Urban War in the Spring

Suppressors target the oncoming Junkers
 through the pipe farm.

This week, for a bit of a change Kev and myself opted to have a game of Urban War using the 2nd Edition of the rules, which Kev had not used in anger yet.

With myself opting for the VASA, and Kev being stubbornly sticking with his Junkers gladiator types (as the last couple of outings his Junkers have been shot to pieces by my VASA before getting within arms reach) to see if the tide could be turned.

The table was laid out as you can see with a reasonable amount of terrain and obstacles but as it proved, insufficient to hide enough to avoid the hail of fire the VASA squad put down in the first half of the game.

Pretty quickly, as Kevs gladiator types advanced through the terrain they were quickly picked off one by one with some pretty efficient dice rolling on my part and after three turns or so I had nearly got the Junkers force to breaking point with a pretty effective gun line, helped by what was proving to be a 'no place left to hide' terrain layout.

Kev was beginning to loose hope as he reached break point and had only managed to take out one VASA with an eventual lucky shotgun shot taking out the VASA leader who had got over confident and placed himself in full view of the whole battlefield so he could pick off nearby targets and pounce when the time came. 

The Sniper and Spotter team clear the right flank
of enemies

The Black Legion Sergeant
 gets a vantage point

He proceeded to make three consecutive break checks as his force was reduced to less than half but it was then that my luck on the dice turned as it does and a couple of charges from Greater Pit Beasts and various others managed to get in amongst the VASA Suppressors and did what they do best and dismembered three or four in pretty quick succession. It was then that the much vaunted 'high morale' of the VASA troops began to let them down and several failed panic checks led to reduced shooting abilities.

Junkers make contact at last

As usual, just when you can taste the victory, it is cruelly taken from you. Of course, with the death of the Angel spotter to a couple of well aimed shots from the Junkers leader who had just eviscerated a second suppressor, the VASA had to do a break test which they duly failed. And Kev's Junkers had their victory at last!

VASA advance through the Pipe Farm while an
Angel watches over them

The totalling up the points bar the break VPs were surprisingly even at the end of the fight, with the break giving the victory. Victory though did not have the proper taste of success, as Kev felt that the battle felt already lost so the surprise victory was a bit hollow having won only by me failing one dice roll. The post game discussion revolved around this and it was pointed out that many games of whatever rules, invariably come down to who fails the break test first, especially skirmish games. It takes a scenario with set victory criteria to move this up a notch and remove the 'who fails first' syndrome from the game.

The Suppressors start getting
panicky

All in all though, this game being my third game of the 2nd edition Urban War rules and I'm beginning to warm to them with the simplified approach and less needless dice rolling removed it does become a much slicker game. A sort of sci-fi version of the LotR strategy game would be reasonable analogy.