Skirmish Sangin - First Skirmish

Hello,

So I had my first game of Skirmish Sangin last night. It was a simple USMC Fire Team vs 8 Insurgents. There were many rule mistakes that happened during my first time playing that I'll outline right now.

• I learned that morale tests happen on the NEXT phase even if your character received morale markers before he/she got to act on the current phase. 
• I simply messed up on who acts when during a combat phase.
• I still have to figure out how indirect fire works as the way I did it doesn't seem right.
• Later on after the game was declared "over" I re-read the morale rules to see that the game shouldn't have been over as even when they fail their morale tests they do not surrender immediately. They have a chance to but you roll on a chart.

The battle was this:

"A small midwestern town was occupied by pro-red insurgents. Having recieved intel that all civilians had been evacuated out of the combat zone 1st Squad entered into the suburb and began clearing out buildings."

The battle I played focused on "Green Team" clearing out the western end of the town. A 4 man team with a LMG, UGL, and two M16A4s entered from the south. The 8 Insurgents were spread through the northern and western parts of the town. 

The "Midwestern Town"

As the Marines entered the town they soon became under fire from one of the buildings across the way. They settled next to an old brick wall and made their stand. The LMG opening up on the building. Soon one of the insurgents ran outside and laid prone. The Rifleman, with his M16A4, aimed and shot a burst ripping through the insurgent knocking him unconscious.

The unconscious insurgent

This lead to the insurgents in the western part of the town start to sneak towards the firefight. Soon the UGL recieved more fire from the same building and he saw more insurgents approaching. Lobbing a 40mm grenade into the door way was soon met by and explosion that sent some limbs flying out the door. Unknown to the Marines they had just killed 3 insurgents.

Marines holding off at the brick wall.

The Marines then focused their attention towards the approaching insurgents. The team leader opened fire at the insurgent that had crossed the street. The burst managed to hit him causing him to collapse on the floor and begin screaming. (It was at this point I thought the game was over and let me explain why).

Dead Insurgents after a 40mm grenade.

Approaching insurgents with many morale markers on them.

So as you might be able to tell, the insurgents had 3-4 morale markers on them. The insurgent infantry were novice giving them a base morale value of 35%. Having 3-4 markers on them made their morale checks -30%. Both of the leaders were down also (one screaming in pain the other blown to bits). So I rolled for them and saw that out of the 3 insurgents left only 1 of them passed their test. Then I called the game. It wasn't until the next day that I read the rules again and saw that if they fail you roll on the morale chart. For the fun of it I rolled for the two that failed. One of them surrendered and the other just went prone. So if I kept the game going I would have 2-3 Insurgents able to keep the fight going.

Overall the hours of preparation that went into this battle (making the quick terrain, fixing up the miniatures, etc) lead to me completing the game on turn 1 (combat phase 4 I think) which took about an hour. Not bad as even though I messed up a couple times it was still fun and quick flowing. A good game that I hope to keep playing.

Story wise, the Marines were able to clear the western side of town but I want to see how "Blue Team" and "Red Team" do in the other sides of town. I'd also like to be able to finish up the buildings to make them look like typical midwestern homes. You might've noticed that I was using 1/72 US Modern Figures and they actually worked really well with the rules and measurements. I was playing on a 2'x2' board which looked awesome with all the terrain on it!

Hope you enjoyed the read,

-"Jonah"