Fighting Patrol

The Section moves forward

This was the first of two scenarios that we played that night. I had hoped to play the scouting patrol, followed by the fighting patrol, but Du Gourmand was late as he had some banks to crash before he left work.

The mission here is a section attack on a Soviet observation post. The twist is that there are actually more Soviets than they bargained for. 

Again, this scenario is set at night on a relatively clear evening. 

The field of battle

The Soviets were deployed on the hill to the rights of the picture, while the British were moving on from the left. There was a radio team on the hill, while there were a couple of two man holes at the bottom of the hill. The team had left their BMP with the driver on the far side of the hill. This was played as a players versus GM game and I did not put any Soviet troops on the table until they were spotted by the players.

This simple decision led to some interesting results, firstly a successful Notice roll didn't put figures on the table it only made the player aware that there were enemy in that rough location. A raise would pinpoint the location (i.e. put a figure on the table), while further raises were required to learn more (weapons, posture, etc). This obviously only applied when figures were in cover, running around in the open made one a lot more visible.

A scout from the Royal Loamshires moves forward

The rest of the patrol are hunkered down.

Russian positions

He spots what look like some Russian fighting position at the base of the crest. He believes that there is some form of OP at the top. This is worrying as intelligence suggested that only three or four men would be present.

The gun group set up and prepare to put fire on the Soviet positions. This is led by Corporal Savage. 

The manoeuvre group make their way forward, moving to flank the Soviet position as the Gun group open fire. Several Soviet infantry have been spotted by diligent observation from Savage (note the figures placed behind the scrub). 

The Gun group and the Soviets exchange fire as the Manoeuvre group dash forward, holding fire until they close within grenade range.

Crikey!

A lone Soviet motor rifleman is suddenly spotted behind a tree. The British freeze as this figure was not dealt a card at the beginning of the turn and it remains to be seen whether he will be acting before or after Lance Corporal Du Gourmand's group. With three dice of automatic fire against a target in the open - it is very unlikely that he will miss. 

Fortunately, Du Gourmand's boys outdraw him and he goes down to a blast of SLR fire from the hip. 

Du Gourmand's boys then proceed to move forward through bags of smoke,  grenading and firing from the hip as they go until they've assaulted through all three Soviet positions and taken up a position on the far side. What I was particularly pleased was that Du Gourmand didn't know that the Russians in two of the holes he'd been attacking were already dead or fled before he'd grenaded them. 

A lone Soviet rifleman makes a run for it. 

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the pictures of the rest of the game, which is a real pity as it illustrated a couple of nice points about the rules and the situation. The Soviet sergeant and a single rifleman legged it their BMP and made to hightail out of trouble. The sergeant failed a driving roll and ended up taking a wrong turn, driving towards the British instead of away from them. 

With a BMP rolling down on them, the British went to ground and Lance Corporal Du Gourmand correctly surmised that the driver would be using Night Vision Equipment.  What actually happened was that he suggested that this might be the case and committed himself to the manuevre, then I went and looked it up.  In a desperate ploy to buy time, he lobbed a flare onto the deck of the BMP in order to blind it. This not only blinded the BMP, but the Gun group who were trying to distract the BMP from the British infantry milling around it by "plinking" it with sustained GPMG fire. Du Gourmand ran back to the the Maneuvre Group, who had dropped everything and set to with their 66mm LAWs. The first LAW missed and Du Gourmand grabbed the second one and scored a direct on the rear door with set off a catastrophic explosion that detonated the ammunition and fuel aboard the vehicle. 

This got pretty hairy as the range was only 14 inches, a bare four scale yards over the minimum arming distance of the rocket. 

Things we learned later.  

The boys would have been in less danger than anticipated because they were so close that they were within the dead ground of the BMP. The Soviets would have been unable to see them because they were so 

Secondly, the backblast from a LAW is significant and Du Gourmand would have probably killed or injured the rifleman standing half a dozen yards behind him. I don't have any exact figures on this, but it's probably something I should find out.

EDIT: I have established that the dangerous zone is 15 metres behind the launcher, with a 25 metre caution zone. 

All in all, Savage World (unsurprisingly) works better as a roleplaying game than as a wargame, though I think as an RPG I it works better as a simulation of small unit combat than most. I was really very pleased with how this worked out.