Glenpool Strike: Airfield Assault

Last Sunday we played out the second skirmish in the Glenpool Strike. In the last game I got my butt handed to me by my son, and the Black Legion lost an entire squad. Between games we followed the rules for force development from the Red Poppy / White Feather rules for the Cherry Street Irregulars. They managed to get a few improvements here and there, the most important being that a second leader has emerged, meaning that they can now activate as two groups instead of one group and / or individuals. I started with a squad of entirely inexperienced men and managed to roll as poorly as I do when we are playing, so I started with a leader and one model with an additional ability.

We then went ahead and rolled on the mission generator. I rolled a one, and so did my son, he however got to add a point to his total so he got a 2. This meant that he was the attacker and was doing a prepared attack.

It was decided that we would do a support weapon for each squad. I choose a MMG, but not having the model for one (it's on the way) we used a small artillery piece as a proxy. My son has been dying to have a Bazooka, his favorite weapon of all time, and why wouldn't it be. So he was a bit disappointment when I told him that it hadn't yet been invented in 1937. So we settled on something else that I had built a few months back. More on that in a minute.

Here are the Black Legion forces guarding the south entrance of the Tulsa Municipal Airport. The entrance has been sandbagged and a machine gun position has been set up to fire down the road. Around this the squad has set up their tents and a small fire pit for cooking. The squad has also been assigned a two local recruits, one of which the squads has nicknamed "cowboy".

Another shot of the Black Legion squad securing the southern entrance to the airfield. All is quite and has been all morning. The troops are just now rotating out of guard duty two at a time to sample some of cowboy's chilli for lunch.

The Cherry Street Irregulars, fresh off the adrenaline buzz of last nights victory have decided to push their luck and directly assault the airfield. Hoping to quickly destroy the fascist menace. They made a call to a local union held shop that escaped the anti-communist purge, and had a Rube Goldberg contraption ready for field testing, it was sent immediately to their location to aid in the attack. 

 What's this? Two trucks rapidly approach the checkpoint, just cresting a small rise. The Senior Sgt. gives the order to open fire with the MMG as these are clearly insane communists who have come to die at the hands of the dreaded Black Legion.

Wouldn't you know it. They are a half inch out of range. Damn the luck. The rounds hit the ground in front of the truck, kicking up dirt but otherwise having no effect. 

An aerial shot of the mad rush towards the gate by the CSI.

A quick shot from the MMG position looking down the road. And what pray-tell is that puff of smoke in the wheat field on the right.

Why, It...It's the "Wiener Werfer"! An old hotdog handcart turned into a mobile rocket platform.

Another gratuitous shot (or two) of the Wiener Werfer delivering red hots to the fascist pigs.

For the rockets we used the rules from "The World Aflame" and they worked well enough. My son picked the spot he wanted to aim at and then had to estimate the distance. He did surprisingly well, coming up about 5 or 6 inches shy of the target.

The first two shots land in the center of the Black Legion forces. Raining shrapnel down on our two diners, and the MMG crew. The two diners both go down but the MMG crew takes cover behind their sandbagged position and escape harm.

The cowboy momentarily rethinks his decision to join up with the Black Legion, but when he sees his award winning chili done wrong by those commies, he becomes a fanatic. "Those durned commies will pay"! he shouts, grabs his trusty shotgun and rushes to join the fray.

At this point we are between turns. We roll for initiative and I win, so I throw the Black Legion .30 cal on over-watch figuring that the commies will continue forward down the road and my boys will be able to get some good shots off and maybe knock out the lead truck. Since, there was no shooting, the initiative passed to the communist forces.

In a move that caught me by surprise, my son does not activate the truck but instead opts to fire the last two rockets from the "Weiner Werfer" and calls out the range again, with an extra five inches added. Which puts the rocket fire right on top of my MMG. However, he still have to roll for deviation which is a d12 so I'm still not worried, they could still land almost anywhere. Then he rolls a rolls a 1 and a 2. Well, the MMG team was nice while it lasted. LOL

The deadly accurate rocket fire from the dreaded communist Weiner Werfer blows the living daylights out of my machine gun nest, incinerating all those therein.

Now the lead communist truck continues it's mad dash for the front gate. It stops just short of the machine-gun nest and take heavy fire from the waiting fascists. Lots of shots are exchanged, a Molotov cocktail goes flying wildly as the thrower is shot and falls from the back of the truck. Another communist is shot as is a Black Legion trooper.

The Second Communist truck arrives with more soldiers. The cowboy takes a shot but misses by a mile.

The communist jump out of the second truck and fire at the Black Legion soldier with the hand grenade, and take him out. So ends the second turn of the game. We roll for initiative again and the communist win this turn.

They target the cowboy, taking careful aim...

...and punch a hole or two through his 10 gallon hat.

The other Cherry Street Irregulars open fire trying to kill the last remaining Black Legion soldier. Their luck has run out and they all miss.

He returns fire taking out the Thompson-wielding field  hockey player, before being gunned down himself.


So ends the second skirmish in the Glenpool Strike campaign. The communist have won again, two consecutive victories over the fascist Black Legion.