Scud hunt ... A Merc AAR

[kcdusk]

Scuds had been firing out of Iraq for just over 6 days now. It wasn’t clear how much longer the United Nations would allow it to happen, but what was becoming more clear was that the USA couldn’t afford to wait much longer. Without UN backing, any action was going to be difficult, or as our Captain put it best, any action was going to be “unpopular”. Since when has any war been “popular”?

Word came through via unofficial channels that the Iraqis were deploying a Scud launcher closer to the border than at any other time in order to fire deeper into the occupied zone. Perhaps they were getting comfortable that no action would be taken? In any case, a group of civvies flew in and two days later their luggage caught up with them, a Commando 300 that had the 50 cal removed and replaced by a 25mm auto gun. It didn’t strike anyone as military issue. So no one was surprised when our visitors and their luggage rolled out at 4am the next morning …

2801


You are a party of 3 people equipped with a Commando 300 APC. You have been flown in close to the Iraqi border and tasked with tracking down a mobile scud launcher no more than half a day away as of the last satellite photo. You are to enter Iraq at the official border crossing station, allowing you to get your bearings from that location and begin hunting down the mobile scud unit. In the past the Scuds have been stationed away from the border, making eliminating them almost impossible even if the UN voted in the affirmative. This scud though, is less than a days drive away and a message needs to be sent. Local US military has its hands tied, so you have been brought in. Read into that what you like, but understand there will be no help should you need it. Good luck, your on your own.

2802


1.0 Border crossing
Thundering along the blacktop at 80 clicks, the border couldn’t be far away. Due to the gentle undulating nature of the sandy landscape, the players didn't pick up the guard house, boom game and APC until later than they had hoped. Shit! It was now likely they had been seen before they had had a chance to scope the guard post out.

The only intel at hand is that there could be a TAB72 armoured personel carrier on station, a guard house that looked like it could handle up to about 8 people and a boom gate that would make a civilian car stop and wait but that’s about the extent of its usefulness. The playing party now had to wait and see what was ahead of them without the chance of dropping off a “runner” who could get glass on the location and determine what lay ahead.

500m ahead the guardhouse loomed into view. The Commando vehicle kept its speed constant to try and lower expectations of trouble of anyone watching their approach, and to give the 25mm gunner a better hit chance. The fact they were a 6 wheeled fighting vehicle approaching a border guard at speed was lost on the players!

At a range of 250m the players could see there was a TAB72, however the exposed weapon mount seemed to be unattended. 2 guards were standing in front of the boom gate and were the only opposition they could see. The players took this bit of luck in their stride and opened fire with the 25mm gun, hoping to rush through and past the border before any other opposition could arrive on scene.

The 25mm opened up from the moving vehicle, range was “close” and while only a few rounds found home, they were more than enough to pulverise the two guards (Ref note: I forgot to add the +2 but it wasn’t needed).

At this point I rolled on my “Border random encounter generator table” and the players had some luck, the TAB72 was unattended although they still did not know that for sure, and there was a machine gun nest setup 80m perpendicular to the road that opened fire on their flank. However, the PK machine gun was firing at long range and the first salvo missed.

In the second action round the Commando had closed to 150m from the border post. The machine gun nest was spotted by the players and another 2 guards came out of the guard house directly ahead. The 25mm gunner had a decision to make and decided to keep his fire on the border post rather than waste a round turning his fire towards the MG nest which couldn’t penetrate the Commando anyway.

The 2 new border guards took incoming 25mm fire and were put down (Refs note: one of the to hit rolls was a “20” which was a miss and caused a chance of a jam on the 25mm but the jam roll succeeded (ie no jam)).

The Iraq machine gun nest fired and hit the Commando, but failed to cause any damage.

In the third action round the Commando came to a stop 50m from the border post. The 25mm gunner raked the machine gun nest at close range, scoring numerous hits putting it out of action. The rest of the border post remained silent.

The first part of the mission was over. Our players had secured the border post and could use it to get their bearings on the last known location of the scud. (Refs note: I know the players could get a bearing on the scud from almost any known location and could have crossed the border at any deserted point. But to encourage an encounter I told the players their “navigation” roll would be a level easier if taken from the border post).


2.0 Navigation check
Having secured the border post, the players had 2 characters check navigation skill to determine which direction to head off in. At the end of the check, the characters had different directions to head in, only slightly, but enough to count over longer distances (Refs note: 2 characters took navigation checks. If both succeeded then they would both agree on which direction to travel in. If the players had different directions, they knew that one or the other PC had failed the roll which was the case here. Why have 2 PCs take navigation checks, doesn’t it increase the chance of failing a test? They did it because if a single player took the check and failed, they had no way of knowing they were heading in the wrong direction. So by having 2 players take a navigation check they increased their chance of succeeding because they could confirm independently which direction to head in).

A short time later, both player characters agreed on which direction they should head in. A small amount of time had been lost getting the correct bearing. But at least they were now on the right track (Refs note: for this scenario I am trying to do 3 things well. One, acknowledge “combat is fun” and try and game through the down time quickly. Two, use as many non-combat skills as possible to make it a well rounded game and encourage “jack of all trade” characters and not just weapon specialists. And finally, the mission requires the players to track down a scud launcher in the desert. But they also have to do it “in a reasonable time”. So I am trying to bring home to the players there is a time pressure to complete the mission as well. Informally I have hinted that if they do not find the scud within a certain time frame, it could launch before they find it. The players need to be suitably hasty while remaining careful behind enemy lines).


3.0 Possible Random Encounter
This is the Twilight 2000 version of the “wandering monster” roll. I used a purely personal encounter table to determine what the encounter would be for a long range recon patrol gunning through the desert. To be clear, I deemed there was an encounter. However, it was left to chance that one or both parties might not see the other party and no encounter could be the result.

The die roll indicated a T-62 main battle tank and the player characters spotted it. The MBT did not react to the players presence, so it was (correctly) assumed the MBT had not seen them.

There was a very short discussion about taking the T-62 on, however it was a very short discussion. The target wasn’t mission critical and was also likely to be more than the players could chew. In the players discussion, the time factor wasn’t brought up, so unknowingly they saved some time too which might be important towards the end of the scenario.


4.0 Tracking Check
Our player characters have been travelling along and apart from the T-62 rolling in the distance, no other encounters were had. As the Ref, I made a secret die roll on the players behalf. The lead character was travelling “crew exposed” in the Commando and I chose his character to be the one most likely to spot tracks in the sand where the Scud had travelled recently. The roll failed. The players were not aware of what the roll was for and their travel continued, but the clock was ticking down on them!

I made another secret die roll that resulted in the Scud tracks being seen! Having found the Scud tracks the players felt they were close.

[end of session]

(comments and constructive criticism welcome)

[NanbanJim]

Nicely done! I like seeing the GM notes too.

[kcdusk]

After discovering tracks that likely belonged to the Scud launcher, the players headed off in search of the mobile unit.

Despite being cautious in their pursuit, the Commando vehicle and its crew was completely unaware some hours later when they passed within 600m of the Scud but failed to see it (Refs note: the players rolled a “20” and failed to spot the Scud).

The Scuds protective guard DID see the Commando vehicle pass close by and were stopped from firing on the vehicle by their Veteran leader. The Commando was never driving directly towards the Scud launcher and eventually passed out of sight completely. By not firing on the enemy Commando vehicle, the Scud was able to continue unmolested towards its launch site.

Having lost the scent of the Scud, the players were required to make a difficult “tracking” skill check, which they passed. Further, they made a successful “observation” roll and located the Scud 1,000m in the distance.

From that distance the players were able to confirm it was a Scud launcher with a protective guard assigned to it. And the scud itself was aimed upwards, in a launch position, however the players were not able to determine how far away from being ready to launch the crew were (Refs note: the players made a successful observation roll but the quality of the roll was not good enough to give them all the information that might have been available to them. Due to the amount of lost time because of failed tracking or observation rolls, the Scud had a higher chance of being ready to fire but a middling roll meant the Scud was at the right location to fire from and was physically set up but there were still electrical and procedural processes to be run through before launch would be possible. The players did not know this.).

The players now had to decide how to approach the scud and render it out of action.

Unknown to the players they had been seen as well. The Scuds protective guard was about to board their vehicle and close down on the players position to allow the scud to fire when ready. The NPCs were in 2 open-backed 4WDs with HMG mounts in the back (technicals). They started to drive towards the PCs position before being spotted at a range of 800m by the players.

Having been sprung behind enemy lines, the players decided to “charge” the on-coming technicals and close as quickly as possible to the Scuds position and hopefully kill/capture the Scuds technical support team and prevent the unit from firing.

As the Commando began to move forward, one of the players realised they would be firing “on the move” and suffer to hit penalties. Also, with only HMG on the approaching technical the Commando was almost bullet proof. So the players decided to come to a halt when the range had closed to 400m.

Due to driving off-road, under combat conditions and needing to come to some sort of stop that put the vehicle in the best position to tackle the approaching vehicles, I made the decision that the driver of the Commando would have to make a wheeled vehicle check to accomplish all of this successfully.

The driver had a skill of “15”. I did not apply any difficulty modifiers to the skill check, believing the task to be a normal action (drive and come to a stop at a suitable position) under somewhat stressful but not unusually difficult circumstances (really the only reason the check was being made was because the task had to be completed “in combat conditions” and potentially “under fire”, which I considered reasonably “normal” conditions considering the players occupations). The player rolled a “7” and passed the skill check easily. (Refs note: I decided prior to the roll that a result of 16, 17 or 18 would have seen the characters unable to fire on the approaching technical due to poor placement of their position when they came to a halt (ie when they stopped a sandhill or wadi would have been in the way, allowing the technical to close closer before coming into the Commandoes field of view. On a roll of 19 I would have ruled hitting a ditch or sand berm at speed and there being a 50% chance of a roll over and on a roll of a 20 there would have been some incident that resulted in a random “major damage” roll on the vehicle damage table).

The 25mm opens fire at the lead technical. 3 hits each resulting in 2 minor damage outcomes being to the Hull (radio and passenger hit), Turrent (windscreen and passenger hit) and Hull again (radio and 2 passengers hit) – I ruled that the combination of these results would have put the technical out of action and everyone on board dead.

(Refs note: at this point I realised having the 25mm bushmaster cutting down the opposition and essentially being “bullet proof” inside their APC, the characters were always going to be hard to kill. I hoped the majority of this scenario would come down to non-combat activities and the time factor would help make it exciting, and just the finding the scud and closing it down has the players excited. But its something I will need to keep in mind with their next scenario, making sure theres more challenge about making potentially life and death decisions).

The 25mm scores two hits in the next action round against the second vehicle with the outcomes being suspension hit (immobilisation, driver skill check to control the gun truck fails therefore 50% chance to roll vehicle but the driver prevents it- the 4WD is simply immobile) and turrent hit (gun operator hit (dead) and HMG itself hit (broken)).

Not wasting any time, the players take the opportunity to drive around the immobile 4WD and approach the Scud. There is still a small team of armed guards taking cover and some technical personnel making final preparations for firing (Refs note: at this point I looked at how many delays the players had incurred, and took into account how quickly some other tasks were completed and said they had done pretty well so there was only a 15% chance of the scud launching. The roll was a 2! Gut Punch! I felt so bad for them, I really felt they had done almost everything right and there was only a small chance the scud would be in a position to fire, but rolling a 2 meant the scud was launched with the players within shouting distance of it and closing in fast!)

The players took the scud launch pretty well, before the roll they understood the logic behind there being a 15% chance and didn’t give allot of thought to the die roll being successful. Players were talking about the best and fastest way to prevent the launch and then there was just silence as everyone realised the die roll meant they were too late.

With the missile disappearing into the distance the players destroyed the scud launcher and cleaned up the armed guards, taking 2 technicians as prisoners.

At this point I suggested gaming out the players escape back over the border, with the understanding that their attack at the border crossing when they entered has potentially tipped off a search, followed up by the scud launcher now not responding to any further radio calls. The players were still a bit shocked at the scud launch die roll and no decision has been made yet re what to do next (escape back over to the friendly side of the border with the 2 prisoners or jump straight into a new scenario).

Part of me was glad the characters were all still alive, yet the mission was a “failure”. The final outcome felt realistic. I was worried for a while that if the characters all survived and the scud launcher was destroyed then it might have appeared too easy. The players could see the importance of getting some of the earlier tasks done quicker would have given them a greater chance for success later in the game. And that even as the “heros” in the game, it didn’t always guarantee success or a happy ending.

[M-Type]

I really liked this. I've been thinking about picking up the PDF of Merc or maybe tracking down a physical copy, and this might have convinced me ;)

I feel that the ending was certainly realistic, and as long as they knew the score (or the odds of firing in this case) you are in the clear. Sometimes luck is not on your side. So it goes.

[NanbanJim]

Re-read this thread. Man, that's dramatic, and with a tragic ending too. Isn't that so fitting for a mercenary tale? Even victory, the bitter taste of defeat.

[max_vale]

Thanks for this and if you have any more AAR's; keep 'em coming! :)