Winning games the Insurgent way

When we wrote SKIRMISH SANGIN we looked in detail at the Taliban (Insurgents) and the tactics used by them. All insurgents around the world soon realise they cannot win a battle toe-to-toe with military forces. Modern military forces have air power, usually superior quality and quantity of weapons and greater discipline than insurgent forces. On paper the insurgent should never win.

So what do Insurgents need to do to win Skirmish Sangin games?

Well to answer that you need to look at the one major weakness of the modern military forces, this is their inability to take casualties.

Each casualty is a potential victory for the Taliban and we recommend you use the optional rules, that when ISAF take casualties the ISAF mission changes to Medevac’ing the wounded.

If you are using the point system and we recommend try using it and not using it and seeing what difference you see in the game. I mainly game without it.

As Taliban you will be aware that you will have no Elites probably few if any Veterans and while you will have Average experienced troops, the majority of your units will be Novices. They have low morale and low weapons skill. So how can they dominate?

Here are a few ideas:

1. When you first roll the BODY attribute your unit will have a range of values form 11 to 20, start by partnering individuals that have the same or similar BODY attributes. Keep these teams together as long as you can.
2. The strongest tactic for a weaker force is to group your fire on individuals. While you hit less often, even missing in SKIRMISH SANGIN causes a morale check, the more fire the enemy takes, the more morale markers you can stack and each one, after the first, is -10% to their morale roll.
3. Keep a number of team members together. Novice characters only have a 35% morale test but for each friendly within 6” they gain + 10% to a max of 30%. A group of three Novice Taliban give +20% on their morale rolls. This makes the Novices morale 55% the same as an Average Taliban.
4. Makes sure you spend your last AP each round kneeling down. It’s so much more difficult to hit a kneeling character.
5. Make the best use of the cover you have, NEVER ever be in the open, do not risk that run you hope to pull off, having few characters on the table means your opponent will see everything you do.
6. Read the snap fire rules carefully, snap fire is your friend.
7. Take as many RPG's as you can afford, RPG's cause lots of damage and morale rolls (-30%) even when they miss and you will frequently miss with Novice characters but if you can put multiple rounds against the enemy your chances of wounded them and causing morale rolls grows significantly. Also remember the burst diameters are 15” so their effect area is about as large as they come.
8. IED’s – This weapon is cheap and powerful, if you are using the points system you don’t even have to tell the opposition player before the activate. But please make sure you have marked them clearly on a sketch map first.
9. In larger games buy the off table mortar team, in smaller games make sure you take at least one off the table Snipers and remember to use them. You will be surprised how many people buy them and then forget to use them.

So there are just a few ideas of what you can do to better use you Taliban force. If you have any other ideas why not drop us a line.