Big Contracting Trouble II

This won't be as thorough a write-up as the last time I ran Big Contracting Trouble, but it was an enjoyable game.  Just for review, the ubiquitous Force on Force scenario is very evenly balanced and has been played and written up by a number of folks:  Donogh, Donogh redux, von Lucky, Dan, and Dave.  This time I was introducing Darren, a friend from the local gaming group, to the Force on Force system.


Scenario:
An SUV carrying two civilian contractors was hit by gunfire as it moved through a neighborhood in one of the city’s red zones. UAV footage indicates that the contractors are injured but alive. The contractors have held the small group of Insurgent gunmen who attacked their vehicle at bay for nearly a quarter of an hour, but more armed men have been spotted converging on the disabled SUV.

A force of US soldiers are en route to save the contractors.  US troops are Troop Quality d8, Morale d10.  Iraqi insurgents are TQ d6, Morale d10.  

General layout of the table, from the American entry point, with a few US forces yet to be fielded.

Tragedy!  An entire US fire team goes down in Turn 1 - you can see them laying on their sides at center frame.  A line of enemy sixes laid them low.

At this point, the US forces had almost no chance of getting to the contractors.  Because of this immediate catastrophe, and not wanting to let Darren (new to the game) suffer through a several turns of nothing but CASEVAC, I reinforced them with an ambulance to facilitate evacuation and another fire team.

Here's the two contractors next to their SUV, which were d10 Troop Quality to show the new player how the differing stats interact.  As it turned out, they held off two squad-sized elements of insurgents with repeated instances of getting the first shot off, inflicting casualties, and prompting morale checks that the insurgents failed.

Insurgent cell hanging out at a Hot Spot (spawn point) at the dump.  They exchanged fire with an American unit and came out worse for wear.

Reverse shot.  The US unit was all the way at the other end of the table.

The CASEVAC arrives, and a (combat-effective) US fire team has moved into the compound on the right.

Shot from the aforementioned dump Hot Spot, where more insurgents have spawned and are exchanging fire with a HMMWV that has taken damage to its engine and weapons.

Unfortunately, that's all the pictures I have.  What isn't shown is that the US forces pushed into the center of the table, neutralized a Hot Spot, and reached the stranded contractors, who stood their ground the entire game.  Just as it looked like the US forces were about to engineer a successful extraction, however, another US fire team was caught in an alley and gunned down by insurgents on a nearby rooftop.

It just wasn't meant to be the Americans' game, I suppose, but Darren had a good time regardless.