Skirmish at Top Malo House

 

Back in May, and a couple of days before the fortieth anniversary, I ran a 28mm game of the engagement between the Royal Marines Arctic and Mountain Warfare Cadre and elements of the Argentinian 602 Commando Company.

I used the Skirmish Sangin rules as, whilst these were designed for Afghanistan, they were relatively easily adapted to the Falklands and provide a suitably crunchy game for such a small engagement with very low levels of cover.

The scenario was developed from the Mountain Commandos at War in the Falklands: The Royal Marines Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre in Action During the 1982 Conflict by Rod Boswell (who commanded the Marines in this engagement).

We ended up playing the scenario twice during the day - here are a couple of pictures from the second round

The main issue, from a gaming perspective, of using Skirmish Sangin for this period is the absence of body armour - so if you get hit you go down.

First Play: Skirmish Sangin

Impressed with the production and keen to see how the mechanisms would work on the table, Lenin and I gave Skirmish Sangin a spin.

Lenin supplied some of his Paras and I provided the Taliban figures but we each handed them over to the other for the game.  We decided to run one of the official scenarios with the Taliban moving down the board and running into my troops trying to head them off.

As you might expect things started slowly with us becoming acustomed to the rules but we quickly got the hang of them.  I moved my first section up to secure the first set of buildings.  I quickly came under fire from some Taliban - all I can say is thank goodness for body armour!  My first fireteam returned fire whilst the other fireteam secured a building to use as a base of fire.

Once I had my teams in place things got rather hot for the first group of Taliban but soon a second appeared to my flank.

When my second section arrived and took position along the nearby edge of a poppy field we began to win the firefights and I could advance one of my original fireteams.

In the end the volume of fire and having the successful hits by the Taliban absorbed by body armour mean the Taliban were in a fix and so the game was mine.

Whilst the rule mechanisms and dice roll modifiers look a little daunting at first, we quickly got the hang of things and the game flowed pretty well for a first try.  The rules certainly did what I was hoping and provided a more granular game allowing a smaller number of figures to be used.  I suspect I will replace the official markers (as you do need quite a few of them) with something a little smaller (particularly as you quickly learn the modifiers printed on them and they're also on the QRS) to help with the aesthetics.

We will definitely be using these again and I have moved my purchases from Empress up my painting priority list as a result.

First Look: Skirmish Sangin

When I first heard about Skirmish Sangin I took a look at their website and was a little concerned that the mechanisms might be a little heavy for the type of game I was envisaging.  Despite the draw of the Empress Modern British range, I already have the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (using Force on Force) I wasn't keen to have two games that were going to play too similarly.  So I wondered whether I could do the Modern Brits at a different level (the Soviets being at Platoon plus) and so Skirmish Sangin came back onto the radar.

I picked up a hard copy of the rules at Salute but they are also available as either a pdf (£7.50) or hard copy (with the pdf as well for £25) from the Radio DishDash website (and in hard copy from other distributors I believe).

The rules are 170 pages in full colour (in softback if you get the hard copy) and illustrated with plenty of photos from the MoD and of various wargames along with a few explanatory diagrams.  After an introduction and a brief history of the conflict the book moves on to creating a suitable force, provides orbats for British, Australian, New Zealand, French and US ISAF forces before moving onto the rules themselves, followed by an example game, two scenarios, the quick reference sheets and some counter sheets.

Troops are given a "Body" attribute which determines their various combat skills and their initiative sequencing along with an armour rating (to reflect body armour if any) and morale.  Morale and skills are expressed as percentages.

Each turn each figure will activate four times and have three action points available to use.  The sequence in which the figures activate is dictated by their Body attribute which are grouped and this allocates their activations across the ten phases of each turn.  This approach reminds me of the system used by older games like Phoenix Command and Car Wars but in a simplified form.  Actions include various movement modes, kneeling, going prone, getting up, climbing etc. as well as spotting and combat actions.  Since a figure's position (moving, stationary, kneeling, prone etc.) along with their location is significant for spotting and firing you do need to think carefully about your use of actions.

Both spotting and combat actions start with a basic skill level and then the relevant modifiers are applied before a d100 roll.  Whilst the list of modifiers in each case is substantial it quickly becomes apparent which are routinely applicable to your current situation.

If a successful shooting roll is made the damage is then rolled and the target can then roll their armour (if they have any) to reduce or eliminate the damage.  Any residual damage then determines how badly injured the target is and whether any nearby troops' morale is affected.  However, even a miss will result in a morale test being required.

As I am sure you can see there isn't anything revolutionary here but the moving parts are assembled to produce a more granular level of game than say Force on Force - which is what I was looking for.  The rules are very nicely presented and I am interested to see how they play out on the table.