Light Air Defence.



Taliban Sa7 Team

Given that I was thinking about using
helicopters it would only be appropriate to give the Taliban something to worry the coalition players. Here we have an SA 7 team. The spotter has a Light machine gun partially to protect the SA7 from ground forces as well as air support. These are both Britannia which I am really enjoying painting, they almost paint themselves. One of the other things about Britannia miniatures is that both times I have ordered from Andy Grubb he's added a little extra, more of this later.
In the Force on Force rules Air defence falls 

Where not to stand

into a different categories dependant on the number of units which can act as anti aircraft, such as surface to air missiles and heavy
 machineguns, 12.7mm and the like. As I don't have much anti aircraft Taliban most of the games will be either "No air defence" or "light Air defence" these are abstracted into the chance of coalition ground attack being successful, or not. It is possible with "No air defence" for the coalition pilots still not to have a decisive attack but the chances are they will do some damage and with the "Danger close" rules it's possible for blue on blue casualties.  But most often the result will be 3rd picture.


Coalition return fire

These two dead Afghans were my freebies from my last order from Britannia. I am of course delighted with them. I may be tempted to buy some more. I was unsure whether I should bloody them, but the decision was taken out of my hands when the blue paint from the figure on the left "Bled" into the sand. The only thing I could do was to paint the blue sand red. So problem solved. These two figures do not have obvious guns which means they can be used as non-combatants as well as Taliban. Was the airstike on target after all? This is perfect as it allows for more options rather than just casualty markers. Imagine a scenario where the British patrol come across a body in the middle of a town, and nothing else. Obviously they need to protect themselves but what if the bodies are wounded and they get the chance to save a life, but then what if it's a trap. One simple marker which could lead to a whole scenario. AS a wargamer we would always expect the worse and assume it was a trap possibly an IED, maybe an ambush. But it could be a teacher the Taliban have severely wounded and left to die and the Coalition have a limited number of turns to rescue them and casevac them. The joy of that scenario is hat most players would assume there would need to be gun-play, but they could loose on victory points just by taking too long to resolve the action. Just a thought.

That's it for today. As the Easter holidays have now started I shall be looking after my nephew for some days which will slow me down. So don't expect too much output. Anyway I'll blog again on Tuesday. All the best cheers Clint.