Black Ops: Trouble With the Guards

One thing about "Black Ops" that still gives me pause is the concept of 'raising the alarm'.  In one sense the game has dual-states; either the defenders are unaware of intruders or they are not.  Unless individuals become aware, and then the question arises of what it takes to raise the alert for everyone.  My understanding is that the first guy to be alerted can wake the leader, who then moves about unaware of threats unless he passes an observation check.

That leaves a lot of activations in play where the attackers can set up a nice little ambush.  Three-quarters of the defenders are stuck in their house or off-board.  It tilts things really heavily in favor of the the attackers, and it is only when you have an objective buried deep inside a building or the attackers have the poor luck to find their objective on the last marker on the board that things balance out.

Which they might in the long run, but on the short run it can make for some seriously short games.

But then, I guess that requires a lot of luck on the part of the attackers, and is perfectly in keeping with the source material.

The Littlest Big Igloo

Back in the day, at the height of the Cold War, cloak and dagger battles were deadly earnest affairs, with only the rare example of a Get Smart to lighten the mood.  Today is no different, with the added frisson of a clandestine asymmetric war waged by entrenched forces against a beleaguered and largely leaderless resistance.  Into such weighty matters and ray of humor must shine, and here we have my tongue-in-cheek campaign wherein the forces of CONTROL and KAOS are played by Hapless Control Freaks and a Well Meaning but Poorly Led Herd of Cats.  You can decide which is which for yourself.

Here, we have the Black Hats infiltrating a small, rural airport on the hunt for Very Important Financial records that take the form of rare Pokemon cards.  Black Ops involves more status tokens on the board than I really like, but they speed play and I'm less inclined to obsess over "visual appeal is everything" than in my younger years.

The leader of the Black Hats, Very Special Agent Ray Getard, takes aim at an airport guard from the corner of a field office.  The resin terrain came from GameCraft Miniatures and they offer a set of three different models for $16.00.  Not a bad price for the kind of terrain you can drop into a variety of settings.  They work for everything from 1950s Africa through modern, post-apocalypse, and well into the future.

And here's a group shot of our plucky resistance.  The guy in the cowboy hat is charismatic leader Ron Wildcard, and for the first time in a short stealth-campaign, he has managed to get his hands on not just an RPG, but a guy who knows how to use it without blowing off his own head.

The campaign has really helped maintain my interest in this ruleset, which I've discussed at length elsewhere.  Just good stuff, man.
 

Modern Warfare: Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Guys

Welcome to plus-ultra mega-elite modern day wargaming where we feature stories ripped from the headlines.  Which naturally means stories that are as fake as the Piltdown Man.

To do that we'll need some modern terrain (working on it), some rules (Osprey's Black Ops), and a matched pair of forces.

In one corner, weighing in at several trillion dollars and dressed all in black, we have the SWAT forces dedicated to protecting the Modernist World Order:

In the other corner, weighing in at a couple hundred bucks and a few thousand rounds of ammo, we have this ragtag band of *ahem* Freedom Fighters.

 

Looks like a gross mis-match.  Let's go down to the sidelines and see what our roving analysts have to say about the coming game.  Take it away, Minh and Walid!

Modern Conflicts Call for Modern Solutions

Starting to amass a little ultra-modern warfare collection for use with Black Ops.  To date, I've only ever played that game using sci-fi figures, but for the first time in a long time, I'm starting to get a handle on how modern warfare can be wargamed.  More on that later.  For now, how about some terrain eye-candy?

All of these office trailers come from Game Craft Minis.  Resin pieces with only a trace of bubbling, and all of it down on the underbelly.  I added a couple of safety posters and a bulletin board using cereal packet to spruce them up a bit.  For sixteen American dollars you get three different 'sculpts' in each pack, a fine addition to any work site.  These will do double duty as makeshift housing for separatist compounds, but for painting, the construction look will do.  

To give them a bit more character, I put two of them up on concrete blocks cut from matte-board.  Thicker than cereal box cardboard, the matte-board paints up just fine as flat concrete slabs, the better to keep the trailer off the ground.  Just a little touch to make these pieces all mine.