[SG] Scenario: A Change Of Orders II

This scenario will be presented in three sections - Red Force 
Briefing, Blue Force Briefing, and Referee's Briefing (Guess which 
one is closest to reality?) 

Players: 2-4

==============================================
Blue Force Briefing: 

Lieutenant Azure, your Blue Force platoon has just formed on Nowhere 
III. It has been formed from veterans of other units that have taken 
a beating in ongoing hostilities with the Reds plus a bunch of green 
recruits fresh out of boot camp back home, just off the transport. 
You yourself are only recently arrived fresh out of ROTP. You are 
looking forward to the challenge and hope you can measure up.

Fortunately they've stuck you with a very experienced Corporal (who 
will probably end up being your Sergeant when the paperwork gets 
sorted) to help you wrangle this understrength collection of 
survivors and newbies into some sort of unified military formation. 
Unfortunately, the Corporal is a survivor of waaaay to many fights 
and is a little shell shocked and has a very short fuse. This has 
made your relationship with the Corporal kind of difficult. 

You are expecting more arrivals next week to bring you up to full 
strength and in the meantime, your force is assigned rear-area duties 
in a quiet sector. Instead of having everyone sit around cleaning the 
barracks, you decide the best way to get a group working together is 
to give them some work. And the best way to get survivors and newbies 
to start thinking like soldiers is to get them into the field under 
controlled conditions. So you're taking them out on a light recce of 
the nearby area surrounding the local base. There are no enemy forces 
anywhere nearby but you're going to pretend you're in Injun' country 
for the practice. 

Your goals for the day are to get your unit out to the three chosen 
map references, perform a short observation at each reference 
(looking for the enemy) then return to base, a bit tired but 
hopefully working a bit better together. 

==============================================
Red Force Briefing: 
Captain Vermillion, your special warfare team has been dispatched
to conduct deep raiding against the enemy. You have been moving
behind enemy lines for more than a week now, scouting enemy 
movements near an enemy base and awaiting an opportunity to 
strike. You have resupplied from several caches and one meeting
with agent provocateurs. 

Your Red Force is small - only one large squad broken into three 
fireteams.But you are well trained and well equiped and your focus 
and intensity levels are still high. 

Your current task is to recover some supplies at a cache location 
nearby. The enemy has sent out few patrols of late, feeling very 
secure in their rear areas, but you're still of a mind to be careful 
just in case. The biggest threat is from overflying enemy air 
transport units who might see you moving or catch you on their 
sensors. 

You want to get to the cache, get the supplies, and exfiltrate. And 
watch out for any Blue Forces. 
=============================================
Referees Briefing:

Things start out as they seem. This starts as a double blind game so 
a good map of the game board (really, three - one for the GM, one for 
each team) is required. The first few turns may be quiet with no on-
board movement as all units will be moving with comms shut down and 
moving silently (no combat movement, no transfer commands except when 
the command unit is in base to base contact). 

The board should be thick with underbrush, not too many long lines of 
sight or movement. This makes for tense, exciting play. 

The referee should indicate (on a map, to the Blue players) the three 
places they wish to siddle up to and take a look see. The referee 
should indicate on the Red Map the place where the supply cache is. 
The arrangement of supply cache and the recce points should be such 
that the two forces paths will cross. 

Some form of spotting rules should be used (I'd suggest QD versus 
range band die with modifiers - down 1 to defence die if target is 
moving, down 2 if combat moving, up 1 if observer is moving, up 2 if 
combat moving, down 2 if target unit fires, up 1 if defender is 
IP/camouflaged ) - spotting should be an action unless the enemy does 
something like open up to give an opportunity spot. Once spotted, 
units stay spotted (once you know you're in contact with the enemy, 
helmet radios/huds/etc. go active). 

Remember to let Blue Force choose its approach - they need to get to 
all three points. If they want to speed it up by splitting up, no 
problem. If they want to stay together, at least suggest to them they 
want to move enough to get back to the base sometime before dark.... 

Now we get to the twist: While we have a Blue Force and a Red Force 
both on unrelated ops that run into each other, their are other 
things going on. A Blue General has decided that he wants to overfly 
Blue Base (nearby) and happens to be travelling over this map region. 

The General's VTOL should enter the turn after first contact between 
the two player units. This is about the right time to cause maximum 
confusion.

The end of the turn before the General's VTOL appears on the Red end 
of the board headed for Blue (really, all this is Blue territory and 
"supposedly" safe), Captain Vermillion gets a tranmission in code (he 
does not respond) to indicate that a fancy air vehicle with an 
important VIP is headed to Blue Base. His unit is re-tasked with 
destroying the air vehicle, capturing the general, and exfiltrating 
(his supplies now don't matter.... although if he has picked them up 
already, you might give him a few spare GMS rounds or IAVRs as a 
reward). 

How it goes from here is rather dependant. The General's Pilot, in 
safe territory, and knowing the General is feeling delicate after a 
big Mess Dinner last night, is flying low, slow and pretty much 
straight down the long axis of the board from the Red Entry side to 
the Blue. He has no idea there are enemies below. 

And the Blue unit below has no idea what his frequencies, crypto 
settings, or anything are. (Though they may try to get through and 
discover this after the fact). So the General's VTOL will move 24" 
(two 12" movements) in a straight line along the center of the board 
each turn. It has Enhanced ECM. It has armour 1 and is unarmed. It 
has 2 crew and 3 officers aboard (1 squad, all armed with sidearms, 
D4 armour). 

In fact, the Pilot has some tunes blasting in his headphones and 
isn't paying much attention to his job. He's still remembering last 
night with the orderly at the last stop on the General's tour. So he 
won't notice any groundfire that doesn't hit the vehicle. He's really 
just not expecting to get hit here. 

If the GMS the Red Force is carrying can knock down the 
VTOL(disabling hit), it will move d12" in a random direction from the 
impact point before splashdown. And then crew must check for injury 
as if bailing out of a destroyed vehicle. This gives a chance the 
general will survive or his adjutants, etc. 

If the VTOL just blows up, Red's should still try to get to the 
wreckage and look for anything interesting unless Blue's are all over 
the place. 

If the Blue Commander sees the Command VTOL go down, he knows 
(without being told) he has to rescue the General and the crew. He 
knows he also has to prevent Blue getting access to anything the 
General may have carried in his briefcase etc (recover the body if 
the General is dead). If the VTOL blows up, he knows he still has to 
recover bodies and drive off or destroy the attackers. 

The key thing for the referee to evoke in this scenario is to brief 
the Red Force and Blue Force separately, give them separate maps, 
make Blue Force think it is on a training exercise (in fact, if you 
want, tell the Blue Force leader to brief his people on a fictitious 
recce of the three target points and invent some info on conjectural 
hostile forces - most of the other Blue players should actually think 
they are on an exercise until the leader realizes otherwise and tells 
them). And then of course his orders will change (implicitly) if the 
ocmmand VTOL goes down. 

On the Red Side, their focus is their supplies, until they have made 
contact with the other side (or are close enough the ref decides to 
bring the VTOL on). Then their orders are changed (they start 
thinking they are on a Milk and Cookies run, and end up on a Snatch 
and Grab). 

The focus of this is to get a bit of a role-assumption overtone here -
 have the players get into their roles and focus on their orders. 
Play as if they only know what they have been told. And the sneakier 
the Ref can be about revealing what he has up his sleeve (ideally the 
Blue player should be saying *who are those guys* when he sees Red as 
they won't be identifiable as enemy immediately and when he sees the 
General's VTOL, he should be saying"what's he doing here?"). And Red 
Force, for its part, should be wondering who the blue guys are, where 
they came from, and if this is a trap for them, or what. 

Remember: Fear and Ignorance make for an entertaining game. 

============================================
Blue Force
Lt. Azure (GRN-1) and the Medic (2 x AR, individuals)
BL1 - 5 men (4 x AR, 1 x SAW) (VET-3) (Corporal is leading this one)
BL2 - 4 men (3 x AR, 1 x SAW)  (REG-2)
BL3 - 5 men (4 x AR, 1 x SAW) (GRN-2)
BL4 - 4 men (2 x AR, 1 x SAW, 1 x Marksman) (REG-2)

Red Force
Cpt. Vermillion and RD1 - 3 men + Cpt (3 x AR, 1 x SAW) (VET-2)
RD2 - 4 men (2 x AR, 1 x SAW, 1 x GMS/P(4 rounds)) (REG-2)
RD3 - 4 men (2 x AR, 1 x Marksman, 1 x GMS/P(4 rounds)) (VET-2)