After moving in, I haven’t yet had a chance to hit the gaming table in my own house, instead going off to the Dastardly Regular Opponent’s house for Chain of Command or BattleTech. However, having finished decorating my dining room I am now ready to begin hosting games for my roster of opponents.
But where to begin? Well, with my former housemate coming over for one of our food/gaming/chat sessions and with the allure of the new units for Echelon and Hongbin alike, we had to get BPRE 28mm back on the table. It had been a while since the housemate had played, so we decided to get a pair of scenarios up and running in the time we had.
Game 1 was a good old face to face brawl, with each side trying to eliminate 100 CP out of the rival force (with both starting at 150CP). For my Scorch operators, this meant I had 4 guys (Advisor, the M320 carrying Assault Grenadier, a regular Recce and one of the new Recce Raiders). Meanwhile OPFOR was… a lot of Shurta. Like a whole lot. They were mixed in with a few Mutashib and Hongbin mercs to give the Aayari some additional punch.
By the end of turn 2, Scorch had managed to wipe enough points off the board without any losses. This was mostly due to splashing a pair of Mutashib Sappers with a single UGL round during the manoeuvre phase as well as the Finishing Shot from the Recce
Game 2 however was going to be a little different. This was an interesting mission I hadn’t played before, with Aayari defending a building to prevent Scorch from extracting critical intel. What is different is that the Aayari guys are springing an ambush, counting them as the Assaulting time and letting them move and shoot first. The board was also nice and busy, with lots of angles to handle. Surely neither of these things would cause a problem.
I decided to go for a little more mass, realising I’d need to go on the offensive and break into a fortified building. Two Recce Raiders, one regular Recce and three Assaulters was planning to give me the ability to go through doors like they weren’t there, as well as a core of guys with frags to take control of the space. The OPFOR was going for a bit more of balanced force, with two Hongbin guys with UGLs forming up in the squad as well as the usual SHurta. He also took an advisor, seeing as the Clear Sky atmospheric card meant it was the perfect time for dropping lumps of Chinesium out of the sky. The Aayari took up position in the largest building (as I predicted) meaning this was going to be a scrap.
I didn’t even get to the main building. It immediately went badly wrong – a lucky shot from one of the Mutashib took down my lead Recce as he moved behind the white car, which then allowed the Mutashib sapper to move and get an angle and drop another Assaulter. My attempt to open up the firing lines with my Recce got them a taste of Chinese engineering as well as some enthusiastic AK fire from the advancing Shurta. The remaining two Assautlers got bogged down in building six, managing to get staggered several times and avoiding death until a pair of Shurta had to literally push into the building and engage in CQB. One got dropped by the last assaulter, but a round from an Underslung Grenade Launcher finished my last Operator off.
Overall, we had a great time playing BPRE again. The game was super quick to get on the table and get playing, the randomised mission generation with the cards giving us some scenario-map-atmospheric combos I hadn’t played with yet. The new units were also great fun to play with – UGLs can be absolutely devastating, especially as the Scorch one can be popped off while on the move (although don’t underestimate the direct-fire approach either). The new CQB weapons also added some interesting tweaks to the usual combat maths. The main thing was just how much fun we had – there were several dice rolls were you could see the game change, as well as several decisions where we both looked back and saw what we could have done different.
Now I just need to paint the guys up to avoid the curse of the Unpainted Models.
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