At 0440 my company of British Mechanized infantry is tasked with conducting a sweep through a mountain valley under insurgent control. The valley is heavily cultivated and irrigated, and the valley floor can be over-watched from several positions by both sides. We have a scant 30 minutes to complete the sweep.
My company has an artillery battery in support, and so I begin the sweep with a fire mission designed to clear the heights to my south. These look to be an excellent position to over watch the southern end of the valley, and I want to occupy them before moving the bulk of my infantry forward.
After the end of the fire mission, I advance my recce platoon of Spartans and occupy the heights. The recce boys are soon engaged with insurgent Technicals. The Technicals take heavy casualties from the 30mm cannon of the Spartans.
Meanwhile, I advance my two platoons of infantry to the west along the road, using the heights as cover. As the road turns south after rounding the end of the mountain spur, my infantry contacts a small group of Technicals. With some support from overwatching Spartans and by dismounting the infantry of the support platoon, we push through the ambush at the cost of one APC destroyed.
Meanwhile, the recce platoon has called in artillery fire on the western ridge overlooking the valley and the irrigation ditches extending east from the small village along the road. When the fires are complete, the recce platoon races forward, destroying Technicals and infantry in the woods at the foot of the heights. Sending the Spartans in without infantry support costs me one disabled vehicle. Another Spartan in hit trying to pass the small village to on the west side; evidently an insurgent RPG team has survived the artillery fire.
An infantry platoon and snipers take up an overwatch position on the western valley rim, where they engage a few insurgents in a trench line. The other infantry platoon moves forwards to occupy the positions of the recce platoon, which has raced forward in the final minutes to occupy the objective at the end of the valley. The attached artillery observer calls another fire mission on the farm complex on the eastern side of the valley to suppress any insurgents that might have a flank shot at the advancing Spartans.
The game ends with almost three minutes to spare with an insurgent surrender. There was indeed a strong insurgent force in the area of the farm. The game gave me a Total Victory but I think with a bit more care I could have avoided even the light casualties I took. Not sending infantry into the village to clear it, advancing my mounted infantry into an ambush, and sending unaccompanied AFVs into woods were all mistakes I made under the pressure of the clock.
Nice AAR. Purely, speculative, if you had to go in without the artillery fire, how much higher would your casualties have been? And would the sweep be completed in time?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure the fire missions on the heights accomplished much. Looking around after the scenario was complete, I didn't find any evidence of destroyed units on either ridge line.
ReplyDeleteThere were some dead and wounded insurgents in the irrigation ditches to the east of the village, but those were taken out by fire from the recce platoon. I do think that artillery fire suppressed a technical that was in some cover by the village, but that's the guy that nailed the Spartan as it probed past the village. So again, I'm not sure how effective it was.
If there was any real result from my fire missions, I suspect it was in suppressing the infantry in the farm fields on the east side of the map while the recce platoon pushed for the objective. We never took any fire from them. That might have been due to distance and visibility, but if they'd been able to see us and had RPGs, they could have done some damage. That might well have scrubbed the mission right there.
Awesome. I have the Nato expansion for this but never picked up the Brits or the Marines. So much gaming and not enough time! This has motivated me to try and squeeze in a Shock Force scenario this week.
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