Stargrunt

Yesterday at the Rainham Wargames Club we had a game of Stargrunt. Having not read the rules for more than 2 years I was not at all familiar with what I was supposed to be doing. Ok that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. The scenario was that a senior officer's vehicle had broken down in an insurgents area and the NI (New Israeli) forces needed to rescue him from the Islamic Federation (IF)insurgents. The officer and bodyguards decided to stay inside the vehicle rather that take cover in any close buildings.

All other troops had a random start location (both direction and distance. The long and the short story of this is that some of the IF forces started in more favourable positions than others. All  the IF insurgents moved and where able opened fire on the troops inside the hover jeep. My troops just got to a position at the end of the 2nd turn and the NI rescue force turned up.

They were veteran quality and the IF were raw/green. Which for those unfamiliar with the rules meant that I was rolling d6 and the Israelis were rolling d10.  As can be seen on the right my squad was caught in the open. They continued to suffer "Double Suppression" for the next hour and a half (real time, probably 5 minutes to them) which ment they could do nothing at all, not even dive run away until the suppression was removed. Being green troops that was not as easy as I would have hoped. SO that just stood in the open getting shot at. Eventually they paniced, went first to Shaken and finally routed of the table, having done nothing all game apart from move twice.

Elsewhere in the town other NI troops had come onto the board. Having already lost one section of troops El Kev gave me another unit to control. These at the time were completely exposed in the open and caught between the officers in the vehicles and another NI squad. I moved them as soon as I could into a walled garden. And managed to fire at the NI squad.

It did not last long, fire was returned and they were "Double Suppressed", Triple Suppressed and first "Shaken" then "Broken" to the stage they could do nothing for the rest of the game. Don't get me wrong the game was not one sided. The IF did (well I did not but Ian and Kev did) manage to put up a fight. Ian in particular managed to keep his militia alive for the whole game.

Finally the Insurgents were allowed to start rolling for reinforcements, regular quality.. Yippee! Mine arrived after everyone elses! But at least they turned up in a place where they could not be shot for a few turns! The other guys arrived straight into the action. Brilliant victory was now possible!

Well actually no it wasn't! Both lots of reinforcements were shot to pieces starting out in the open and with no real chance to become combat effective. They did get a few shots back, and did manage a few NI Casualties, but realistically to little too late. Overall they died horribly out in the open.

My reinforcements did benefit from the massacre. Not being seen as a threat the NI forces did not attempt to target them straight away. As they did achieve a couple of shots at the Officers vehicle, and did manage to wound 2 of the crew, but not the senior officer. All in all the IF were just targets in a NI shooting gallery.

It would have been over much sooner if the dice had not gone against the New Israelis. With an armour value of d4 against a NI automatic rifle firing d12 for impact/penetration it was surprising just how often the d4 beat the d12.  Still it is a good set of rules and even just being a target was OK as all the guys are nice to play against!