenery had a vaguely East European look we took that as a general location. This was my first attempt at running a game of Stargrunt so I decided to keep things easy by using the ambush scenario in the rulebook.
The basic outline was that Steve, Paddy & Len were peacekeepers trying to run a convoy of trucks and AFVs through bandit country. Brian and Dave ambushed them in an abandoned village.
The first turn went pretty much by the book but the peacekeepers' losses were heavier than I expected. Len lost his APC to a mine and 40% of his squad to enemy fire. Steve did even worse losing his MICV and 60% of his command squad. Paddy was well out of range of the only revealed enemy squad and deployed ready for action.
Dave and Brian played a cunning game by not revealing the rest of their force and reactivating the one active squad to good effect. At this stage Len was all for letting common sense prevail and withdrawing in some order but Steve and Paddy wanted blood. I'd already said that the truck crews were fairly poor quality troops but I gave them machine pistols for self defence. Steve decided to use them aggressively and at close quarters the firepower was more effective than I'd planned.
After over-running the first unit of ambushers Len's squad were almost wiped out by Brian's command squad. Dave's squad had revealed themselves behind Paddy and took out his APC. After being shot in the back Paddy's lads wanted to surrender and the only thing that stopped them was the vehicle crews blasting Dave's squad. Brian's command squad died horribly in close quarters with the truck crews.
By the time we called it over there was nothing much left to fight with. The ambushers had been thoroughly beaten in the final turn but the convoy was unable to move until recovery units arrived.
I think it was a well fought game and I hope everyone enjoyed it. If I ran it again I'd reduce the firepower for the ambushers and force the truck crews to retreat if they had to bail out. I'd probably leave the motivation at medium with a rider that it falls to low once a unit takes a casualty.
My next planned scenario will be a variation on the Black Bag mission I found at www.stargrunt.ca a new site for the game which is well worth a visit. Now I need more trees and a couple of tracker dogs.
The photos show the scene just before the mine went off and Len about to extract revenge for the loss of his APC (click either image to view the larger version).
|
|
|
