Spectre Miniatures Playtest - Mr Blake Calling.....

A number of us over at Wyvern Wargamers signed up for the recent kickstarter campaign from Spectre Miniatures, along with the rather nice figure range are their home grown set of rules, for modern day operatives in Africa.
Whilst we kick our heels until the figures land in September, we though we would give the beta rules a try out.

The Scenario.
Mr. Blake, a representative of Petro Corp has come to the village of Bandunu too meet with the village elders to negotiate a contract to extend the oil pipeline through their territory. He has with him a substantial bribe with him and contracts guaranteeing that the most of the labour hired for the contract will come from the village and surrounding area.
Unfortunately Dr J and his Southside militia has become aware of these negotiations and has spent some time preparing an ambush to stop them. They are particularly eager to get their hands on Mr. Blake and his briefcase – they can use the money to hire more gunmen and buy arms.

The ambush has already destroyed the contractors vehicles and has left them stranded in the middle of Bandunu. As usual, radio and cellular reception is zero in this part of Zikanga, so no reinforcements are likely from Petrocorps main base of operations until they fail to report in, but that wont be for an our or so.

The team’s only hope is to defeat the militia ambush team and hole up until the SF's arrive.

Contractor Mission Objective.

The contractors must defend their principle at all costs and find a building to use as a strongpoint from which to await special forces relief.

Militia Mission Objective.

Capture Mr. Blake.

The command phase allows you to place figures on over watch or remove supression points, the militia very often fail and once a roll is missed then thats it for that turn, this makes for plenty of thought provoking moves by the militia as they try and defend from the advancing contractors.

When dicing for initiative it would be better if Elite and Professionals gained a bonus rather than simply he who killed the most in the previous turn.

The Elite Special forces wait in the stone compound awaiting the contractors and Mr Blake, we issued them with body armour, in our view it should not be harder to hit, but it should give you a bonus when rolling against the lethality of the weapon as all to often the better quality troops were supressed and then killed by the lower quality militia.

The Militia mass, chasing the contractors as they head for the only brick building on the table, the bleedout rules work well for the better quality troops, but make militia practically useless once wounded, they also lose there ability to use anything but side arms, which in most cases make the militia armed.

The militia finally get the drop on the contractor rear guard, we need to workout some house rules for Overwatch, as what happens if you start the turn in sight and don't move in to view - can you still fire?

Mr Blake makes his way to the compound, with only a few contractors remaining, for the loss of seven figures, they have taken out over 30 militia, the results seemed a little to heavy on the professionals side.

Unless we missed something, the lack of morale made it simply meant it a question of maths towards the end of the scenario, you knew the maximum number of rounds of fire a figure could put out each turn and even if the militia missed the volume of suppression on a figure made him combat ineffective for several rounds.

The rules have some nice mechanics they are are fast and easy, the line of sight rules make for some considered moves before your take your turn. Grenades are jolly dangerous as to is close assault. I think they need a few tweaks to give the professionals more of an advantage, we need to factor in the assets available, such as Drone strikes etc, etc, to even the balance, but on first outing they certainly have promise.