A Simple Encounter, probably good for a few night's play.

[ChalkLine]

Combat Mission:

(Note: Only very rough descriptions are used in this scenario as it’s assumed that after over thirty years since the game was released T2K campaigns are so diverse that by now they don’t actually bear much relation to each other. Only some tanks are mentioned with any detail and this is to give you an idea of an equivalent to use, not the actual tank. While the term ‘friendly’ is used for some NPCs these could actually even be former enemies such as WTO troops in T2K’s Europe.)

An important part of this scenario is the players will be travelling over old ground. This means the GM will have to have good maps and closely detail the environment the PCs travel through for a bit. Don't forget to wreck the place, litter the world with the detritus of war and old positions. These old positions ranging from the odd fox hole to even trench-lines and fortified buildings could be important later. It will be one of the big advantages the players have over a tough opposition. Let the players linger over the place, looting and scavenging while meanwhile learning about the ground.

The PC's are on the move when they encounter a foot patrol from a nearby friendly group. This group warns them of a few dangers to look out for such as a little village nearby that is known to have a sniper nearby or a FASCAM minefield across a paddock and gives them some radio freqs that are monitored by their home base.
Try and make the warnings this friendly patrol provides useful stuff and let the troops trade for stuff like smokes, food and alcohol. Remember this is a combat patrol and they're not carrying much and only what is relevant to their mission. Especially take the time to detail the personalities of the patrol so the players form emotional links. The patrol isn't small, maybe ten soldiers, so apart from the big personalities (leader, platoon daddy, scrounger, joker and philosopher) colour the other members with things like 'this guy is really thin' and so on. Note that one of the patrol members has a light anti-armour weapon.

After this the patrol moves off. During the afternoon they hear some small arms fire from the direction the patrol went to. Now is the time to do a bit of foreshadowing. While the PCs are doing their four hour periods occasionally say stuff like 'this time you hear what sounds like an extended battle going on, but before you can do anything the shooting slows and then stops'. If the players become concerned for the patrol now they should be rewarded for it if they start to head in their direction. However don't penalise them for inaction. A good reward is that they might meet a refugee from the area that can provide info later.
Soon after this they start to hear artillery firing from where the base is supposed to be and explosions down near where the shooting is starting up again. Now run a random encounter that seems right for the moment. We're still foreshadowing at this time.

At nightfall they get a call from the local commander who is desperate. The patrol they met earlier has been bounced by an unknown group and has taken casualties. They have taken shelter in a small hamlet that is only semi-fortified and are in a bad way for ammunition, water, food and medical supplies. Reinforcements sent to help them have been pushed back and are trying to find a way to probe through to the patrol but are meeting strong resistance. However the commander now hasn't got enough troops to spare from his perimeter (this sounds exactly like a way of drawing troops away from the base) but he's not about to throw his troops to the wolves. He says that he can send five troopers with some supplies to link up with them and he wants the PCs to flank the fighting, penetrate the encirclement and relieve the troops. Once on the ground he wants the PCs to help with organising a breakout and using their mobility to extract back to the base. Once there he'll help them in anyway he can. If the players start bargaining at this crucial juncture they will probably form a poor impression in the commander's mind (although he won't show it) and reduce his gratitude later.

The situation is as follows. The friendly commander has exactly evaluated the situation. A local marauder group comprised of stragglers, deserters and criminals of all nations has decided they want to over-winter in the friendly base and its small town. To do this they've carefully scouted the area and chosen a place to ambush a patrol in an effort to draw away as many troops from the perimeter as possible. They've been careful to not show their hand, they've actually tried this before elsewhere but pulled out when the opposition realised what was happening, so they're being careful and the marauder commander is exercising very close command and control over his troops. His big problem is that he has very little unit cohesion; most of the marauders are intensely selfish and will leave their comrades in the lurch at the slightest hint of danger. This means that he can only really get them to assault positions if they are desperate or well supported as they usually only jump unprepared victims. This is what has happened with the patrol. As the group tasked for attacking the base needs the most support so the attack is successful the marauder commander has had to limit the amount of support the patrol ambush and its reserve has. This means they have not pushed the attacks they have made as much as they might have. The marauder commander is not overly concerned here as he actually doesn't want the patrol eradicated; as long as they call for help they'll sap the perimeter of troops. However he has now evaluated the friendly base won't send more reinforcements and wants the patrol and its reinforcements dealt with so he can mass an attack with all his troops. Of course the players know nothing of this and neither does the friendly commander.

An important part of the upcoming fighting is that the marauders have a very brittle morale unless backed up by support. The GM should usually have the marauders fall back when they lose 25% killed or wounded, possibly less if the PCs are aggressive and the marauders have a clear, safe way out. These marauders do not simply disappear out of the game and might rally or be rallied by the marauder commander and his sub commanders. The idea behind this is the players should have to cover ground if they continue to engage retreating marauders instead of a static short firefight that has no movement component.

The meet up is quick. Once again detail each of the five NPCs. A good way to do this is to use five old character sheets and provide them with useful kit. Four should have assault rifles and one should have a SAW. The leader is a smart but injured trooper with a bandage around his head under his helmet. This lets you have him a bit hesitant in coming up with ideas of his own and sapping the players of agency. He will however perform well using his own initiative, All these troops are volunteers as the friendly commander has no idea if the PCs are part of the problem and he is gambling here. The troops are willing and experienced but not quite as trusting as could be and won't undertake suicide operations (but don't make them arseholes). They have a battered pickup truck that looks extremely dubious in its reliability. They meet at a wrecked church nearby and say they have detected no hostiles on their way here. In fact one drove the vehicle and the other four walked in front from the base. Everywhere is now considered hostile territory. This gives you an idea of how cautious the NPCs are of the situation.

The mission itself: First off the PCs and NPCs will move towards the beleaguered patrol. On the way they will encounter a blocking force, then possible another small intercepting force. After this they will find the encirclement and finally some hostile reserves will show up. After this they can extract back along their route to the base.
Remember that the patrol hasn't moved all that far since the players met them so the PCs have covered this ground before and should be able to use their knoweldge of the ground to their advantage.

The blocking force is an ambush and not a roadblock and will take place at a choke point. A bridge is a good place but you can devise others if you like. If your players have spent any time playing they should be rightly suspicious, otherwise the NPCs will be highly suspicious of a bridge. If they moved towards the troops at the first sign of trouble the refugee mentioned earlier says they saw about ten armed men there in a truck and avoided the place. The players are going to have to push through this ambush somehow.

OPFOR: The enemy is a light ambush party without a radio. They should outnumber the PCs and NPCs but not be better armed, few if any should have body armour. None of them have anti-armour capability but they have rigged a small IED in a wrecked car at their end of the bridge. While this will severely damage a soft skin vehicle it will only blow a track off any sort of armour. They won't just blow the IED though, they want any enemy they encounter to storm the bridge so they can use the IED to disable anything heavy so they'll start shooting when the players scout the bridge to force the PCs to consolidate and assault. The very first thing they also do is fire a green flare to let the encirclement know they are in contact with enemy forces. If the players are Sneaky Petes who swim the river, knife the ambush party and continue on their merry way the flare is never launched. Any prisoners captured know that they are trying to wipe out a patrol and that the rest of the marauder band is elsewhere doing something else, but not what. They know about the long term plan of capturing the friendly base. The encirclement marauders know roughly the same thing.

When they see the flare the encirclement then relays this to the marauder commander but they then reorganise a bit to defend from the direction of the bridge as they don't have enough troops to defend in all directions while they contain the friendly patrol. If the players storm in from the direction of the bridge they will encounter this defence and these guys do have anti-armour capability. What's worse is not being idiots they have set up their RPG team to cover the likely approach at optimum range for their weapon and are set up for a flank shot. Don't forget that despite what video games tell us armoured vehicles have absolutely terrible situational awareness and need close infantry support to be their eyes and ears. As the RPG team and the small blocking force it is in are about the same size as the bridge contingent the players should have a short, nasty firefight. Make no mistake, this is a serious situation and many players might get killed if they are too gung-ho but don't forget like all these marauders their morale is very brittle. If the players flank around and miss them this group will be vectored in later as reserves to counter attack but they'll have to use their RPG frontally and use whatever terrain is available.

Now the PCs have actually got to the encircled patrol. The situation is serious. The patrol contacts them on the way in and tells the PCs that they have three killed and four wounded, two seriously. They are down to two magazines each, and have no water or food. They have encountered easily twenty plus OPFOR who they have pushed back several times. At this time a bit of sun will come out of the clouds for the PCs though as the base also contacts them and tasks two 105mm howitzers or equivalent with twenty rounds each to their support. The PCs can use their forward observer skills (probably for the first time in their character’s playing careers) and if not then one of the accompanying NPCs has the skill but is not very accurate. A player using their skill gets better results. This artillery can be used by the PCs to really turn the tide here as they are heavily outnumbered and known to be in the area. If they met the response force on the way in from the bridge the enemy knows exactly where they are.
Why is this bad? Because the marauder commander wants this wrapped up and wants the patrol and any reinforcements they have cleared up so he can get these troops ready for his base assault. To do this he has sent one of his T-55s to support them and stiffen their morale. (Yes, I said ‘one of’. They might meet the others later if the GM wants to expand the scenario).
On a real world note this is a regular tactic of dealing with troops with poor morale such as irregulars and even battered main force units. Often the tanks are not even committed but rather used as artillery, just having them lets the troops know they have a powerful back up and stiffens their resolve.
This unit is just arriving and setting up for the attack on the unexpectedly resilient patrol. The patrol however has heard the vehicle’s engine and tracks and contacts the PCs to know that some sort of armour is in the area and the time to get out is now.

The little town the patrol is in is a mixture of the old and new. It has taken heavy fire in the past and a good place for it would be on a hill so it overlooks the area around it. Try not to set it in open fields or similar as this makes a nasty killing zone the players have to get across. Woods and ruined buildings should give the PCs a covered approach, and also don’t just draw up square boxes for buildings but look at google maps or similar to get a more organic idea of how towns develop along terrain lines. If you’re setting this game in Europe and it’s in an old town then the buildings will have grown up with minimal site preparation so they will be at odd angles and relative heights. Take the time to put in earth banks, culverts, a little stream or ditch and so on. Now imagine that at some time a battle was fought here and wreck the joint. String up razor wire in odd spots, put in some shell holes (the PCs will add more soon) and a bunch of wreck and burned out armoured and unarmoured vehicles. One of my trademarks is always to have a burnt-out tank halfway through a ruined building.

The PCs have several options here and I’ll cover a few.

They can Go Tank Hunting. (‘Tank Hunting Is Easy And Fun’ ARVN Motto).
Destroying the T-55 will break the marauder encirclers’ morale and make them break off the attack. However unlike earlier they don’t fall back easily when fighting with their tanks if it is still in action. The tank is never risked, it’s instead used more like an assault gun. The infantry get into an area, gets a good idea of where strong points are and fixes the defenders in place, the tank then manoeuvres for a shot at them and reduces the target with HE rounds. At no time does the tank gallivant around unsupported. So to get a shot at the tank the players are going to have to keep moving, identify the tank’s position and then deal with the supporting infantry before destroying it. As the tank moves around with its support troops a fair bit just interrogating a prisoner is usually not useful as they rarely have up to date knowedlge of their own positions. However a bit of logic tells the PCs that the tank is here to deal with the patrol and must therefore be setting up to reduce their position. If the players have any sort of armour of their own their own engines and possibly tracks also give them away but the marauders, unlike every PC I’ve ever seen, don’t have many radios. In fact there’s only three in the local area on the OPFOR side; one with the encirclement commander, one in the tank and the blocking force off dealing with the reinforcements that are bogged down has one. This means the marauders instead rely on runners or flares.
A best case scenario is where the players deal with the tank before it and its support troops even are aware of them. Note that you know there is only one tank here but the players don’t.
A worst case scenario is where the marauders instead use the tank to reduce the players while they’re pinned down and holed up somewhere and they can’t reply with anything. This is a sucky thing to do (although it must have happened innumerable times in real life) so we’ll avoid it. Rather than use deus ex machina we can give the players a way to help themselves. If they don’t have organic anti-armour capability the patrol does. However the operator of the weapon is dead, the players must get in and then use the weapon themselves. Otherwise they can capture the blocking force’s RPG and use that.

They can use The Queen of the Battlefield, Call in Support.
Artillery is an awful thing and the ammunition they have available to them is actually a mix of HE and something called Splintex. Splintex is a beehive round of roughly 25mm blades wrapped around a bursting charge and due to their odd flight dynamics they carry their lethality for quite some distance. They are especially effective against infantry; HE blows a human to bloody rags but Splintex slices them to ribbons. There is no way the marauders will take this sort of abuse however they’ve gotten into the buildings in the ruined hamlet and have to be gotten out into the open for them to take the full effects of the artillery. In fact if they start taking artillery fire their first response is to burrow deeper into the ruins and this might have the opposite effect of what the players want. They’re also too close to the patrol for the HE to take out without causing casualties among the patrol itself. A determined assault and especially grenades will force the marauders to fall back where the artillery can stonk the crap out of them though. After an artillery strike the marauders will pull back to the vicinity their tank if the PCs haven’t zapped it and try and either rejoin the main marauder body or reassess the situation and continue their mission to elininate the patrol and any reinforcements. If the players have taken losses these attempts will probably be only half-hearted that involve a lot of shooting at too long a range before withdrawing.

The can Do It The Old Way; Infantry Assault.
Going in and dealing with the encirclers house to house will be messy, dangerous and hardcore but the PCs may feel they need to get to the patrol quickly and link up. While you and I know there are better options listed above the players don’t have all the information we have and might be worried enough that they want to get the patrol out right away and risk this.
The town the patrol is in has taken a lot of damage and is far too large for them to hold. Instead they have fallen back to two adjoining buildings and set up an all round defence. However their wounded are finding the pressure difficult and their fire is slackening at their particular posts, something the encirclers have picked up on. Knowing this the marauders tactic now is to keep up regular fire from some nearby buildings while getting an assault party ready to attack along a vector covered by one of the wounded who is only just holding onto consciousness. The tank will take up a position about two hundred metres away and fire HE right at that point, the wounded friendly won’t pick up on the tank’s movement.
Hitting this storming party and winkling out the encirclers in the surrounding buildings is getting pretty Stalingrad so the PCs might take casualties. Some things to remember;
- The interior walls can be penetrated by rounds so shooting out internal partitions will mean they don’t have to actually engage in cowboy one-on-one gunfights where the PC’s lives depend on the dice and not tactics.
- The OPFOR aren’t wearing body armour on the whole so shotguns will generally have a big effect.
- Grenades clear rooms. That’s what they’re designed for and the NPCs have brought along plenty.
- The marauders don’t like stand up fights and will leave a building after a few casualties.
- The NPCs have brought along a SAW and can suppress windows and other firepoints with gusto. In fact this is a perfect use for them.
You can have some serious combat here where PCs and marauders end up in actual hand to hand with melee weapons. Strangely enough the marauders are probably better at melee then they are with ranged weapons as they tend to fight each other often and also are brutally physical with captives so they are desensitised to hand to hand fighting and its effects.

The PCs, as PCs do, probably will do a mix of these things and their usual out-of-left-field ideas. Whatever the result at this point they will link up with the surviving members of the patrol and extract them from this bun-fight. Now the situation is up to you. The marauder commander might think he’s lost too many assets to do his assault and pull back to rethink. He might write off his encircling and blocking troops and make a push right away that the PCs and their supporting NPCs have to rush to help out with.

The results of this is that if the players pull this off with minimal NPC casualties they are literal heroes to the friendly base, especially if they took casualties themselves. If any PCs fell they are buried at the base with an honour guard and the GM is encouraged to detail this mark of respect. If any PCs are seriously wounded they are nursed back to health as best as the troops at the base can do and this should be at a level higher than the PCs can supply themselves.
The players will of course always have the maximum positive level reaction level with the base personnel and their associated civilians. They are welcome to stay for an extended period and the base will share food with them as well as try and replace as much as their expended ammunition as they can as they acquire it. The base has a machine shop and the PCs can utilise this. It also has a small battery of two howitzers and three mortars that can be tasked for fire support if the players get into trouble nearby. These are not supplied with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition but the base personnel will try and pull out all the stops for the PCs unless this abused. If the PCs capture ammunition for these weapons it can be traded for stuff on a ‘one for the base and one for the PCs as support’ per round basis. Finally the troops will definitely try and ransom them back if they ever get overrun nearby and taken prisoner (although I’m yet to see a PC let themselves get taken prisoner, usually they fight to the death).

The tale of this deed spreads to the surrounding area. Local civilians will consider the PCs to be ‘good soldiers’ if they know about them and have a reaction level one higher than normal. Oddly enough, so will the local OPFOR troops if they are ‘official’ soldiers depending on the campaign. In a standard Polish campaign Warsaw Pact troops will treat them with respect when they find out of this effort. Everyone hates marauders.

The local marauders rapidly find out somehow that this particular group of troops pulled this off and the PCs are now marked men. The marauder commander has had his standing seriously damaged among the local marauder warlords especially if he lost the T-55 as the marauders measure standing among themselves by heavy equipment the band has. One of the ways he can get some standing back is to punish the troops that gave him this black eye just as he was on the verge of pulling off a serious coup. He gives this some thought . . .

[Raellus]

Nice work, Chalk. It's an interesting, solid hook, not frequently seen (in my experience), quite plausible, and well thought-out.

Just a minor nitpick but, as far as I understand, beehive rounds are direct fire only. If you want an indirect fire round that has a similarly lethal effect on enemy infantry that are not dug, proximity-fused rounds (i.e. airburst) will usually do the trick.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

From memory, "beehive" was originally a specific reference to Splintex, based on a project name or code name or something like that.
Splintex is a little different to typical cannister rounds not just because it used flechettes rather than balls but because it used a timed fuze.
It was definitely intended as a direct fire round fired from a horizontally inclined barrel but I suspect it could be possible to use it in indirect fire at short ranges.

There's a claim floating about that the Soviets developed similar artillery rounds for indirect fire with 122mm and 152mm guns but I'm still trying to find some authoritative source for that. While a number of sources mention that for example, the 152mm D-20 has a flechette round, they don't state the specific ammunition name so I haven't been able to find if it's for direct or indirect fire but I suspect its the former.
And that's probably because any Splintex type round the Soviets (and anyone else) might have developed has pretty much been superseded by better HE-Frag or sub-munitions rounds.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

As additional information, the Soviets definitely had shrapnel rounds from as early as WW2, e.g. the VSh-534, so they definitely have some experience in that particular field of ammuntion.
Specific info for the VSh-534 can be found here (near the bottom of the page) https://ww2data.blogspot.com/2015/11...152mm-and.html
It's described as a ball shrapnel round although again, there is nothing specifically stating direct or indirect fire usage. However the projectile itself (Sh-501) is capable of using two different fuzes and maybe that facilitates use as either direct or indirect fire but I'm just guessing.

[Adm.Lee]

I like it, thanks for the outline!

I'm already thinking about where & when I can use it.