A game played on Wednesday 13th February 2019. Arthur’s close protection team vs Glenn’s SAS. In, well we never really said where we were.
Spectre Operations the 28mm modern skirmish wargame by the folks at Spectre miniatures are due for a 2nd Edition. Expected in time for Adepticon in March.
With the 2nd Edition on the horizon we thought we’d go back to first principles and learn the 1st Edition rules from scratch with a series of simple scenarios. This will allow us to appreciate the changes better.
A collection of Empress and Spectre miniatures
A close protection team hustles their principals to a clandestine meeting point.
Empress miniatures SAS moving into ambush positions
We were a bit rusty with the rules, we tend to take as long as we need to satisfy ourselves we’ve gotten it right. On this occasion we struggled a bit with a few rules. I didn’t take many pictures.
The Movement, Detection and Alertness rules needed a bit of re reading to get unalert, alerted and alert states straight. They are actually simple and allow fast play without getting too bogged down in who has spotted who.
We also had a situation where the SAS won initiative and at that moment it would have been better both narratively and tactically for them to go into overwatch and force the close protection team to move first. I’d have liked to see it written that trained, professional or elite level characters that win initiative can choose to go second in the movement phase. I’d even let elite and professional that won initiative to choose to move second and still shoot first in the combat phase.
Likewise with overwatch, the errata says a character in overwatch must shoot at the first enemy to appear in LOS. On first play through I felt I’d be happier to have militia troops do this but trained and above able to hold their fire.
There were no massive issues and the rules promote narrative play and I’d happily house rule round the small things that didn’t sit well with me.
A good learning game and it cleared up a few rules to allow us to take something a little bigger on next time. Our approach is to play the games rules as written until we feel we actually know the rules well before tinkering with them, it’s only after a few plays that you understand how the game really plays so it’s worth sticking at it for a few games.
Skirmish Preston 