sunnuntai 5. helmikuuta 2012

Theres is no harder thing than gettin started

Its been 3-4 years since I first time thought about creating own wargame blog - so it didnt take so long, didnt it? ;D

Few weeks ago me and few members from my scholar gaming group decided to start new gaming project in 15mm/1:100 scale, and the first "lead-order" was sent few days ago, so I decided its now or never situation.
The project itself..we decided to go for the Africa. Unknown mostly imaginary middleafrican country during early 1990`s in the blink of civil war, roamed by local militias, hired henchmen, international peace keepers and national army. At the moment we have three guys going with the project, but I hope we can include few motivated inviduals more at some point.

Between the peter pigs (PP) built-for-purpose african rulesystem (AK-47 Republic) and Ambush Alleys universal Force on Force (with oncoming bushwars addon), we decided to go for the Force on Force (FoF) - first of all `cos I allready had the rulebook (and we had few cold war gone hot games at the backround) and `cos we wanted invidual based game with insurgency (Assymetric) option.
Mostly the games will be symmetric - after all, main part of the armies are "real" armies - mostly lacking advanced training and tactics, sometimes even basic tooling to perform their job, but after all, they think themselves as army, and thats all that matters.

So, as Im still waiting my part of the lead mountain and lacking camera to show-off my older works, I cant do much but list the stuff&plans of the armies.

First of all, my friend Matts peace keepin force:

Based loosely to finnish and german forces of the 1990`s (the peace keepers are from imaginary country too, from Fairylands 1st jagerbattallion :D), its going to be rather small in number, with limited equipment & assets, but decent training, morale and excellent supply level. Lacking all true air assets (its peace keeping operation, after all) with excepltion of MEDEVAC, all indirect assets (at least at this point - might include light/medium mortar support availibility later if the army provides to be too downgunned) and all true heavy support.
The basic squad is around 7 to 10 men strong, with heavy-barrel G3 as a LMG. The AT support is rather limited too, scenario based number of armburst LAWs available from APCs storages.
Squads are mounted in the wheeled APCs (Fuchs), and vehicle itself is equipped with MG3.
For in-call "heavy" reserve there will be (propably) wheeled Recon vehicle (Luchs) and in later point some stuff we see fit.

With Peace Keeping Force (PKF) we need to deal out rules how to represent the reluctance in open full-scale confrontation and importance of keeping the casualtys in minimum.

Second, the "all African" technical riding group:

Im not acctually sure how Veikko will see his army working, so cant tell much of it. Its the "traditional" group of poorly trained and equipped militiamen in pickups, so there will be a lot of RPGs, AKs and toyotas :D
Still, these are (at least in paper) much more prepared to full scale confrontation, with (ancient/obsolete)MBT available, which in this point seems to be old, trusty and ineffective Sherman M4 (not sure about the variant, but propably A3 or A2). At some point these guys will get air-assets too in their support pool, but not yet - but when it happens it will propably be some civilian (bi-)plane with improvised rocket launchers or old helicopter. Indirect (medium, later also heavy mortar)support is unreliable, but available.

Third, my force: Private Military Contracting force (PMC) , in Africa known as less "hypocritical" mercenary.

These will be former members of professional armies, from western and neighbouring countries. Relatively large in number, working for oil-, diamond- and other high-value companies (or pretty much anyone) for cash. Good with guns, but lacking most up-to-date equipment - the supply level is from Ok to poor, and morale is pretty much random (well, their paid, but how well?), never higher than D10 and even that should be rare! Mostly D6 to D8, skill is from D8 to D10.

In this point seems like Im arming these fellas with L1A1 SLRs (or FN-FAL), M60s, RPGs and LAW-72s. Lacking truely heavy support, but compensating that with better skill and sheer number of medium eqipment it shouldnt be so difficult to operate against any force.
Mostly riding in light trucks (Unimogs or Land Rover 1 tonne, aka Forward Controll) but also capable of small scale airmobile operations (UH-1 or OH-6 variants) and wielding small number of wheeled Saracen APCs. The patrol support is offered by AML-90 armored car.


We propably still need few players more (as ATM the player pool is way too western based), but lets see what this turn up to be when the PPs order arrives - and yeah, were still lacking the name!