After Action Report

As promised months ago, here's a little description of my modern Africa game that I ran for the Army of Central Maryland.

To begin with, after some solo play-testing I modified the game as follows: I placed the Zamundan rebel compound closer to the center of the table and started all of the rebels inside the buildings. I found that if the American/British Humvee column had to travel from one end of the table to the other, and if some of the rebels were allowed to start the game outside the buildings behind their barricades the Humvees would just get shot up too much.

So at the beginning of the game one AH-6 Little Bird carrying 4 Delta operators and one UH-60 Blackhawk carrying 8 US Army paras flew towards the compound while the Humvees rolled up the road in the same direction. The Zamundans held their positions inside the buildings, wishing to avoid being targeted by the coalition's well-armed helos. The Little Bird landed on the roof of the target building (they were given intelligence before the game revealing the location of the rebel leader they were supposed to capture) while the airborne inside the Blackhawk roped down towards the deck. Unfortunately, one of them lost his grip on the rope and fell. At this time the Zamundans in the target building emerged and opened fire on the paras, which were hard pressed trying to form up and drag their wounded buddy to cover.

Things got worse for the Americans as they suffered another casualty and were out of the game for a few turns, unable to support the Delta on the roof. Said Delta were exchanging some fire with another group of Zamundans who had come out of the target building. Both sides got pinning results on the other, but the Deltas easily recovered while the Zamundans could not. However, disaster struck the coalition when another group of Zamandans who had been moving among some crates in the middle of the compound opened up on the Deltas with their AK-47's and wiped all of the American elite counter-terrorists!

From there on out it was a tough road for the coalition forces. While they still had their airborne troops and a number of British SAS who had ridden to battle in the Humvee column, they were out of position as by now the Russian APC had arrived to rescue the Zamundan rebel leader. The Deltas had been the only troops close enough to stop him from making a dash to his former communist saviors, but they were all casualties. So, Papa Booya escaped, victory to the Zamundans.

A pretty clear cut victory, I might add. The squad of Russians the Zamundan players had access to didn't even have to fire a shot.

Obviously I have to count this game as another play-test, but I won't take anything away from the Zamundans who played a good game. Maybe the other side should have gotten the airborne and SAS into position first before the Delta landed and assaulted the building. As it was they were exposed and paid for this mistake with their lead lives.

One thing I will change (maybe) is that I will allow the Delta guys to blow through the roof of the building they land on. We'll see.

Anyhow, everyone seemed to have fun and hopefully I will run the game again at Fall In.