FUBAR Battle Report: Action on Garda Vilis

This is the set-up for playing out our FUBAR game set in the Traveller Universe 'Action on Garda-Vilis', based on the scenario set out in my last post. Figures are largely EM4 and Denizen.Vehicles came out of a couple of toy sets in the local Pound Shop.

We had previously tested FUBAR with the Star Wars Scenario set on starship, which gave us a good chance to test out the man-to-man combat rules, but I came up with this scenario to set how the vehicle combat and cover rules worked. The top picture shows the table layout from the Imperial side of the board. Most of the table was set up as jungle, with a marshy area on the right, and the little one horse town of Iluurum defended by the Imperial Troops and the Garda Vilis Police Detatchment. The Sword World Armoured Infantry entered in APCs from the other side. Various forces were deployed in the jungle - initially all units were hidden (the scraps of paper, with a number being decoy markers).

By this stage in the game, the Sword Worlders Pathfinder unit on the left opened fire on the Police Unit at the road block, followed by the Zhodani Commandos who fired from the jungle in front. The Imperials responded by withdrawing the police unit from the roadblock and opening fire on the Zho Commandos with Imperial Infantry in the blockhouse inflicting a number of casualties. The Imperial Commandos turned out to be deployed in the same piece of jungle as the Sword World Pathfinders and after a round of shooting decided to charge in and finish them with close assault. Steve decided that it wasn't such a good idea to leave his Zho Commandos so heavily exposed and pulled them back into the jungle and I sent a squad of Imperial Marines around to the right fire on them.This is the point caught on camera.

 This is a shot of the same scene from a different angle.

 And another from Steve (the Sword World) side of the table.

 Having finished off the Pathfinders, my Imperial Commando's forward observer spotted and called in a drone missile on one of the Sword World APCs. The vehicle was destroyed but most of the passengers bailed out, taking two casualties as suppressions.

Steve's other APC exchanged some long range auto cannon fire with my marines in the block house who responded with some RAM HEAP grenades which took out one cannon. Steve de-bussed his Sword World infantry into some jungle before something worse happened to their APC.

Steve finally grasped the concept of 'vertical envelopment' - he admits he finds all these modern warfare concepts very confusing and prefers the clean lines and tactics of phalanxes and tercios!- and teleported his Zhodani Commandos behind one of my squads of Imperial troopers and pretty much wiped them out with close range laser rifle fire.

...and there unfortunately the battle ended...out of time...given our 10.30pm 'out of the building' deadline in our new club. Indecisive, except for the fact that it was the Sword World task to break through the Imperial roadblock, so I guess an Imperial victory of sorts. Could certainly have done with a few more turns to finish off the game...which would have come down to whether the Zhodani commandos could have done any more damage, as the Imperial forces out-matched the Sword World Infantry that they were facing, now their transport had been knocked out/disarmed.

In their second outing the FUBAR rules were proving versatile and extremely playable. Turns could take a little while to play out but overall definitely worth continuing to test out.