Hey,

This weekend I ran a game of Force On Force for my usual gaming group down at Hobby Bunker. The scenario came out of the Enduring Freedom source book and was supposed to represent the fighting that took place in the early days of Operation Anaconda in March of 2002. That operation was marked by a number of snafus and screw-ups that could've spelled disaster for the Americans and it was only the bravery and determination of troops on the ground that got them home safe again.

In our game, the Americans were all out of luck.

Here's the initial set-up of the game:



You can see the Americans are all clustered together. They've basically just stormed off their Chinook helicopters unaware that the hills around them are swarming with Taliban.


This is a broader shot from the "south" end of the board. You can see the line of hills on either edge of the board and the compound that the Americans are supposed to take.


And finally, here's a high-angle shot from the "north" looking down over the compound and back to the American's LZ.

Here's what I thought was going to happen -- the Americans would take a pasting for two turns (by scenario rules, the Taliban go first on the first two turns), but their body armor and advanced medical skills would keep their guys in the fight. By turn 3 they'd have a chance to gain the initiative and rush the compound. On turn 4 the Apache helicopter air support shows up and after that the Americans would start to clear the board. Final point totals would be close.

 The Americans never made it out of their deployment zone.


This is the end of Turn 1. The enemy mortar team is rolling really well and causing casualties among the Americans. The only unharmed squad has had to break up and move among the fallen squad so that at the start of the next turn, they can make casualty checks to determine the status of all the troops.

At the start of Turn 2, almost all the Americans stand back up, only to be pounded back into the dirt by the Taliban forces ringing the valley (again, just phenomenally high rolls on lots of dice by the attackers that the Americans couldn't defend against).

 On Turn 3, almost all of the remaining Americans stand up, but they lose the initiative and they all fall back down again. The Taliban send out a couple of squads to try and finish them off.


Start of Turn 4. The only American still standing is the TAC officer. If he can survive the turn, he can call in an airstrike and possibly turn the tide of this fight. But again, the Americans lose initiative and the Taliban blow him off his feet.

With all the Americans down, there's no one left to apply first aid. The Americans are helpless and the Taliban swoop in:


Obviously that was the end of the game. By the end of Turn 3, the Taliban had racked up so many points in kills/serious injury that even if the Americans had accomplished all of their objectives, the Taliban still would've won.

It was an incredibly lop-sided affair. I know a large part of this was the monster die rolls the Taliban were getting, but the scenario gave a lot of bonuses to them as well and the Americans just couldn't get initiative or air support fast enough.

I apologized about the one-sided-ness of the game, but everyone did seem to have a pretty good time and they're interested in trying other scenarios so I guess that's a win. It's too bad, I was hoping to use this scenario later in August for the club's game day, but I might have to change it to something else. I really need to get more terrain put together. Being out in the open like that is killer, especially between two evenly matched opponents and most scenarios are a little more urban in nature.

Ah well, chalk one up for experience.
Tom