Hearts and Minds - AAR

Hearts and Minds Overview:

As part of the ISAF programme to deny villages and towns to the Taliban, American forces run regular medical clinics for people in the outer reaches of Afghanistan countryside as part of the ongoing “hearts and minds” policy.

A few days before each clinic takes place, the word is spread in the local area and people sometimes walk for many miles to get the free medical care for themselves, their families. This is inherently dangerous as the Taliban have prior information as to where the clinic will be and want to prevent the Americans from gaining a foothold in the community. Therefore the American forces need to ensure that security is tight, both for their own safety and that of the civilians in the villages.

 The clinic planned for the village of Sabzak-Musal is no different. Large numbers of civilians are crowding the area, awaiting medical attention which will make security more difficult and unknown to the American forces, the Taliban have arrived before them, laying an IED on the road into the village and posting fighters in ambush, awaiting the American forces arrival.

The terrain:

The game begins...

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The market is in full swing with the local expecting the medical convoy to arrive soon. These civilian figures are from Eureka miniatures and are really nice.

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The ISAF convoy enters the table. (Vehicles by Empress and Tamiya, figures from Eureka)

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The first HUMVEE triggers the IED . It starts with a low roll to trigger the IED(35% chance) and then a high roll (9) on the damage table, adding up to scratch one HUMVEE and all its crew. The ISAF forces are now down half its tactical strength in the opening rounds of the game

Below:

A brave navy corpsman runs forward to see if there are any survivors

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The second HUMVEE drives of the round as its crew work to secure the area.

Villagers run screaming in all directions

 The ISAF troops (USMC) now begin to take fire from the hidden Taliban.

 Theres a whoosh as an RPG hits at the rear of the HUMVEE wagon killing another soldier and knocking others to the floor.

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Finally the Navy Corpsman see's his target and a few rounds later the first casualties to the Taliban.

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Additional fire is taken by ISAF, morale markers litter the battlefield.

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The .50 cal opens up on the RPG gunner, scratch one RPG gunner.

 The M998 HUMVEE reverses back at top speed.

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ISAF begin to deploy to take the offensive to the Taliban in a hope of allowing the Corpsman to check for wounded.

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Scratch another Taliban

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Help arrives at the HUMVEE at last. unfortunately there where no survivors.

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ISAF come under sniper fire.

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The Taliban Dicker is calling in an off table sniper

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Casualties begin to mount

The M998 races forward to pick up the wounded.

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The .50 cal comes up to cover the retreat. Killing more Taliban.

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What's left of the convoy retreats off the board

So ISAF retreat with their casualties to await support, to allow them to recover the HUMVEE. 

A great second scenario would be the recovery of the HUMVEE.

While this scenario is a hard game for ISAF it does show the strength of a good ambush and more importantly as Chris adopted SOP (standard operating procedure) once the ambush was triggered he managed to check for survivors and give the Taliban a bloody nose while MEDEVAC-ing his wounded off the table.  

This was a great game and a good fight. In this version most things went Terry Taliban way, but there are no guarantees with this scenario.

Also this AAR only shows one side of the game. If the HUMVEE get in the village there is all sorts of excitement, but we'll let you find that out for yourselves...

Fancy doing this game in 15mm

All the figures for this scenario are being released by Flytrap Miniatures, everything you need to play the scenario in one pack are available soon, we'll let you know once there ready. Click on the images below to look at a bigger image.