For Liberty and Freedom! OR Stamping out the terrorist enclave; a trip to Central Africa in the 1960s with R.U.P.

        Last weekend Rich Uncle Pat put on one of his trademark Cold War in Africa games. In this instance we played SPECTRE rules instead of the  usual modified B'Maso regime. Please excuse the gaps in the photo record as I was busy absorbing the new rules and often forgot to snap pictures. Further games in this genre by Rich Uncle Pat can be found here.

       These rules emphasize the limited amount of command energy that a force has, your CinC only has so much "processing power" and if he focuses his attention in one direction others areas will stall. The command energy is represented by Momentum Chits, these can be expended to cause units to take actions, a unit may be given any number of chits and can perform an unlimited number of actions (with progressively diminishing returns) until the supply of chits is expended. 

       The game is played in a modified I-Go You-Go system; the Attacker moves first by selecting a unit and having it perform its actions, the Defender may expend their momentum chits to react to Attacker moves. This continues until the Attacker runs out of momentum or chooses to stop. The Defender then may move and shoot his units in reply using his remaining momentum (if the Attacker has reserved some momentum he may interrupt the Defender's actions) This neatly handles overwatch and pass-through fire without any cumbersome rules. Shooting inflicts hits that are mostly reflected as Stress but may occasionally cause actual wounds or kills. In all it is a rather elegant system.

 

another of R.U.P's exquisite tables, 

the defenders mission was to avoid destruction, 

the attackers were searching for hidden supply depots

 

 

I chose to scatter the defending forces around the table

 trying to maintain control of the road approaches

 

R.U.P. insists on having lots of interesting bits of scatter terrain;

 civilians, ducks and chickens, civilian vehicles 

it really makes the tabletop come alive

 

 

just another idyllic day under the warm rays of the sun,

 everyone minding their own business in the Worker's Paradise

 

 

then the Forces of Oppression arrived  from the south, the Resistance fighters (represented by that green dot with the question mark) only had AKs and so chose to remain hidden

(in the rules AFVs, while dangerous, are nearly blind)

 

but one brave soul in the Command Bunker  just to the north (left in this picture) took a reaction move and opened fire with and RPG, this caused the APC to pop smoke and back up

meanwhile a squad of Government troops had infested the rocky hill to the east (top of photo) and rained fire down on the resistance fighters in the bunker, this caused a rebel infantry unit hidden in the brush next to the road to open fire on the Government troops (with little effect) the return fire shattered their morals and the not-so-brave rebels fled north behind the hedge line

 

 

as this was happening more Government troops stormed in from the west 

scaring the daylights out of the local farmers

at this point the action got pretty intense and I forgot to take pictures, the troops in the APC debussed after it suffered some damage and began clearing the village on the southwest side of the road, they located one of the supply dumps and were fired upon by the rebel technical which caused a great deal of Stress but few casualties, when the Government troops returned fire the technical was eliminated. To the east several Rebel units opened fire on the Government troops on the rocky hill causing it to retreat

 

here we see the technical burning hidden in the trees (top center) 

you can see the Government troops that destroyed it

 

a higher angle shot shows the amount of momentum (red chits) the Government troops expended moving up and engaging the technical, they had moved from the location of the APC (top left) through the woods and into firing range

 

but this left them without any momentum to react during the Rebel turn when the rebels crossed the road and opened fire on them from behind the fence killing several troopers, the Rebels then went prone to avoid return fire the next turn. What the Rebels hadn't counted on was the Government troops running around the building and gunning them down from the roadway (notice the pile of momentum chits that the Government troops expended getting there and attacking)

 

after this the Government attack from the stumbled into an ambush and was routed, the routing Rebels in the east rallied and stopped the Government push there, while in the center both sides lacked the manpower to push across the road and drive off the opposing forces. The result was a draw; the Government troops had found half of the supplies while the Rebels had largely survived and maintained control of the village

 

       Overall I found the game very interesting. I particularly like the iterative nature of play, generally I don't care for I-Go/You-Go games but the inclusion of Momentum allows the "inactive" side the opportunity to respond to the other sides actions. I look forward to further games of SPECTRE.