Fighting Season Campaign Game in Play

[Lardy Rich]

We played our first game in the Bore Pallaw campaign yesterday using Fighting Season.  Bore Pallaw is in the Dastarkhan province which is an entirely made up place (albeit with a very significant resemblance to Helmand in Afghanistan), as such I hope this use of an "imaginations" setting means I am not breaking any rules here.  

Anyway, this is the first patrol by A Company of the West Sussex Regiment (fictional unit) out of FOB Cawnpore (fictional location), undertaken by a multiple from Lieutenant Ian Jefferies 1 Platoon.   Anyway, what isn't fictional is that we had a great time and really enjoyed the challenges that the campaign setting provides.  You can read about it here:

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=5043

And here are some snaps of Dastarkhan.






Hope you enjoy the report.

Rich

[Garder]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

I look forward to the release of the rules.

[muggins]

Is that a real sandbox? Awesome!

[Lardy Rich]

Yeah.  I originally had the table built for 2' terrain squares from TSS, but for this project I use sand.  The table has a lip around it and I just sweep it up with a dustpan and brush at the end. 

Rich 

[Poiter50]

Your game report reads like a section of Company Commander by Russell Lewis. Great stuuf, think I need some more RPGs.

[Rob_bresnen]

Great AAR. Very exciting and action packed. It certainly has the right feel. I like the way the insurgent are not after a military victory- it makes sense in a way Force on Force never did. After all, most asymmetrical engagement the insurgent are trying to score political points rather than defeat a better trained and equipped force in a stand up battle.

I am very much looking forward to playing Fighting Season. I think it could well be the rules I have been looking for for years!

[Lardy Rich]

Hi Rob

Thanks for your kind words.  Leigh and I have spent a lot of time researching the conflict and I've had a lot of assistance from the British Army who I have been working with on another project.  What we have attempted to do is combine some of the aspects which make this conflict very different to conventional warfare.  We have just finished a game where I had two GPMGs on a roof to provide a strong base of fire, but I was unable to use them effectively as we had what seemed to be a bunch of unarmed civilians in the area where fire was coming from.  It had for several pretty tense phases of play where my troops were taking fire and I was unable to respond as I would like for fear of collateral damage on the civvies.  Courageous Restraint is difficult to achieve when you have RPGs sailing up towards you and a Corporal dead in an irrigation ditch as a result.  You really just want to brass up the bad guys with a few belts of 7.62!

Fortunately we PID'd the naughty chaps in the end and the gimpys did their job with some style.

War in imaginary Dastarkhan is pretty Hellish!

Rich

 

     

[Arlequín]

For me this has been the problem with every rule set I've encountered; the guerilla is forced to play the 'conventional opponent' on his terms, rather than the other way round. No matter how many extra figures you allow them, how many 'sneaky rules' they get, it comes down to volume of fire in the end, which rarely works in the guerilla's favour.

For me Fighting Season actually enables a guerilla opponent to play like one and forces some tough calls on the conventional player... which is how it should be.

 

[commissarmoody]

Great report, I will have to.check the rules out some time. I don't think I will do the stan. ( served there, lost a few friends too)
But I think I will enjoy reading your way of dealing with the insurgent forces..Any planes in the future to expand the rules and locations?
Maybe some blue and red force actions?

[Lardy Rich]

Hi Commissar,

Fighting Season focus purely on Afghanistan or, in our case, an "imaginations" version which means I can avoid posting game reports which some people who were present would find disturbing. 

Classic red and blue conventional warfare is not something we seek to address with these rules.  This is very much about, as Arlequin says, counter-insurgency blue versus orange with a bit of green thrown in.  A campaign system will be at the heart of the game and we do plan to do the same for Iraq. 

If you want red versus blue we do have a team working on a cold war version which we hope to produce next year. 

Rich

[commissarmoody]

Thanks for the info Rich. I am still looking forward to reading the rules just the same. And I am also a fan of using fictional settings that just resemble other location.
 

[axabrax]

Can't wait for this. When is it coming out? I thought it was going to be shortly after Salute?  Also, how hard would it be to use these for Soviet Afghan war? Presumably the Afghans would be nearly the same and the Russians would be nearly the same as the British perhaps with some restrictions on more modern equipment?

[Lardy Rich]

Axabrax

We're not far off now.  We're in the final stages of playtesting and should have it out "soon".  I hesitate to name a date as playtetsing is an imprecise science and I won't publush anything until I am 100% happy with it.

In the meantime, there's a fresh report from Dastarkhan here on Lard Island News:

 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=5087





Hope you enjoy it.

Rich

[Rob_bresnen]

Cool. What is a civilian jump off point?

[Lardy Rich]

Chain of Command uses jump-off points for troop deplopyment.  A civilian jump off point is a group of military age males who may be civilians or may be insurgents.  Until they are PID'd by the British (in this case, as that's who is fighting in Dastarkhan) they can be used as a deployment point by insurgent forces.  In other words they are unidentified blokes who you don't trust but you can't open fire on them as they may be a bunch of farmers carrying out their legal business.

Rich