Monday 5 May 2014

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.

5 comments:

  1. What are the differences comparing to Force on Force/Ambush Alley/Tomorrows War?

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    Replies
    1. Much smaller scale, you are playing individual figures (including individual stance for every man) instead of team based games. In effect, the entirety of the mechanics are different from AA-Games as the latter are all based on team to team combat.

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    2. Despite both being modern rules they are indeed quite different and are really designed to provide differing levels of game (section+ vs platoon+). The game mechanisms are also very different. I enjoy both but for different reasons.

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  2. Very, very interesting
    An intense game with a low figure count (even better)

    I may have to dip into late twentieth early twenty first century low intensity conflicts

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    Replies
    1. It certainly makes a change from 18th and 19th century games!

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