To Have and To HAVOC

So Friday/Saturday I went down to Shrewsbury for this year's HAVOC wargame convention. I played in three games and here's what I thought of them:

On Friday evening I sat down to a game of Check Your Six -- a WWII air combat game. In this scenario, a recon P-38 escorted by a batch of F4 Wildcats had to overfly a Japanese airfield and then beat feet before the Zeros in the area shot them up.

I was on the Japanese side, one half of a squadron that had just taken off from the airfield and was moving low and slow. Because the recon plane was worth a ton of victory points, we decided to circle wide, climb and hopefully catch the recon plane as it comes off its photo run -- though we'd have F4's sitting on our butts almost immediately.

We got lucky and the recon plane took a hit going over the airfield greatly reducing it's speed. It was also too big a temptation for us. Pretty much all the zeros rushed the recon plane and didn't give the F4's enough attention. In the event, through some hard jinking, the recon plane managed to sneak off the board while the rest of the zeros got shot up. Of my two planes, the experienced pilot got shot down while my rookie limped off the board with a damaged engine.

Check Your Six has a pretty simple movement system, you pick your maneuver off the chart, adjust speed and altitude as required and then see if you've got any targets to shoot. Moreso than most wargames, air combat is all about maneuver and second-guessing your opponent. There was a definite chess-like feel to the game. I still want something that puts a bit more 3-D in the fights, but that will ramp up the complexity -- I suppose some sort of computer-moderated system could alleviate that.

On Saturday morning, I got up way to early to drive in and to test out the "I Ain't Been Shot Mum" ruleset in a French Indo-China game. We had a group of French Foreign Legion and Algerian troops who were tasked with the job of clearing a road of mines. Somehow, today would be the day we'd be jumped by the Viet Minh.

So the big twist with this ruleset is that platoons of troops are represented by "blinds" until enemy units get close enough to spot you or you de-cloak for some reason. Of course, the Viet Minh had a number of dummy blinds and they pretty much papered the board with their blinds while we only had just as many blinds as we had troopers.

The other interesting detail with the rules is that each platoon is represented with a card and each turn, cards are drawn at random to determine what activates and what doesn't. The presence of some "end of turn" cards mean that a turn can end without a given platoon activating. Further, some platoons have "Big Men" attached to them, leaders or NCO's who get their own card and can force a partial activation of the platoon. So, if your Big Man card comes out early, do you go now at reduced effectiveness or hang on and hope to make the whole platoon go with a leader bonus and risk the turn ending before you get to do anything?

I've cleared my share of roads in Vietnam so I knew what the smart play was here -- you send infantry out along the sides of the road to roust the enemy and protect the mine-clearing convoy. Once you've beaten back the enemy, you can proceed down the road. There followed several turns of skulking in the tree line trying to spot the blinds and force them to drop. Finally, we decided we were just going to sit there forever so we pushed forward.

On the right, the Algerians encountered a batch of Viet Minh and got held up scraping them out. That all ended when the Algerians rushed the position -- close combat, when you team has a leader gives you a boat-load of dice and a convincing win against leaderless troops. So my Foreign Legion waded out on the left side, uncovered a group of Viet Minh on another hill and swept them right off, followed up back to a rice paddy and then discovered about half the enemy units waiting in a small farm.

Meanwhile, we'd tried to tentatively advance down the road, when a Recoiless Rifle blew out one of our armored cars. Our vehicles immediately went off-road. The other AC got shot up by the Rifle, but the tanks (when they managed to go) put down a punishing barrage on the right-hand side of the board, suppressing the machine gun teams that were chewing up our Algerians.

But breaking the left-hand side was grinding up the Foreign Legion and in the end, we ran out of time about halfway down the board.

I think the rule set was good, but the scenario was problematic (and yes, I lost so take this with a grain of salt). The biggest problem was that every platoon had a Big Man card, plus platoon leaders. So there were a ton of cards that could activate a platoon or squad and tracking which unit/sub-unit had already acted that turn was a pain. Further, the rules are explicit and say that not *every* unit gets a big man card, only a few of them. Reducing the number of Big Men cards would've made things go much faster and made the choice about activating the Big Man less interesting.

For my part, I didn't break up my support platoon and attach the various MGs and mortars to the rifle platoons. That would've given me much needed firepower as I moved up the side.

Still, I really did like the rules. The hidden movement was good, there were opposed rolls and the variable turn length/activation kept you in the game.

A quick lunch at Moe's and then back for a round of Ambush Alley. As you might guess, this is a game about fireteams sweeping dense, insurgent-filled urban areas. So Baghdad, Mogadishu, and like environs. The game has gotten some pretty good press and Osprey is publishing a polished upgrade of the rules that will cover both asymmetrical warfare and more conventional conflicts. So I wanted to give the rules a spin to see about picking up the full rules later this month.

I was on the side of the Marines in charge of a 4-man fire team. We had to cross the board taking out "hotspots" (i.e. insurgent spawn points) along the way while fending off waves of poorly armed, badly trained, but highly motivated troops.

The game bogged down for the US very early. One of our fireteams got caught out and chopped to pieces by the insurgents. So there was some stalling while we got a replacement team. Our one good piece of fortune (from the nefarious "Fog of War" deck that kept dishing out the pain), was the assistance of an M1 Abrams tank. One high-explosive round later and the insrugents who'd hit us were buried under rubble.

Once we got sorted, I moved my team and the tank towards the right-hand side of the board. The tank couldn't really move into the narrow streets but I'd use it to support my drive up the side where two hotspots were located. As I came up on the first hotspot, a car loaded with insurgents came speeding towards me. I promptly shot everyone out of the vehicle. Finally I took cover near the first hotspot. The rule is that you have to sit on it for a full turn to clear it. So I went into overwatch and promptly shredded several waves of insurgents trying to pick me off. Seriously, six guys would run up, unload, we'd be fine and then we'd wipe them out to a man. The tank also made a few telling shots, but a lucky RPG round wounded the tank commander and dinged our main gun (sadly a TV crew recorded the action in a propaganda coup for the bad guys). The tank had to drive off, but it had done it's job.

With one hotspot secured, we rushed down the side of the board, slipping past an angry mob into a courtyard where the next hotspot was located. When insurgent reinforcements were called up, our hotspot was the indicated spawn point. Luckily, it was just a single red shirt. We handily took him out and claimed the spot.

My job was finished. On the left-hand side of the board, another fireteam got hammered letting the third team secure a hotspot. However, the current score was still in the insurgents favor thanks to the injuries they inflicted on us. Our only hope was a mad dash to the back of the board to grab one more hotspot. They dashed up the street, failing to draw any fire and managed to sit tight on the hotspot, claiming it and winning the game.

The game was a little frustrating at first, it didn't seem like we'd be able to make any headway at all (that Fortunes of War deck was a real pain). But once we cracked through the stiff line of resistance we ran riot into the backfield and racked up the score. If the insurgents had a bit more defense in depth they might've slowed us up just enough. That said, it takes a lot of insurgents to generate the fire needed to bring down US regulars. Our first batch of casualties was just really poor dice rolling. On average we could shrug off just about everything that came our way.

One of the guys who'd played a few games earlier said it best -- "The regulars are godlike until they blow a roll and then they're toast". I really liked the set-up and it has me interested in the Ospery version of the ruleset coming out later this month. I got a chance to look at a pre-release copy of the book as well as the "Road to Baghdad" supplement that will be coming out. The supplement is interesting because in all the scenarios they include "historical outcomes" -- well, for the Iraq war the historical out come is "The US won decisively only suffering a couple of friendly fire casualties". Making the scenarios a more interesting game is going to be quite a challenge.

So that was the games. I also hit the dealer tables. I picked up a couple packs of 28mm WWII partisans and some ASL stuff.

There wasn't much I was interested in for the evening, so I joined my gaming friends and we went out to Coral Seafood in Marlborough. The food was pretty darn tasty and there was the usual post-con banter. I was slated to be in a game this morning, but I decided I'd rather be lazy today and sleep in so that's what I did.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with HAVOC. I played in three games using three different systems that I really wanted to try out. My win/loss record wasn't so great, but I had fun in all the games and that's what counts.