{"id":4875,"date":"2021-11-13T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-13T10:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/?p=4875"},"modified":"2021-11-02T12:05:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T12:05:28","slug":"poor-communications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/2021\/11\/13\/poor-communications\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor Communications"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/fb:like><\/div><\/div>

Stephen reports on a recent Sci Fi solo game using Black Ops<\/em><\/p>\n

Since it was a wet weekend I thought I just fancied a game of something. Since I hadn\u2019t played Black Ops for a while I thought that\u2019s what I\u2019d do.<\/p>\n

I went with a simple meeting engagement. Each side had 100 points each. The human squad had two fireteams of five men \u2013 in the first was the leader, heavy weapons support, a technical expert, and two troopers. In the second was another heavy weapons support, a sniper, and three troopers. The droids had three fireteams of five, each consisting of a heavy weapon support and four troopers.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Droids occupy the relay station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The idea behind the scenario is that the droid army has captured a human communications station and the human squad has to go in, recapture it, and get it online. They have seven turns to do that and get to safety.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Moving through the cargo crates<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turn One<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Black Ops is a card activation system. Each troop type has two cards in the deck and when they are drawn a model can take one action (e.g. the human Specialist card is drawn \u2013 the technical expert and sniper can each take an action). In addition, the leader gets a bonus third card which can be used to activate a third time or he can order a model within 6\u201d to take a third action. Simple enough.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Get some! Get some!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the first turn it seemed like there were only droid cards in the deck, all the droids had taken one action, and the droid troopers had taken their second, before one of the human cards came up. This allowed the droids to make a quick advance and move up to halfway across the board (I was using my smaller 2\u2019x3\u2019 board). This put the humans on a back foot, particularly the sniper (private Urek Ricci) who I had wanted to move up to an advantageous position but this was now denied because the droids, ZX81 and CPC464, had moved so far forward.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sniper Ricci takes aim<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turn Two<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The human leader, Sergeant Waylan Gomez, led his team up through some cargo containers. Urek Ricci advanced on another position and took a quick snapshot with his rifle at ZX81 \u2013 he missed. I\u2019d made the terrain nice and close, to eliminate too many long-range avenues of fire that could dominate, so models had to move carefully to ensure they couldn\u2019t be seen. The droids well and truly moved into the comms relay station area and crossed it safely to cover the approach of the humans.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Droids advance in strength<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turn Three<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The humans had to get a move on. Private Yan Obrand, with his M77 plasma gun, saw the droids Dragon 32 and HP85 moving around the back of the comms relay. He let rip, but missed. He then took a second burst and this time both droids went down! First kill to the humans. Urek also had a go with his sniper rifle at the droids in the station compound, this time with a steady hand and good rest for his weapon. But he missed again! Close to Urek was private Cove Longstern and he moved up to put some suppressive fire down. The droids responded by moving an entire squad against Ricci and Longstern. They opened up but failed to hit anything. Sergeant Gomez with specialist Sorel Marsden and private Dorian Zenward continued to sidle through the containers trying to find a way to the relay station.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yan Obrand lays down covering fire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turn Four<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Again, Urek Ricci took a shot and again he missed! Some sniper he was turning out to be. That would be his last shot though, because ZX81 returned fire and he went down. Two of the droids moved up to occupy his position where they would be able to make a flanking attack on the rest of the human squad. Private Longstern gave fire and a droid went down. But then C64 took a shot and it was bad news for Cove Longstern \u2013 it was the end of his game.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The firefight hots up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turn Five<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The droids sought to consolidate their position and see if they could exploit the flank they\u2019d opened up. More droids moved up. Another pair of droids, one armed with a heavy kinetic lance, tried to counter the advance of Yan, Sorel Marsden, and Dorian Zenward. These three had advanced to the side of the comms station, but were waiting for the right moment to break cover and make a dash for the doors. Sergeant Gomez took private Uriah West to shore up the weakened flank left vulnerable after Ricci and Longstern had been taken down.<\/p>\n

\"\"
You go that way and we’ll give you cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turn Six<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

With not much time left it was obvious the humans had to get a move on. It was already looking extremely unlikely they would have time to re-enable the relay station and get off board so if they were to they would have to get moving. With that in mind, Yan, Sorel, and Dorian moved up to the station. Immediately the droids opened up and took Dorian Zenward out. But on their second activation Yan put down some suppressive fire and Marsden managed to unlock the station and get it back online. First part of the mission complete!<\/p>\n

\"\"
Behind the back of the bike sheds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turn Seven<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Last turn syndrome \u2013 go for it! So the station was working but could they get away? It pretty much happened how you think it would \u2013 the humans made a dash for the table edge and the droids opened up where they could.<\/p>\n

In the end none of the humans escaped. The station had been reactivated but they hadn\u2019t quite got away. Human loses were four models, and droid loses were six \u2013 so a pretty even ratio. The humans could claim a partial success.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Hurry up! We’ve got company!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen reports on a recent Sci Fi solo game using Black Ops Since it was a wet weekend I thought I just fancied a game of something. Since I hadn\u2019t played Black Ops for a while I thought that\u2019s what I\u2019d do. I went with a simple meeting engagement. Each side had 100 points each. … Continue reading “Poor Communications”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,73,32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-28mm-wargaming","category-black-ops","category-game-reports","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/ST-Poor-Comms-Header-e1635853500273.jpg?fit=800%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9A5LG-1gD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4877,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions\/4877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}