Half-a-game report

Hey guys,

Nothing spectacular to show today. I played another game of Breaking news the other day.The idea was that Yellow Jacket (who featured in this game as someone else, naturally) leaked info about a location of a weapons cache.
Special forces are called in to find it - the idea was they'd have to search the buildings until they find it. I was thinking about using cards to see where the cache is (1 real and the rest blanks in a deck, obviously), but as my brother wanted to play he took the insurgents and picked a building himself.

SWAT force was the same as in last game, 4 SMG guys and a sniper. Same quality, same everything.

 Insurgents, on the other hand, were boosted from 8 to 10 and were given 3 support weapons (2 RPKs and an RPG).

 

 We set up a table using my new WIP concrete walls you can see on most of the photos. I'll show them in more detail when I will finish them. Let's just say I think they are good enough but I MIGHT went a bit over board with the graffiti as every single section has one side painted.

Below you can see the table before the start. Insurgents were sprinkled around the table (which I think is what makes SF so overpowered, as they are always together!) and had to protect the cache. I didn't knew where the weapons were, but as my brother wrote it down I saw when I was packing the terrain that it was in black one.  There were some "zombies" on the board, used as civilians. We forgot to account for them in first shooting so we simply took them off :D.
SF could start on any edge and I started in lower right corner, hoping the walls would save me from some flanking fire.

 Not much to say about the rest of the game, we played for some 3-4 turns and quit when little rebel had enough :D. In kills, it was 4-1 for SF. RPK has a lot of firepower, which was nice to see and RPG never got to fire in this game. We missed a lot of things out as rules are a bit more elaborate than I'd first think.

I came to a conclusion that fight would be much more balanced if both forces would start grouped - SF only die on a roll of 1, but with enough hits forced on them, this can be achieved easier than one might think. I have to say I can't wait to get my regular army guys ready as it might be all much more interesting with some heavy weapons and humvees. I also think I need to get some pickups for technicals!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Local terrorist cell discovered!

Hello guys,

With all the modern stuff I have going on, I was really eager to play a game. I went trough my (what looks like very limited, now that I think of it) collection of modern figures and I decided I am going to use my TAG SWAT officers versus some of the insurgents I was so busy converting and painting a while ago.

Rules used were Breaking News, a free set or modern rules that have clearly been out for quite some time. By reading through them, I figured the idea isn't bad, but while playing, I found out there are lot of things that are either unclear or don't seem to work out that well. Still, it's a free set of rules and they should do for now. Other thing I've realised is I don't like my houses. When making them, I had an idea of putting interior in, so they are on the large side. This makes my way too tiny 2x3 board filled up very fast. I should really make an effort and get another 2x3 plate for a 4x3 board that would give me some space to maneuver on the field.

 I decided to play a simple deathmatch game and see how mechanics work.
I calculated points very roughly. I had 4 special forces (creme de la creme) officers with SMGs, supported by SF sniper.
I matched their points with as many of "commando insurgents", all armed with automatic rifles, that I could fit in. It was eight. Lead by everyone's favorite The King in Yellow. Jacket.

8 criminals barricaded themselves in their compound (note the garbage truck/drive in block that rises and drops as needed!) and as being a criminal is bad, Police special operations unit (PSU) was called in (right short table edge) to save the day.

In Breaking News, initiative is rolled for on every turn. The player that wins is an active player, who can move his miniatures and the one that losses is confined to reacting - either by fire or taking cover. So with SF, being so awesome, it was mostly them moving and attacking while the terrorists were shooting at them and they rarely got to actually move.
A reacting player (the one that lost initiative roll) reacts to EVERY action. So, while an active player can move each miniature separately, it can limit the number of opposing player's reactions by activating groups. This means I can effectively move fire teams in groups, which is one of the things I love about Force on Force rules. For this game, I decided that officers would always (if possible) operate in three groups: two SMG pairs and a sniper.

TURN 1
Special forces won the initiative and started their assault.
PSU-1 (one pair) moved closer towards the terrorists and fired. They managed to score two hits, while terrorist's return fire scored 6. One terrorist died and none of the SF were harmed. But because of the fire they received, they were suppressed (yellow beam).
PSU-2 (second pair) did more or less the same thing, they, too, got suppressed and another terrorist died.
PSU-S (sniper) didn't move from his position on top of the SWAT van and did what snipers do, fired a shot and killed a guy.

TURN 2

This turn was no better, Special forces class is just too powerful and my next game will certainly see the officer "only" being Elite (this means they lose their to hit bonus and invincibility). They actually didn't kill anyone now, but have managed to suppress one of the bad guys.
This is not clear in the rules, but I assume you can only regroup from suppression on your ACTIVE turn, which means the terrorists, even while being the best you can get, were mostly just keeping their heads down. They can not react to enemy movement and fire while suppressed.

TURN 3
Magically, terrorists won the initiative on third turn (every turn that same side wins the initiative, they get -1 to their roll, so the opposing side gets to win it sooner or later). Their regrouping doesn't work as flawlessly as SF guys', so some still kept their heads down.
They tried doing some shooting but it mostly ended up in a criminal being killed by officer's reactions.

 TURN 4
Police won the initiative again, regroupped and sort of killed a lot. 

 TURN 5
Police wins the initiative (as I've said, being SF really, really ruined this game!). PSU officers fired for the last time and - I kid you not! - suffered a casualty! Man down, man down!
They pretty much killed everyone, except for the Yellow jacket, so I concluded he gave up and was taken into custody.

 A close up on a downed policeman:

 And a horrible photo of Yellow jacket, being suppressed after the sniper's bullet failed to hit.

I can only apologise for such a boring report. The game was very, very one sided and it was really no good for anything, except for learning how the rules (probably!) work. I will give it a re-run eventually, with 1 class lower police officers. This will still keep them better than what my soldiers will game with, to keep the idea of an elite unit, but it will take the easier hit chances and their absurdly awesome saving throw from them.
After that, I would like to try a game with some RPGs flying around Evergreen troops, supported by a humvee and by then I might even get some Slovenes finished to see if they are any good on the table top, as well.

In other news, I am still working on the SAW gunners, so that's probably what I will show you in my next post.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

TAG SWATs

Hello,

I've painted my TAG SWATs to try and restart my Zombie project. Those are by far my favorite TAG modern models..those exact ones with gasmasks. It might surprise you that I had them for quite a while...probably around a year or so? Anyways, I've finally settled for grey-black scheme as there is nothing I find more boring than completely black miniatures. While they do look great, they also kinda look boring, as it's all one big blob of black.

Unfortunately my painting mojo was really on low level, but in the end, I think they've came out just fine.

The pack is SWATs with gasmask + sniper is a SWAT sniper freebie I've got as my order was large enough. They're mostly armed with MP5, but there is one shotgun. Oh, there is a guy with a pistol, too. Sniper has .50 cal, which isn't made to shoot people with (not that you can't, though!), so that's a bit exaggerated. I would be more happy with something less hurtful but visually more appealing :P.

Here is the basic set in "combat" poses:

 And a close up on one of them. Again, they're basically all the same - uniformed personnel after all.

They'll be useful as your zombie heroes, but probably also in my modern games, in 1991 police special forces assisted military units, so if I'd game grand scale WW3 invasion, they could be used as a "back up" to break the monotony of proper soldiers.

Talking of proper soldiers, my weapons are slowly progressing (I do at least something every day...cut and sand if nothing else), but I'm not taking any photos as...err...too lazy to go get the camera to be honest. I'll photo them in the end, unless I'll need a "filler post" to show some WIP again, as this is all I do hobby wise lately.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo