Call to Arms preperation- Pooch's Taliban Army List

Time has almost run out on the Insurgent painting competition, last chance to get your entries in!

Yesterday I posted up my plans for my Australian force for the first Skirmish Sangin Tournament at Call to Arms in just two weeks time.

For the tournament, you have to provide both an ISAF and a Taliban force, to game over the weekend. With my ISAF sorted, I need to sort out my Taliban list.

I find making a Taliban list a lot harder than making an ISAF force- basically because an ISAF force writes itself! With strict fire team organisations, high points costs and limited options, the 1000 point lists all have a similar base.

Not so for Taliban. The only impositions Colin put on me were:

- 1000 points
- No off table assets

All in all, pretty darn flexible!

Colin also sent out the forthcoming Taliban ORBAT to the competitors (released very soon in Despatches II), but I have decided to keep my force simple and from the main rule book. Don't worry, I am sure during the reports of the tournament some snippets of what is in the forthcoming ORBAT will be revealed!

I decided to give myself one more rule- that I am not going to include any IEDs or Booby Traps. Mainly because last time I had a game with Colin, he told me a Taliban force needed them to win. Wanting to prove Colin wrong and because I am an argumentative sod, they are out.

After all of my self imposed restrictions, what does that leave me with? Well, lots actually. When making a Taliban force, I like a mix of qualities, and a mix of cool upgraded guys, as well as having some novices with AKs (who can be scarily effective, as Craig H found out!).

But the first step I need an inspirational leader for the force.

I have opted for a Veteran, with an AK and the Warrior Imam upgrade package.

The other Taliban upgrade package I will use in the force is the Sword of Allah, giving a massive bonus to rifle skill to one of my fighters. I will put this on a veteran armed with a Sniper Rifle. Hopefully I will roll a high BODY rating, giving him a very high Rifle skill, combined with a 4d10 damage weapon will help me punch through the ISAF Body Armour!

Next, I will add some heavy weapons in the form of two Average Taliban with RPG's. No Taliban force would ever leave home without an RPG or two, they are just so darn effective! With 6d10 damage if it hits, 1 d10 damage if it hits near you, the RPG is one of the great levellers that the Taliban have against the ISAF. After adding another Average Taliban, this time with a PKM, it will give me another guy firing with a 4d10 damage weapon.

Not wanting to have lots and lots of heavy weapons, it was time to bulk out the force with some normal Taliban with the good ol' AK. 1 Veteran, 2 Average and 5 Novices will fit the bill nicely!. While you might look at the humble AK you may think that it will only have a limited effect (2d10 damage against 1d10+4 body armour) especially in the hands of a novice with a rifle skill ranging between 32% and 50%. But, this is a dice game, and having a lot of AKs will have a much greater effect. They might not all the time, but sometimes, they will! (That's right. 50% of the time, they work everytime....)

The last thing I am going to add to the list is a technical. The technical should give my Taliban a mobile firebase, capable of zooming around and causing mayhem with the heavy machine gun mounted on the back. Either that, or it will get slotted by a Javelin or AT-4 before it gets an opportunity to do anything. Either way, it is going to be entertaining! The technical is also a good opportunity for me to finish a piece of modelling I started a while ago, converting up one of the Airfix Landrovers into a Taliban technical. I am going to put a .50 cal HMG on the back, mainly because that is the weapon I have spare!

Now, I eluded to yesterday how much painting I had left to do on my Australians. Now, if I was intelligent, I would use my already painted Empress Miniatures Taliban. But given I am clearly not intelligent person, I have decided that this is a good opportunity to get my Eureka Miniatures Taliban painted.

So, this is where they are at:

Yep, definitely ready to go

Plus I haven't built the technical fully yet.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have an update with some painting. Right, enough blogging, now I really have to paint!

Pooch

Call to Arms preperation- Pooch's ISAF Army List

DON'T FORGET TO SEND US PICTURES OF YOUR INSURGENTS FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A SET OF OUR BRAND NEW TALIBAN MINIATURES! ENTRIES CLOSE VERY SOON.......

The first Skirmish Sangin tournament is only a few weeks away at Call to Arms in Wellington, New Zealand. I managed to win the rock/paper/scissors competition between the three writers, and so get the opportunity to play, while the other two are being the generals for the ISAF and Taliban sides and have to organise the whole thing, while I just get to have fun playing games (suckers).

In keeping with my traditional style with tournaments, I have only organised myself two weeks from the start. Having now sent my entry, the first port of call is making a list.

Deciding on which ISAF force to take was difficult, too many cool ideas, too many cool lists, Royal Marine Commandos, Afghan National Police, SAS, Kiwis, DEVGRU, Parajumpers..... But in the end, I have opted to bring my Australians. It will be a good wee kick to get them done, the Empress models have been sitting half done on my table for a while, so getting them finished will be a double bonus.

An Australian armed with an HK417 with some locals in the Urzgan province

This is what I plan to bring for my 1000 point list....

Veteran- F88,1 Grenade
Average- F88 with UGL, 1 Grenade
Average- Minimi, 1 Grenade
Veteran- HK417, 1 Grenade

Veteran- F88, 1 Grenade
Average- F88, 1 Grenade
Average- Minimi, 1 Grenade
Veteran- HK417, 1 Grenade

Veteran 2-man Javelin Team

So two standard fire teams, and support from a Javelin team. With a mix of Veteran and Average soldiers this would represent an Auzzie force towards the end of their deployment, supported by the Javelin to do some serious compound clearing! To make it easy on myself to remember, I gave everyone a grenade, otherwise I would very quickly get confused as to who had thrown what.

The HK417 is a Designated Marksman Rifle, so I will use the stats for the Light Support Weapon (LSW) found in Despatches I, doing 3d10 damage at a range of 600m (300").

And with that, I have a list.

But how ready are they to go? Er... Let's just say they aren't painted.

The two fireteams have got most of their camo done, the Javelin team is undercoated. All of them need a fair bit more work done. So I had better get cracking! Tomorrow, I will show my plans for a Taliban list, and hopefully will have done some painting on these Australians....

Pooch

Skirmish Sangin Competition – Call to Arms 16/17 August 2014

Call to Arms, Wellington New Zealand -  16/17 August 2014

Firstly our apologies to all those who read this living in places other than New Zealand, we realise its frustrating to read about event you can't attend (Of course if you can get here, you can play, we'll make sure of that) but as other events happen globally we will put that information out  - Colin

Introduction:

Welcome to the first Skirmish Sangin competition. Our aim is to provide a narrative competition, the over arching scenario called “Operation Civilisation” this has ISAF trying to dislodge the Taliban out of the green zone, a contested area somewhere in the Helmand province.

The success or failure of this mission will be decided by your results as commanders on the ground with your results contributing to the success or failure of the ISAF mission. Narrative elements will come into play and we will work hard to make this competition as much fun as possible. This is the player’s pack, which will contain important information; specialist rules and any other additional information we think may be useful.

Overview:

All current forces - so that's all forces listed in Skirmish Sangin and Sangin Despatches no.1 are allowed.

A short note on force building

Skirmish Sangin is a narrative based game and while the rules will allow someone to turn up with 16 Novice Taliban all armed with RPG’s (16x25 = 400pts + 16x35 = 560pts for a total of 960pts) this is not in the spirit of the game and the force will be refused.

This competition is not for players who want to win at all costs but for players who want to have fun both winning and losing, and who bring forces that accurately reflect the battlefield of modern Afghanistan.

Each player will be asked to develop two forces:

• An ISAF force
• A Taliban/Insurgent force

If you could indicate which of the two is your preference for the tournament we will try to accommodate your first choice as much as possible. We will have spare miniatures available for those who do not have an alternate force.

Each force can be up to 1000 points each and cannot include any off table or advanced rules elements; these will be allocated for at the beginning of each game, depending on the narrative.

All forces must be WYSIWYG, your miniatures need to accurately represent the primary weapon that the figure is using and must be painted.

ISAF players must adhere to ISAF structures for their Fire-team and the Taliban are limited to 3 RPGs per force. Please note that all character BODY rating will be rolled before the start of the competition on Saturday morning.

All forces must be submitted at least a week prior to the event for approval.

If you also have suitable Afghanistan terrain that we could use for the weekend, please let us know.

Registration and Cost

See Wellington Warlords website:

http://www.warlords.org.nz

How will the competition run?

The competition is limited to 10 players and each player will play 5 games over the weekend with either their Taliban or ISAF force.

The results of your games will decide the success of Operation Civilisation. Craig and I will be updating you before each game and throughout the day on the availability of off table assets.

As each game will be scenario based, in some instances the different tables will interact with each other e.g. a mortar fired on one table may well hit on another table. Requests for a MEDEVAC chopper may be delayed if the chopper is already rescuing someone on another table. The idea is that each game forms part of the battlefront and have the issues for each commander dictated by the overarching battle.

Scoring

Games are scored by the victory points earned per game, with all victory points going towards the ISAF and Taliban totals. At the end of the final game the side with the most total victory points will decide the success of Operation “Civilization”.

Players will also have an opponent score card and these will confidential and handed to the referees.

Score	Description
0	Your opponent more than occasionally displayed behaviour you would classify as borderline cheating and was not what you expected to face when playing a narrative game.  The opponent played against the narrative, e.g. moving figures towards unseen opponents, were argumentative or unpleasant to play against
1	Your opponent's behaviour clearly detracted from your ability to enjoy the game. They refused to resolve rules disputes amicably or displayed an unsavoury attitude throughout the game - whether too much gloating when winning or too much bitterness when things didn't go their way. PLEASE NOTE calling over an Umpire for a rules dispute is regarded as an amicable outcome and should not be punished.
5	Your opponent gave you a decent amicable game or better Your opponent was essentially in line with, or exceeded your expectations of another player's behaviour. Rules queries were decided amicably. Nothing they did detracted from your ability to enjoy the game, other than maybe having beat you but you can hardly hold that against them...

We expect all of the games to be scored at a 5, people should come to the games wanting to enjoy the game with their opponent and roll some dice. At the end of the day, this is toy soldiers; we are here to have fun!

There will be a number of prizes, which will be based around the narrative aspects of the campaign, rewarding those who are really getting in to the narrative of the games.

What you need to bring

Any gaming material that you require to play, including:

• Your army!
• At least two copies of your Army Roster
• Pen and paper
• Main Rulebook and Sangin Despatches No.1 if relevant
• Tape measure
• Some d10 and d6

·      We also recommend you have a set of tokens, and a copy of the grenade template

Time table

Saturday 16^th August

9.00am – Briefing

9:30am – 11.30am     Round 1

1.00pm – 3pm            Round 2

3.30pm – 5.30pm       Round 3

Sunday 17^th August

10.00am – 12.00am   Round 4

1.00pm – 3pm            Round 5

3.30pm                       Prize giving