VBCW Kill Team, Part 2

I am playing the Mounties, with the Red sailors on autopilot. This means they will mostly be looking for places to shoot from, except the two with Molotovs who will move forward.

Deployment: (up to three inches from board edge)

RCMP setup.

Constables look for sniping positions.

Sailor setup.

All figures in concealment. Sailors win initiative.

Turning Point 1: All sailors on Conceal orders, as they're unlikely to see anything they can shoot this turn. All Mounties except the rightmost are on Active, hoping to move and shoot; there are no opportunities.

Positions at end of Turn 1.

"Should we really be on Active,
where the enemy can see us?"

Turning Point 2: (5 pics) Sailors win initiative again. 

Sarge and his pet hide behind a Wendy house.

• The Lewis gunner kills one Mountie. 

  

  "Reach out and touch someone."

  
  
• His partner returns fire, but totally whiffs his shooting rolls - nothing but ones and twos! 
  
  
  
• In return, the Mad Bomber (number one) hurls a flaming bottle of cheap liquor at the sergeant and his dog. The dog yips and flees the field (I couldn't bear to just kill off the poor thing). Reynolds is severely injured (two wounds left) by the burns and flying glass and as the Wendy house catches fire...
• And his weak pistol shot misses. 
• Constable in woods badly hurt, down to two wounds.
• Mad Bomber (number two) takes five wounds; despite cover and limited to a 5+ save for his other two rolls, he survives to rush his assailant. The Constable is only slightly injured, cover sheltering him from the blast.
• The badly hurt sailor succumbs to musketry from the woods.
• A second Constable is killed.
  
  
  
• Return fire knocks his killer down to one wound.
• A little plinking back and forth does light injury to the right-hand constable and one of his opponents.

  

  "Eh, might as well."

  
  
• The last sailor moves forward to shoot at the sergeant, who lies in the bracken at the edge of the wood, but he misses.

  

  "I can see you - wait, who put sand
  in my mechanism?"

  Casualties: Two Mounties killed, two badly wounded. One sailor dead, two badly wounded.

Two mistakes this turn - I kept forgetting the sailors had 5+ saves and only seven wounds, and I transposed one of the bombers for a rifleman, using the latter to throw the grenade. In both cases, this may have made a difference, though not much. I might have avoided loss on the left by Concealing figures (which cannot be seen until opponents are within 2"), but at the cost of leaving them nothing to contribute to the fight this turn.

I think a retreat is in order.

Turning Point 3: (pics) The Mounties finally win init, allowing them to activate a figure first. 

• This will be the constable on the right, who is completely in the open. He kills a sailor (also in the open) and moves back far enough to be in the woods and out of sight.
• A sailor tries to pick off the badly wounded Sergeant Reynolds, but misses.
• Reynolds crawls away.

As the last unhurt Mountie retreats into the woods, I decide that to attack any of them the sailors will have to get to within two inches (per the rules for ignoring Concealment). This would, however, expose them to Counteractions even though otherwise the Mounties can't act, and none of them would get within 2". I considered crowding them around the Wendy house, but I declared it afire earlier in the game. They move into cover as the surviving Mounties limp away.

A disheartening result for the pride of Canada.

Turning Point 4: (last 2 pics) At this point, it feels like a standoff. Because both sides only have two actions (unlike the Marines in the previous games which had three) it's impossible for the sailors to get into the woods AND shoot at the Mounties. Two of the Mounties are intact (one uninjured, the other taken one wound) but their compatriots are so badly hurt (1 and 2 wounds respectively) that it makes sense they would help them off the board rather than try to kill something more. The best result would be that BOTH sides would bottle out, and it's likelier to be the Mounties if only because the Lewis gunner can stay out of view until it's his turn to unleash hell.

Besides, this was only supposed to be a scouting trip, so...

End result:

• Two sailors killed and one down to one wound, out of eight total.
• Two Mounties killed and two down to one or two wounds, out of six total (plus the dog, who, despite Reynolds' fondness for him, does not count).

The miniature meeting engagement ends with the Red sailors holding the field of battle.

So, I think Kill Team works for this. The catch is that it is largely focused either on figures with twice as many wounds (the Space Marines had an average of 14) or with rules for special actions and equipment for each figure and faction that make them more durable. The "heavy weapon" I gave the sailors, on the other hand, could easily have killed one Mountie a turn if only it could see them, which luckily for the Mounties it didn't. I've read that KT relies heavily on having a ton of cover, and I probably could have used even more. Figures in this game must expose themselves to shoot (even though still in cover) and given the low number of wounds this can lead to debilitating injury in short order. This is why Marines are the poster boys of 40K and the best beginner faction - 3+ to hit and save is miles better than 4+ to hit and save, not to mention that ordinary humans have only two Action Points. Two firing phases with human rifles are enough to kill another human.

Maybe I'll look at a few more of the special rules for individual operatives and teams. Snipers, for example, can remain Concealed and still fire (ie, firing doesn't necessarily mean they can be attacked back). Elite troops might need those extra actions. Command Rerolls would have come in handy too, and I think in the full rules the underdog (ie whoever's in worse shape or has lost initiative) gets more such "special" actions. Of course this would increase complexity.

All in all, though, an okay if quick game. Might be better with more figures on the board too. I found a scenario in one of the CS Grant books in which six elites must tackle twelve basic guards to rescue a hostage, which could easily be represented by a moveable objective. Gurkhas as Heavy Brawlers, perhaps? Something to work towards...

VBCW Kill Team, Part 1

The mess on my table put me off running a game with my Wofuns, some of which are buried under the table with everything else. Also, I was still reading and watching Kill Team material. So next will be a try with VBCW figs. I gave serious thought to just using the black side of the Kill Team board and the MDF industrial terrain - if you squint it could represent a coal spoil from Wales or the Newcastle area. As I was about to start, I was also listening to the proceeds of the 2nd Warhammer Conference in Heidelberg, Germany.

Yes, they have an academic conference now. There are enough talks on playing in schools that I can get away with watching them at work and counting it as training.

The latest talk I listened to was about terrain kits, and it contained this comment from a source:

"Terrain pieces greatly reduce the ontological barrier between players and the fictional world and therefore contribute to the players' feeling of immersion and the realism of the simulation of wargames."

OK, so I'll try to make the table more immersive. On the minus side, I don't have much 28mm 20th century terrain. On the plus side, a Kill Team board is only just over two feet square. I managed to work it out.

A ruined farmstead on the edge of a wood.
Plus a couple abandoned farm vehicles and a Wendy house
(the Quar hut at top center).

Who to fight with? I have: 

• 8th Army types (read: Mobile Division elements brought home from the Med), who could be either Royalist or "Joshua Force" (led by an evangelical general who thinks it's his mission to return Britain to godliness)
• Mounties (from Prince Albert's invasion force)
• Ordinary line infantry in flat caps
• Civilian fighters, or LDV
• Sailors, who could be Reds or Albertines
• Police

I've chosen the Mounties, who are scouting their way from the beachhead into this green and pleasant land when they come upon a squad of Navy riflemen looting a burned farmstead...

It's a xerox of a xerox, so yeah, it didn't come out well.

Clearly they are some of those damned socialists and probably drunk on their grog ration. The Duke of York has famously declared that no one who advocates social upheaval is allowed in his coalition, thus shooting it in the foot to keep the setting going. The RCMP have experience dealing with punks like these... but the ones they left behind in Canada weren't this heavily armed.

For the figure stats, I am using the Kill Team Non-Player Operative rules. They are quite generic, but with three different levels (Trooper, Warrior, Heavy) and come in two types (Brawler and Marksman). It's allowed to modify them slightly. Heavies are the equivalent of Space Marines, so will be reserved for machine-gun teams to represent their extra wounds and better shooting. Almost everyone will be Marksmen, because the Brawlers don't get ranged weapons. Here are the sides:

Sergeant Reynolds, five Constables, (8 wounds apiece, 4+ saves) and the sergeant's faithful dog Busker. All with rifles except the Sergeant (whose weapon only ranges 8") and Busker, who counts as a Brawler with only 4 wounds and 5+ save).

Eight sailors (7 wounds apiece, 5+ saves) all with rifles, two with Molotovs (counting as one-use frag grenades) and one with a Lewis gun (counts as special weapon with Piercing 1).

Adding a couple modifications to the rules from the Lite Rules document - figures can be Injured at half wounds, reducing them to 4" movement and -1 to-hits. Each team gets one Command Reroll per turn. The forested oval counts as Concealed so long as figures are not at the edge, and as Cover otherwise. Also, I'm not bothering with an objective, mostly because I can't think of one, so this is a meeting engagement and points will be scored for kills. First side to lose half its men (Busker does not count) will bottle out.

Battle report to follow...