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Had another NEIS game, this time I remembered my camera so though I’d share.
The set up was Russian motor-rifle infantry vs US Marines rated as Trained and Professional respectively, all with body armour. The US side had about 24 marines in 6 fireteams, the Russians had 3 squads of infantry, an MG support team and a BMP-3. The objective was the hastily put-together storage yard in the center of the board that yet again reminded me I really need to get on with sorting some better, more fitting terrain. Some generic cars would be nice. More modern buildings too. The tank and second BMP-3 didn’t feature this time due to lack of suitable armoured opposition.
The US force deployed in an L shape in the top left corner, the Russians as seen here on the bottom right. I was playing as the Russians.
The first turn had pretty much no shooting due to the lines of sight all being blocked, everyone just carefully moved towards their goals.
As usual the blue glass bits here being my way of tracking stress points. My opponent instead used blue D8s.
The vague plan I had in mind was to use the BMP as a mobile cover unit and big scary thing whilst the far left squad pushed into the ruins just ahead of it, the two central squads would move up around the crates and the MG team would hang back providing a base of fire. My opponent’s plan was to use smoke and superior numbers to rush the objective, get into close assaults and shrug the casualties. I suspect he’s not only read but mastered Zapp Brannigan’s Big Book of War.
The first casualties came on the second turn as things got in close. The green dice are marking the area of a smoke grenade which managed to scatter and not actually cover the goon at the end of the building by the pipe stack, and he promptly ate a burst of PKP fire. Over on my side my central team started having troubles as the leader flaked out and got exhausted early. Grenades featured heavily in the close fighting of the center as we allowed targeting of the ground if line of sight could be drawn and the unit attacking knew of the enemy position.
The BMP-3 or perhaps better named Mobile Cover Unit 1 pushed through a smoke cloud from the left-most squad thrown to cover their advance in the bits that the brick-like form of the IFV failed to block and punched a 100mm HE-FRAG round at point blank range into the ruins. How NEIS treats vehicles and their movement/needing to observe is an interesting set of limitations on the usual all-seeing-all-destroying box of death that heavily armed vehicles are in this size of fight. Especially when you roll as consistently badly for them as I do, but it’s much like how the RPGs and grenades don’t actually dominate when in many games of this size they absolutely would. Yes I still have nightmares about 2nd edition 40k grenade spam.
This was probably the best thing it did all game as apparently I have terrible luck at getting action points for vehicles and it spent much of the rest of the time trying to manoeuvre but lacking the extra points needed to observe, which also massively limited it’s targeting ability against infantry in cover. But it kept the marines worried, they fired off an AT-4 at it, missing entirely, but for the most part just kept away.After the initial volleys of turn 2, turn 3 got brutal as Marines pushed into the center and the Russians couldn’t get enough actions going on. Smoke grenades again providing a modicum of concealment from supporting fire against the marines and regular grenades making a right mess of the situation. The BMP-3 pulled back a bit in an effort to try and lend fire support but didn’t follow through on the dice rolling front. the Russian unit on the far right managed to get several people into the ruins and snap-shots and RPK fire managed to beat down the rearward units of the marines.
The final turn was still quite vicious as the smoke cleared and the marines took further casualties from pretty much everything that could shoot, but the Russians failed to force them back. The BMP struggled to get consistent action points to reposition and keep shooting. The MG team got repeatedly pinned, took a casualty but rallied kept shooting.
Overall the final body count was 1 dead Russian, about 6 wounded, most stabilized. The marines took a full 50% wounded, none immediately dead but at least half stabilised and ready for evacuation. I feel like I missed some overall morale rule about that. The marines captured the objective area to claim victory but would be handing out a lot of purple hearts. I suspect we missed some morale rules in there about taking that many casualties, but then they were also spread across the half dozen fireteams and being rated at professional they expect to take more casualties than Trained troops without gaining extra stress from it.
too many open areas for my liking
Agreed, as you can tell from the mish-mash of bases going on it was very much a grab whatever was on hand and fitted affair. Am slowly working on stuff to fill in the gaps, but one of the hardest parts is actually getting something that should be all over the place: Cars.
Or rather, cars that fit even remotely the scale of the miniatures. I have one currently and it’s a rusty old van that needs refitting, probably an original Ford Transit, and that was dug out of a flower bed in the garden. Which I don’t think is a sustainable source of suitable vehicle models to be honest, though I have given it a few extra looks just in case.
Spurious,
<p data-wr_replaced=”true”>Great game, great minis, and great write-up. I agree with your observation about vehicles not being overly powerful, and I’d extend that to shooting in general (at least that was my experience). For me the key was keeping a unit close to the action that was shielded/leader was keeping motivated, so that I could get them into close combat when the time was right to put a pinned/suppressed enemy unit out of the fight. Then again, shoving my little lead troops into close combat is kind of my calling card
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<p data-wr_replaced=”true”>“…the Marines took further casualties from pretty much everything that could shoot, but the Russians failed to force them back.” That’s what I’m talking about</p>
<p data-wr_replaced=”true”>V/R, Jack</p>
yeah, where players get caught up is a squad gets hung out on its own, and it either gets pinned down and stuck with no one to help out, or they manage to pin down an enemy but then can’t exploit the attack.Which is probably pretty “realistic” (don’t hurt me!)
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