Bush Wars with No End In Sight

 

Last week we had our first club meeting take place after the last city-side lockdown ended. It was a small meeting, no surprises there. To help kick it off another club member, Peter, and I decided to try out the skirmish rules No End In Sight, developed and published by Ivan Sorensen of Nordic Weasel. Peter had been testing them in solo match-ups, and I’d played a test game a few days before with another club member, Jenko, also a section-on-section game that I’ll write up another time.

The rules are easy to read and clearly laid out. There seems to be a translation issue early on with his mixing of the term phase and turn, but it isn’t difficult to understand what he intends around breaking down time and actions, so this wasn’t difficult to work around.

To test out the mechanics we decided on a simple section meeting engagement. In game setting terms, it was a section patrol of regular Kalemniktan troops bumping the same sort of Zeebian force. While section on section out in the bush was not likely to give us a definitive outcome, it was small enough to be manageable with new rules.

I had to complicate matters somehow, so introduced to this game something I tried out with Jenko, namely dead ground. This was represented by small hillocks as well as depressions in the ground. The concept was that a standing adult was easily seen when moving through them. However unless an observer was at a higher elevation, then a soldier placed correctly would represent one having taken cover on the reverse slope of the depression or hillock, giving them the cover bonus. There was a fair bit of discussion around the use of this during the game, but the end result was that it took away the billiard table openness of ground between terrain features.

For C2 we simply used the  you-go-I-go method. As we only had one commander rolling activity dice during each phase the game didn’t need any sort of randomisation, and we simply diced to see who activated first that turn.

The forces started on opposite sides of the table. We both moved through scrub and bush to get closer to get eyes-on the other bloke. Interestingly we both moved LMG teams out to our respective rights to cover some of the open ground there and so give us a little flank security

 

The tempo of activity in the game worked pretty well. My turn: roll Activation Points, spend activation points – move, then Peter. Our sections worked their way through the bush we both sought for cover, but Peter had his LMG team reach a firing position first.

 

The first fire for the game was brutal but not deadly. Peter had three figures firing, one with an LMG, so had six shock dice and three kill dice (one Firepower per figure plus two more for the LMG, with one Shock Dice per Firepower and one Kill Dice per two Firepower), His results were two Pin counters but no wound or kill. That forced  my infantryman back three inches, and forced me to spend two Activation points to remove the Pin markers so I could get him moving again. After that the movement was very careful so as to be able to take as much advantage of cover and concealment as possible.

Peter pushed a three man group out of the scrub towards my section, though they couldn’t make it all the way from one treeline to the next. Instead, they took cover on the reverse slope of a hillock (my new terrain!). That was a good move on Peter’s part, and I next pushed a scout team through the scrub until they could make out his three taking cover. I rolled some very accurate shock and kill dice, resulting in one having to save for a wound and the other two each being Pinned. Being in cover, Peter was entitled to, and made, a cover save roll, so didn’t suffer any casualties. He next had to make a Pressure Test. This is a nice name for a morale test, and takes into account pinned and wounded from that round, as well as any untreated wounded from fire previously taken. Peter failed the test, so his troops had to pull back two inches, forcing him back into the bush from which they had emerged.

At that point I was satisfied that my scouts had done their job: they ID’d a few more Zeebians likely from the same group as the LMG group that had brassed up one of my Kalemniktan riflemen. Given that made it clear that my section was facing off at 1:1 odds, discretion became the better part of valour and I began to withdraw. Peter was about to do the same thing, so we called it a night at that, point, dissected the game, then had a look around at the other tables and their various states of disarray.

There was some discussion around the cover and its effect on the game. The point of interest was that any troops moving in cover weren’t subject to reaction fire, but could easily be fired upon when a figure was activated by the section commander. I’m not sure we resolved the question of whether reaction fire should be permitted at figures within a particular distance from the edge of cover, but this led into a discussion of movement through open ground that offered some dead ground to seek protection from opposition firepower.

 This being my second game of No End In Sight, I was quite impressed with it. It’s a basic skirmish game, so lacks the fidelity you might find in Force on Force, but it played with temp and tension. The separation of kill and shock results was a great idea, and the Pressure Tests were simple but effective in giving interesting outcomes. I intend to play this again at and outside the club, and will give further updates on how it plays.