I hope everyone is doing well. As the title says, this is a 'quick' (albeit a long one) battle report on the Danger Close ruleset from Empress Miniatures as well as some initial thoughts on how they work and impressions. I played the game a few days ago and have had a chance to also collect a few other thoughts on the whole thing...so here goes:
First, the ruleset comes in super light at only 4 pages...and if you're not using any vehicles or large assets it is literally 2 pages. The made thumbing of pages trying to look things up is not really a factor in this game; at the same time, there are a few small gaps in concepts or defined terms - personally I was really good with that, it gave me a chance to be creative or go with what jumped to mind.
Second, the game is a straight up d-20 affair, and relies heavily on calculated dice mod's +/- to applicable rolls.
Third, in terms of who's who, the game breaks that down to a quick stat line per figure - with the most important stat being what is the Skills & Drills for that individual figure. YUP, these are for individual figures or characters if you want to do a narrative campaign thing. This made it pretty easy as S&D's drive everything in the game (number of actions you can take, modifiers, and who goes first), but also keeps the figure count relatively low...lots of metal/resin/plastic to control, so the suggestion from Empress is 20 figs or less.
Fourth, it does help to have some knowledge of military/combatant organization or load-out; but conversely, don't let that stop you. Have some belligerents in mind and kit them out accordingly - so you could have some creative license.
Bottom Line: I liked it...it was a lot of figs to manage for a first go, I made some mistakes, had to ad-lib a little, but really liked the flow and how it went. I hadn't looked at the ruleset in sometime, dove right in and had a 17 figure game in about 2.5 hours.
The Setup:
I didn't think far enough ahead to have any set objective...so that kinda developed as I rolled along. The terrain was extremely rudimentary as I also wanted to see how forms scaled with the figures and overall look and mechanics. So this was also a terrain build planning exercise.
Basic objective: Regular force (tier1/2 operators) converge on insurgent/militant/criminal safehouse. In this instance it was a sweep and clear operation or similar.
Good guys: Operators, broken into 2 loose teams; Team #1 was 3 pers, with silenced weapons; Team #2 ended up having the SOF Commander and 3 operators without silenced weapons. As these were SAS, SEALS, or JTF'ers they had 4 and 5 for S&D's (5 is the max). So this crew is built for speed and action.
From left to right: Boomer (5 points, M4 w/grenade launcher - team #2), Slick Pete (5 pts, M4 and silenced pistol - team #1), Face (5 pts, SOF Cmd, M4); Thud (4 pts, silenced M4), Swing Joe (4 pts, M4, pistol and tomahawk), Thump (4 pts, M4 and shotgun), and Fabio (4 pts, FN Minimi SAW).
Bad guys: The Milli Vanilli crew, mix of S&D's from 1 to 4, variety of kit but predominantly AK's, no body armour; 10 figures total, not grouped into teams but a variety of functions and placements on the map.
From left to right: Map Jerry (3 points, AK w/grenade launcher), Captain K (the bossman, 4 pts, SMG), 1-Eye Will (3 pts, AK), Walkin' Pete (2 points, Dragunov), Tower Tom (kneeling, 2 pts, AK), Carl (2 pts, AK), Mobile Mike (cell phone, 2 pts, AK), Helmet Hal (1 pt, RPD), Mark (1 pt, Dragunov), and Beret Boris (wearing a...beret...1 pt, RPD).
The table:
As marked on the pic, the compund/safehouse is 3 buildings with 1 guard tower. There are 2 vehicles, with one backed into the Garage. Tower Tom is in the tower, Beret Boris in the Garage, Mobile Mike is near the blue van, and Walkin' Pete is pulling sentry duty. The rest of the crew is in the main house, the higher skilled folks are having a meeting, making a plan; the remainder are in the next room grabbing some racktime.
The dice are there to denote doors (6's) and windows (anything else, but then I changed this to 4's). The green shaded areas are brush and forest (so light-ish ground terrain, impedes movement) with the general idea that everything is just a smidge lower than the tower - so relatively easy to stay out of line of sight.
The Game:
The view from the left side of the table for Team #1, and right side for Team #2. The plan is pretty simple, stay in cover and move converge on each side of the table. I realized mid-way through turn 1 that I had all silenced weapons on the left side.
I was randomly rolling for the movement of Walkin' Pete and Tower Tom, whether they would turn left and right, and then make their own actions accordingly. For Tower Tom that kept him looking in the wrong direction for almost the entire game...so not a lot of use having Tom on watch. Funny enough, Walkin' Pete had started heading towards Team #1, but rolled to move the other direction and kept on going towards the tower.
Before you can shoot, you have to spot the target first. This worked relatively well for the SOF dudes, and not so well for the Milli Vanilli's, they only had 1 successful spot. If equipped with radios, then you could make a roll to pass on any successful spot to the rest of the team...this ended up working well. Spotting is kept until the target breaks LOS with all team members...so bonus!
So, in the pic above, we see Team #1 keep working their way up, making it to the edge of the brush and trees. They would hold here for a spell, getting into shooting position, spotting targets, and reporting to the rest of the team.
View of Tower Tom, looking at the vans...poor Tom, and Team #2's progress on the right side. For the most part they stayed close together at the start and would then break into two 2-man elements and ingress to the structures.
Overhead drone shot...you can see that Walkin' Pete has made it to the DHL van, Mobile Mike finally rolled to start moving and heads towards the main house. Tower Tom is spotted, but only by 1 team member, comms issue and he failed the 5+ roll to tell the team, sigh...but all the others in the open are spotted and position reported to the team. And the arrows show the SOF movements...on the right, you have 2 operators by the guard tower, 2 moving up along the treeline just short of the shed. On the left side, all operators are now on the edge of the brush and treeline.
Closer view from the right side...
and the left side...
Tower Tom is finally reported to the rest of the team; SOF moves on the right: 1 operator on overwatch (red and blue die), 2 move in behind the blue van (out of LOS of Tom), and 1 in behind the shed.
Alternate view of the above actions.
Thud is lining up for a shot on Tom from within cover...spoiler, he misses...luckily he's using a silenced weapon and no one was alerted.
This pic is just before things go somewhat wrong...if I remember correctly, shots are fired, but the noise alerts Captain K, Jerry, and 1-eye...
1-eye Will points to where he hears the noise...
Lots of quick action...2 operators move behind the garage and stack up near the backdoor. 2 others are behind the blue van and lay down some fire on Walkin' Pete and Mobile Mike (who are both seriously wounded)...Mike fails the subsequent stress roll and surrenders to the SOF troops, getting up against the side of the van.
Alternate view and other moves...Team #1 takes out Tower Tom, and they start their move towards covering positions near the tower. Beret Boris lets loose with a burst of fire from his RPD and misses Boomer and Thud by the VW van. Boomer has enough of that and fires his grenade launcher at the house. The sleeping troops in the house are woken by the RPD fire and jump out of bed to join the action.
Anyone within 4 inches is hit and rolls for injury (point of green pen is impact area, 4 inches is up to the black band at the top of the pen)...Captain K and 1-eyed Will are lightly wounded, Map Jerry is seriously wounded, and Mark is lightly wounded as well (although he would end up in the corner of the room from failed stress roll. Captain K, peeved off, runs out the door of the house to let loose with his SMG. Helmet Hal, with his 1 action moves to the doorway.
Another flurry of action...SOF'ers move through the garage and take aim at Captain K, taking him down as he gets out the door (he does fire a burst, but it has not effect). 1-eyed Will moves to the gapping hole in the house and jumps through, and falls to overwatch fire from Slick Pete. From inside the house, Carl jumped out the backdoor and was immediately taken out by overwatch fire from Thud.
More action, SOF Cmd Face rushes the open door near the fallen Captain K, and drops Map Jerry with well aimed fire. Boomer rushes past 1-eyed and sprays the inside of the building. Slick Pete gets to the doorway, opens the door, and puts a couple of rounds into Helment Hal before he can react - definite difference between in S&D, 4v1.
Subsequent moves...SOF converges and consolidates on the house. Swing Joe gets into the house and drops Mark in the corner of the room. Thud jumps in through the backdoor and provides cover into the house. Fabio rolls around the corner of the VW van and secures Mobile Mike for recovery.
THOUGHTS: all in all a very enjoyable game...yes, I did decide on running through it last minute, hence the improvised markers and 'measuring' template <cough, green pen>. I think this will also serve as a good scenario to playtest some other rulesets and then I have a proper baseline to compare against.
Take care folks.
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