I have had the Battlespace rulebook of modern warfare for a long time, but hadn't been able to test it until now, so I printed out the necessary cards to play and took out my US Marines to fight the Mujahideen of Al Wadi in the harsh Afghan sands.
The game book has several missions that will be played with four characters / miniatures of marines, with their respective character cards and their equipment selected by the player.
These will be my men and their gear.
So let's go...
AFGHANISTAN 2011. Another day in hell...
Our men go in their humvee in towards the Al Ghani military camp when they receive an emergency call, an American unit has fallen into an ambush just 10 kilometers from their current position, before communications were cut they reported being attacked by several armed men with AKs and RPGs.
Our men will have to go as quickly as possible, locate them and try to extract any possible survivors. Time runs against them.
When they arrive to the location of the attacked unit, they find the streets cut by burning vehicles, so they must continue the last meters on foot.
"Sarge, do we expect reinforcements?" asks recruit Stevens descending from the humvee. Sargeant Rogers, ammunitioning his m4, replied "WE are the reinforcements, mate".
We deploy our men on a mission to get to the damaged humvee on the other side of the table, check if there are any American soldiers there, and exit from the edge of the table opposite to the one we deploy.
Turn 1.
I advance in two groups, covering one with a parked vehicle. A jihadists come out of a nearby house attacking one of my men. Another advances from the alley firing his Ak47.
Two of my men are wounded while one of the attackers is killed. At the end of the street shots are heard and a group of jihadists can be seen running towards our men.
Wait a minute... we're on turn one, right? First turn and I already have two soldiers injured? Ok... this is going to be tough ...
The soldier with the m203 throws a grenade that kills two attackers, while his partner kills another one that was running towards them.
When they see some more enemies at the end of the street, they run to regroup with the other soldiers, although more enemies continue appearing and attacking.
Faced with several wave of enemies, I decide to place one of my men in an elevated position, and covered by the wall he attacks with grenades, killing several enemies.
Since I see that it is going to be a good idea to have support from the rooftops, I place another soldier in the same elevated position, attacking with the M203, while two other soldiers try to reach the humvee to check for survivors.
From the roof they repel enemy attacks allowing the other two soldiers to approach the military vehicle.
When everything was looking better for my team, from the top of a roof you see something shinning, that means a rifle scope of an enemy sniper.
In two turns, the Sniper kills the two soldiers who were going to check the humvee, being eliminated by the soldiers who were on the roof.
Once the Sniper is eliminated, and without having more members in their team, the two marines decide to jump off the roof and check the humvee.
Running in a hurry they verify that there is no one inside the vehicle, so they decide to run away taking advantage that no more enemies are appearing.
Victory for my men in a quite dynamic and stressing game, I have two casualties on my side and fifteen on the opposite side.
I want to play more games to get a complete idea about this ruleset, but at the moment I see it as a very dynamic, fast and fun game, perhaps too dependent on luck/random, but as I have already said it is very fun.
