Ambush at Abadwe

The AK47 game Jon and I played yesterday turned out to be a bit of a cliff hanger with both sides fighting to the bitter end.

I was defending with my F.A.R.T. Colonial Settler Force and Jon attacking with his A.L.N. Peoples Popular Front. I was lucky enough to turn my unit of 10 regulars plus HMG's into professionals in the political manoever phase, while Jon gained a truck with RCL and a movement upgrade for one of his militia units (+3 due to a supply of nifty training shoes).

From that point on things didn't go so well for the Nbuto defenders as I only got one unit on the table, the professionals in trucks with an AML60 escort, while Jon piled on three units straight away including armoured cars, APC's with RCL's and attached regulars plus a militia mortar unit.

The vastly outnumbered F.A.R.T. column proceeded in a 'thunder run' up the road that ran along the table centre line, heading past a P.A.R.P. police station and through a defile between two hills, towards a shanty town at the far end of the table. However, by turn four they had been virtually wiped out in a well laid A.L.N. ambush, being sandwiched in the crossfire from three AML90 amoured cars on one side of the road and the fire poured in from the insurgent's recoilless rifle armed APC's from the edge of the shanty town. To add insult to injury they got hammered by the rebel mortars, which pinned down what was left of the truck crews behind a nearby wrecked tank.

At this stage in the game it was looking like a walkover for the A.L.N. but, fortunately, the F.A.R.T. reinforcements started to trickle in with the arrival of both a mortar unit and two AML90 armoured cars. The armoured cars proceded to zoom backwards and forwards at high speed on the other side of the shanty town (I rolled some good movement dice!). They suppressed the enemy mortar unit which fled into some woods, wiped out one of his armoured cars and brewed up two of the A.L.N. APC's, before finally being KO'd by concentrated AK47 and RPG fire from the rebel troops.

In the meantime, the F.A.R.T. mortars were pounding the last two enemy armoured cars to smouldering wreckage and taking some heavy fire in return, losing one base and getting pinned down in a patch of jungle as they arrived on table. The A.L.N. were soon reinforced by two units of miltia that appeared at opposite ends of the table, heading immediately for two of the key objectives, one a UN field hospital next to the police station and the other a crashed helicopter. Things were taking a turn for the worse as the F.A.R.T. repeatedly failed to get the last of it's own reinforcements into the game.

In the last four turns, however, the dice rolls of the F.A.R.T. commander finally turned around and the upgraded professional infantry swarmed onto the table. They quickly positioned their HMG's to pour fire into the A.L.N. militia, who, with their nice new +3 trainers, immediately sprinted for the cover of the police station. Caught in the crossfire of the two remaining mortars, the dug in HMG's and the assaulting professional infantry (who got a +2 fire bonus two turns in a row) and blasted by a last minute air strike from a rocket armed F4U Corsair, it wasn't long before the rebels routed.

On the other end of the battlefield, the Llama attack gunship flew on and started to strafe the second rebel militia unit at the crashed helicopter site. As it started it's high speed attack run, the gunship took an intense fusilade of fire from the AK47's of the rebels but fortunately escaped any damage. The enemy also got away without casualties due to some dodgy dice rolling by the shaken pilot, who decided to switch attention to the last remaining enemy APC instead. This was not a good idea. The APC's recoilless rifle was swiftly pointed skywards, slamming a round into the fuselage of the helicopter which fell in flaming wreckage after blowing up the APC in return (or did it actually blow itself up with the backblast from the RCL?).

As night fell, the battlefield was a wasteland of wrecked and burning vehicles. The F.A.R.T. had held on to one objective whilst a second was in the hands of the A.L.N. militia. A quick combat assessment revealed a points score of 65 for the F.A.R.T. government forces and 66 for the A.L.N. rebels. This was clearly a draw, the first of the campaign and quite a serious set back for the otherwise victorious F.A.R.T. A damned close run thing!