Modern Wars (Borneo Confrontation), Force on Force, 28mm

Both Dougie Trail and I have been building up modern forces based around the excellent new Force on Force rules, published by Osprey. Dougie has been concentrating on the Rhodesian Bush War (1964-79), while I’ve been working on the Borneo Confrontation (1962-66). Force on Force games are nice and quick – just what you want in a skirmish game.We opted for a typical encounter of the “confrontation), where a helicopter had dropped off a small unit of Gurkhas (a single squad of two fireteams), who took up ambush positions in the path of an Indonesian raiding party, which was returning to the Sarawak-Indonesia border after raiding a Sarawak Kampong (village). The Indonesian column consisted of two squads of IBTs (Indonesian Border Terrorists), which sort of equate to the local Viet Cong, and two squads of Indonesian regulars.The raiders were marching along a dried-up stream bed when they ran into the ambush. In the first turn the first Gurkha fire team opened up on the second squad in the column – IBTs – killing or wounding four of them. The other three Indonesian squads ran for cover, with one IBT squad attempting to keep out of line of sight of the ambushers, while offering succour to their wounded comrades.The leading squad of Indonesian regulars advanced through the secondary jungle, only to be sprayed by the second Gurkha fire team, which wiped them out. Then it was simply a matter of picking off the Indonesian survivors, as the remaining regular squad started a firefight that it lost – badly – and the remaining IBT squad broke and ran. The ambush rules worked really well, and when good troops (D10-rated Gurkhas) get a first fire through being in ambush, the results can be truly devastating!

Tags: Force on Force