Cuba Libre - Cronistria Fight #4

All,

It's been several days since crossing the debacle of the blown ambush by Team 6-2, and Lt "Mikey" Trojas, commander of TF Trojas, is pouring over maps and message traffic when suddenly Andraz Gregor, leader of the Cronistrian Democrats, darkens his door.  "Have you got a moment?"  "Sure, Sir, come on in."  Gregor quickly explained that one of his key lieutenants was captured ten hours ago, and that Gregor's sources had informed him the lieutenant was being held in a bombed out house in the village of Crocuk, northeast of the capital city of Miran.  Gregor stated he was putting together a team to go and retrieve his lieutenant, and could the CLEF task force spare any gear?  "Sir, we do.  But let us take care of this for you.  Let's look at the map, and I'll personally lead the mission."

It's 1030 on 13 April 1990, and Team 6-1 has been briefed, geared up, and conducted its movement to the objective area.  They conducted a security halt, and Lt Trojas conducted a recon of the area; the team is now infiltrating as close to the target building as possible to secure the Cronistrian Democrat Militia (CDM) lieutenant.

The table, north is up, with a small stream running east-west along the bottom of the board.  The target building, a bombed out house where the Cronistrian National Guard (CNG) is holding the CDM lieutenant, is at center.

Looking southwest to northeast at the target building.

The opposing forces: at top is the CLEF Special forces team, at right is the CDM lieutenant (the point of the exercise), and at bottom is a seven-man squad from the CNG.

The CLEF's Team 6-1: bottom left is Mikey, center is Rolly, bottom right is Chick, top right is Badger, and top left is Slate.

The bad guys.

Again looking SW to NE at the target building, with two hostiles visible in the building (1st and 3rd floors) and one to the northeast.

Target building, looking northwest to southeast: same bad guy on foot outside as previous pic (top left), again two bad guys visible on 1st and 3rd floors.

Team 6-1 comes on the table in the west, just north of the stream, filtering towards the target building (top center).

Mikey: "Well, this is about as close as we're gonna get boys.  Target building is 12 o'clock, we've got Tangos on 1st and 3rd floor, one on foot at 1 o'clock, 20 meters past target building.  On me boys, let's go."

Rolly, Chick, and Mikey went right, while Slate and Badger went left, closing on the target building at the shuffle.

Mikey presses forward, and is the first to open up, startling the hell out of the complacent CNG troops.

Mikey's rounds put the target down (bottom center, explosion), and cause the guy on the 3rd floor to fall back to what little cover he could find and hunker (red bead).

With the guy hunkering in the corner, Chick has lost the angle (off camera to bottom, with Mikey at bottom center), so Badger scoots over and takes a shot, putting the hunkering coward 'man down.'

While Rolly (center, with Mikey and Badger to his left, Chick at bottom left) moves up and takes a shot at the foot sentry (top right).

Forcing him to fall back (bottom right, from explosion at bottom center, CLEF at top left).

The bad guy on the north (left) side of the house, 1st floor, moves over to get a look at what's going on (CLEF is off camera to right).  The guy that's hunkering from Rolly's shot is at (top left) successfully self rallies.  But the 'man down' guy (white bead at top right of building) tries to recover but remains man down.

All five CLEF Spec Ops guys push forward.  Slate is at bottom left, Badger is next to the house staring at the bad guy that just poked around the corner, Mikey is next to the opening at center, Chick is at bottom right covering Mikey, and Rolly pushed up to the right corner of the house.

Badger keeps pushing forward, firing bursts on every other foot.

The target is out of the fight (bottom left), and the enemy marksman (3rd floor, red dot at top left of building) falls back and hunkers.  Mikey is at right.

The just rallied enemy foot sentry (top left) Guard fires at Badger, but misses.

Looking south to north at the right (east) side of the house, Rolly pushes forward to take out the foot sentry, the one he forced to fall back and that just fired on Badger (bad guy is behind tree at top right, Badger off camera to left).  Rolly didn't know, but there's a bad guy on the first floor of the target building, peering out the window as Rolly goes by (the building has three floors that can be taken apart; I've removed the top two floors to see the guy on the first floor.

In any case, the bad guy is just as startled as Rolly and the rounds go wide,  Rolly pushes ahead.

Looking north to south, Rolly opens fire (center, having moved up to the north (bottom) corner of the building, fires on the enemy sentry (bottom left, with Badger at far right, Mikey and Chick at top right, and the enemy marksman at top left in the building on the 3rd floor with red bead).

Again forcing the enemy sentry to fall back (looking west to east, bottom right, from explosion at center).

That's twice, the no-shootin' bastard!

Chick moves up next to Mikey (with Badger at top left, Slate off camera to left, and Rolly behind the house at top right) and takes a shot at man down guy on the third floor.  The rounds have no effect (another 'man down' result; I should have counted that as putting him out of the fight, but I was feeling magnanimous).

Looking north to south, the enemy foot sentry tries to rally but fails and falls back again (bottom left, from red bead at left, where he fell back to after Rolly shot at him at the explosion at center!).  But the marksman on the 3rd floor successfully self-rallies.

Having been turned on to the Tango on the first floor by Rolly's near-death experience, Chick rushes into the building and tosses a flash-bang into the room with the bad guy.

And Mikey immediately follows it, pumping rounds into the CNG soldier.

Dropping him.

With Mikey and Chick into the building (bottom right), Slate moves up (bottom left) and fires at the foot sentry (top left), hiding behind a haystack.

And he's done.

On the north side of the house, the enemy marksman (top left) creeps forward, but Badger (bottom right) sees him and Snap fires.

But he misses and the enemy fires on him.

Badger is down (center, next to down enemy soldier, with Slate at bottom left).

The poor bad guy on the south side of the house, who's man down on the third floor (top center, white bead, Mikey and Chick are on the first floor, just past the down enemy soldier), tries to recover again, but again rolls a '1' and stays man down!

CLEF rolls a random event, "Take Cover," so Slate dashes to the building, out of  sight of the enemy marksman (top left).

While Rolly approaches from the other side and fires a long burst into the back of the CNG marksman (Rolly is at the top of the photo, hidden by the building's wall).

The marksman goes down like a sack of potatoes.

While Mikey and Chick make their way to the 2nd floor, with the CMD lieutenant and a bad guy on the other side of the wall.

Again Chick feeds them a flash-bang.

And again Mikey crashes the room as soon as it goes off, firing on the CNG soldier.

The enemy is down, and Mikey calmly states "boxcars" into his intra-squad radio, informing the team he's secured the CMD lieutenant.

Chick moves swiftly to the 3rd floor and dispatches the last bad guy, the one that's been 'man down' the whole fight.

Rolly stands overwatch while Slate tends to Badger.

And it's time to get the heck out of dodge before the bad guy QRF shows up!  Mission accomplished!  Oh wait, not really.  The mission to secure the CMD lieutenant went off almost without a hitch (upon further inspection, Badger is back on his feet in action, having suffered a 'through and through' in his off-hand shoulder).

But this one's a little bit different, yes?  The next fight will be Team 6-1 and their guest on the run, being chased by the bad guy QRF (Quick Reaction Force), so this tale is not yet finished.  I was kind of up in the air about whether to do that or not, but since I finally got a team through a fight without a serious casualty, I figured, "hey, why not give them a shot at having some real casualties?" ;)

I also thought about giving Mikey a Bronze Star for his two close combats, but I didn't.  If he makes it through this next one successfully I'll give him a Silver Star.  Excuse me, Estrella de Plata. ;)

The fight went very well, and at such close range the difference between the CLEF SF and the CNG regulars was telling.  Violence of action.

Well, that's it for now, I'll look to get some more games in this coming weekend.  I'm loving how quick these are; the previous took a tad longer to set up because I used all that lichen, as well as the fact the fight went long (due to the CLEF knocking the bad guys around then the bad guys recovering and knocking the CLEF around), but this fight was quicker than normal and so I got both in (set up, play, take down, set up, play) in about three hours.

More fights to come!

V/R,
Jack