Battle Report - 25 Nov 2019 - "The Finns are coming" - Free Fire

Ok - for those of you who don't remember, Free Fire is the set of generic skirmish rules Rob from our club is working on. They've got a nice core mechanic, and the idea, as I understand it, is somewhat GURPs-like in that there are core rules and then stuff that ties the rules into a specific setting.

Anyway,. If you happened on this game at Hereward, this is the same scenario, only instead of the Brotherhood Without Banners ambushing a Lanister wagon train, it's WW2 Finns ambushing a Russian truck convoy.

Myk and I got the Russians: at least to start with, better commanded and with more men, but the Finns are considerably tougher (they're used to this winter lark) and we were also testing out some new rules both for combat damage and for snipers,. And the Finns had a sniper...

Oh boy, did the Finns have a sniper.

The Russians pile out to both sides of the road having come screeching to a halt in front of an unexpected barricade.

Finns - figures from the Winter War Kickstarter from the early days of this blog :D

More Finns crest a rise, about to make serious inroads into the Russians.
This section and the sniper opened up and made short work of most of these, including taking out their Lieutenant with a single shot.

My section of Russians go for the sensible approach of trying to shift the barricade so we can all get the heck out of here, pronto. 

Meanwhile, the braver than he is useful Russian Comissar and a couple of men try and track down the sniper (Hint, guys, he's behind that tree in front of you.)
We should have had him - one of the rifleman put 5 dice of hits into him and rolled NO damage (wanting 4s on d8s)... 

The braver bits of my section try and hold off the Finns. About here is where the sniper, who by rights should have been dead if either Myk or I could roll dice, splatters my Sergeant's brains all over the snow.

Yes there is tinsel on one of the trees in this Finnish forest. Why do you ask? :D 

"And HEAVE, comrades!"
Cue sounds of impatient gunning of truck engines, and an awful lot of small arms fire hitting the rear truck and immobilising it.

"Run away! Bravely run away!"
(Other captions are available.)

With better dice, and at least one smarter command decision, we might have made it away with both trucks, One, however is better than anyone else has managed with this scenario in this setting!

Kickstarter Watch - Russian 28mm trucks

3D render of GAZ AAA

A bit specialist, you might think - but if you followed the Winter War Kickstarter from last year, or alternatively were on a different planet when that happened, and have been collecting some of the Warlord Russians, this Kickstarter may entertain....

Done by Gavin Tyler, who's the man behind the original Winter War Kickstarter, it's already well past its goal with 12 days to go - it's not intended to be as big as the original one, but it does have some rather nice looking variants on the GAZ AAA truck that was the Russian Army's workhorse for most of WW2.

Tempted? You bet.