Looking for opinions on Skirmish Sangin or "Fighting Season"?

[jamesmanto]

Sold my Canadians. Post is now irrelevant to me.

Oh that's too bad.
There is some good stuff from Nordic Weasel Games too. 5Core and No End in Sight for section and platoon+ level of action. Plus they're PDF so cheap.

Rules are easy to switch out, but painted miniatures are a pain to redo.

[mellis1644]

Fighting Season has a lot of potential and isn't completely dead - just delayed.

The problem we had with it was the 'Good guys' had loads of tactical options but 50 ways of losing and the 'bad guys' job was to help them along the way.
The bad plan was always corner one good squad and hammer it into oblivion - when the cavalry turns up - leg it!  Relatively easy.

That's basically modern small scale CI skirmish warfare from the 50's onwards - whether in jungle or 'poppy country' etc. Victory for the 'bad guys' is as much/if not more political and PR of casualties vs. a traditional military one.

One option is to have a GM run the insurgents or even have them 'automated/run by the system' with multiple 'good guys' on the same side. That's been done a couple of times with Vietnam period rules and works well. But that's not always easy to pull off in a nice & balanced way.

[jamesmanto]

That's basically modern small scale CI skirmish warfare from the 50's onwards - whether in jungle or 'poppy country' etc. Victory for the 'bad guys' is as much/if not more political and PR of casualties vs. a traditional military one.

One option is to have a GM run the insurgents or even have them 'automated/run by the system' with multiple 'good guys' on the same side. That's been done a couple of times with Vietnam period rules and works well. But that's not always easy to pull off in a nice & balanced way.

I always run mine as the players vs. the Taliban (me).

I just need a good automatic system so that I can play solo and still present myself with some tactical problems.

[Arlequín]

You are going to struggle with making a game out of it mostly, as religious martyrdom aside, the aim of the insurgent is just to survive; avoiding contact with troops where at all possible. The constant traditional complaint of troops in a CI role is that the enemy "won't stand and fight".

In Indochina only in the far North were conventional actions taking place. In Vietnam it was only the NVA who would try to engage the Americans on even terms and then only from a position of strength. In Rhodesia whole platoons-worth of assets would be turned out to chase-down groups of two or three insurgents, or more rarely ten or more; the 'Externals' everyone raves about were the only way to really hurt the insurgents. Those hurt the government more at the political level however.  

Soldiers have boots on the ground flying the flag in any given area maybe one or two days a month, the rest of the time the insurgent is there reminding everyone of that fact; ergo to Joe Public it's the insurgent's territory and the soldiers are just passing through. When there is a fight, it's on the insurgent's terms and designed to show the population that they don't fear the regime.

Victory for the bad guys is being ever-present as a threat to people's lives and happiness, it rarely involves giving regime soldiers a thrashing. They are simply playing an entirely different game and at a quite different level. Why risk fighting soldiers when you can just intimidate voters into going your way?  

Wargames on the other hand tend to play as a CI soldier's wet dream; they have the armour, the helicopters and technology and the bad guys decide to make a 'fair fight' of it by standing-up with their AKs.  

[jamesmanto]

Usually my games are a patrol or sweep or even a quick reaction force getting ambushed.

Once the Canadian player can bring in fast air the game ends as the Taliban bugger off

http://rabbitsinmybasement.blogspot.ca/2016/05/ambush.html

[grant]

You are going to struggle with stuff

It really doesn't matter - I sold my Canadians and don't have any moderns left.