Force on Force: Thunder Run to Baghdad Photo Report

It's taken me a while to get this typed up and posted (damn you, freshers flu) - so I'm afraid the details are now a little hazy... 

The game was 2003, the US Army's "Thunder Run" to Baghdad. The American's (John & Kev's) main objective was to get off the board, with all vehicles intact, minimal casualties to their own forces and no civilian casualties (No points for killing 'bad guys' though!). The Iraqi's (Steve and Myself) objective was to stop them, with points scored for every vehicle damaged and American killed. 

The game played well, and it was interesting to have a more balanced 'stand-up-fight' rather than the pseudo-Colonial games we'd played up to then (Not that I dislike them, far from it, but variety is the spice of life!). The Iraqi RPGs just pinged off the Abrams, whilst generally speaking the Iraqi armour was pretty much useless. Despite all that - quantity has a quality all of it's own as they say, and we got lucky with artillery and reiforcements - the Iraqis eventually won 17 (?) points to 3 (all due to a Fog of War card, which said that footage of the American's proffesionalism and shear fire-power had become a major youtube hit!). Most of the Iraqi points were scored by disabling vehicles and killing unbuttoned tank crew. Interestingly, the table as it stood at the end of the game, with a couple of immobilised US vehicles wasn't too far off from what actually happened (an Abrams was immobilised and needed to be rescued/destroyed in a later action).

There were some great heroics, especially on the US side, with vehicles exiting the table, to deposit their troops in safety, only to return to the fray to collect some of the stranded infantry, some of which eventually had to ride out on the tops of the vehicles. That said, the Iraqi guy who started the game as a civilian and who became one of our most effective AT assets with his RPG certainly deserves some sort of mention. The American heroics were tempered by their engagement of civilian mobs (in fairness, 2 mobs had been converted to insurgent bands, and the one in question did have a guy trying to pass out AKs and incite them to violence ) and their engagement of several civilian cars (which did have the potential to become VIEDs)

Venue: Steve's
Scenery: Steve, Johnny & Kev
Vehicles: Steve (& Kev?)

Figures: Steve (dark bases) & Kev (desert bases)

Sound track: ACDC 

Substitutions?: The free standing walls towards the American starting point were counting as trenches...