Me and my son, Alex, have done our first refight of the raid on Top Malo House in 20mm scale using "TAC-Skirmish: Arc of Fire". The engagement will be well known to students of the Falklands War, but for the uninitiated it was a raid by 19 members of the Royal Marines Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre on Top Malo House which contained 17 members of Argentine Commando 602.
I've played AoF on and off since it came out in 2002 and I've always quite liked it, the Tactical Ability levels and the Tactical modes particularly, I think it's still available, link below
http://www.skirmishcampaigns.com/aof/index.htm
I'll not go into the details of the rules, they do play nice, skirmish level, card initiative, and the majority of stats are covered for troops and vehicles from 1900-2000. Included are scenarios from the Boxer Rebellion, WW1, WW2, Vietnam and a particularly good one for the SADF fighting Angolans and Cubans in 1987.
Here are my orbats
The terrain as set up
Top Malo House in the centre the ground rises towards the right of the board where the UK forces will start. The engagement was small the terrain measures 50cm x 100cm.
Below, Top Malo House, target of the raid.
The view from the UK position, the attack took place just after first light and the low sun is casting its shadow!
Deployment, all of 602 are in the structure, no sentries posted! The UKSF have deployed at the right are the 2 Fire Teams of the Fire Support Group and to the left are the Assault Group consisting of Fire Team 1 Alpha and Fire Team 1 Bravo forward with the HQ element commanded by Capt Boswell at the rear.
Alex had the Brits and initiated the engagement by unleashing a barrage of fire against the house, consisting of 4 66mm LAWs, the GPMG gunner letting rip, and the remaining members of the FSG putting down rounds from their SLRs and M16s. For myself in command of 602 the results were horrendous, Capt Verseci (CO) was wounded, the Pl Sgt (2IC) was killed, 2 other soldiers wounded and 2 more broken! At the same time the Assault group elements were skirmishing forward.
When my troops were activated, 2 of my Fire Teams were out and took cover in the stream at the rear of the house, Fire Team 1 Charlie stayed put to try and hold up the British advance.
The initial Argentine burst of fire from the house was painful, killing 1 and wounding another of Fire Team 1 Alpha, the high morale and Tactical ability of the Marines coming to the fore here, however this resulted in a swift British response with the FSG again putting a fearful amount of fire into the house causing it to catch fire and eliminating the threat posed by the 602 members there.
The situation for me was now rapidly falling apart, a Fire Team in the stream completely broke and my last gallant hurrah were 2 members of Fire Team 1 Alpha spurring themselves forward in a forlorn charge against the Brits.
As luck would have it the FSG were activated as opportunity fire and the sniper ended the charge with his L42!
This was the last straw and the remnants of 602 surrendered to the Royal Marines, the Brits had performed wonderfully and with luck had ended the engagement with 1 killed and 1 wounded, both from Fire Team 1 Alpha, 602 on the other hand had a butchers bill to pay with 8 killed and 6 wounded of their 17 men present! No sentries - To fail to plan is to plan to fail.
Conclusion: I think the rules performed well and a similar result was obtained as to what actually happened, we intend to replay this engagement using other rule systems, perhaps Force on Force and Cold War 1983.
Comments always welcome and appreciated!
Dougie
Looks like a great game. Wonderful visuals and beautiful figures.
ReplyDeleteI've had Arc of Fire gathering dust on my bookshelf for years and have recently been looking for an alternative to Force on Force. I'll give AoF a dusting off I think - I have some WWIII games in mind and your visuals have inspired me.
Worth giving it a try, quite a quick and elegant system and thanks for your comments.
DeleteDougie
AoF is one of my favourite games, and not matter what other rules I play, I always seem to come back to them myself.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see someone else playing them :-)
They are good Shelldrake, I keep coming back to them.
DeleteNice work!
ReplyDeleteThanks Barks
DeleteExcellent looking game. I'd missed seeing the finish to the Top Malo house, lovely work.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mark
DeleteGreat AAR, funny seeing it laid out like that you get to realize how sparse the terrain was in the islands.
ReplyDeleteA few quick questions: What were the victory conditions for the Argentinians? It seemed like it was a fairly basic re run of the actual conditions. Would the deployment of sentries made much of a difference? Giving them the option to undertake a fighting withdrawal could add more interest too I suppose...?
I used to play a lot of Arc of Fire but have since moved over to Two Hour Wargames rules- we found that the weapon ranges of Arc were rather short due to its adopted ground scale. Given that I mainly game infantry skirmishes I moved on to different rule sets.
Cheers,
Pete.