Sadr City Showdown

Baghdad, 2005.  The occupation of Iraq has soured and Sadr City has fallen under control of the Mahdi Militia and the political machinations of Muqtada al-Sadr.  A slightly understrength US infantry platoon is attempting to retake some lost ground from the militia forces and kill or capture this vaguely Usama-looking fellow:

He's in the compound at top right of the map below, and the US forces start at the bottom.  Militia cells stand between the US forces and victory.

The view from the US staging area.

US troops secure a building in anticipation of the advance.

The militia headquarters compound.

A militia cell got spotted by US troops on a rooftop, and promptly dropped to American fire.

An insurgent cell lays shot up in the foreground after losing an initiative roll and getting pasted by the Americans.

Another insurgent cell bites the dust.

The two Humvees reinforcing the US troops rush forward, perhaps recklessly, to engage a courtyard full of insurgents in a courtyard.

The Humvee gambit works, but one is at half mobility and the other at half firepower.

The Americans, having run out of people to shoot for now, rush toward their objective. 

Aerial view of the American advance.

Insurgents rush from their headquarters to take up a better defensive position, but there's a US Humvee at the far end of the street...

The insurgents lose initiative, and are lucky to lose only one man to the .50 caliber fire.

The insurgents completed their run across the street, but they roll some ones on their morale check - this causes additional shrinkage of two more insurgents who decide they have a better place to be and are taken off the board.  The cell is also frozen due to a failed morale check.  Did I mention that the insurgents have failed pretty much every roll this game?

Collateral damage.  A pickup truck goes up in the exchange of fire.

The Americans set up the Humvees in overwatch on their leftmost axis of advance and start to push to their objective.

The building at left of shot fills up with newly arrived insurgents...

...who fail an initiative roll against the Americans and are promptly gunned down.

On the American right, a fire team mounts the roof of a building and goes into overwatch to cover the fire team advancing to the objective building at the rear of the shot.

Another insurgent cell spawns behind the building on the left flank, the same building where their comrades were just shot to pieces...

...and they also fail an initiative roll and get wiped out by point blank .50 caliber fire and a fire team  of Americans.

Then the Americans pull a Fog of War card that gives them a reinforcing special ops team, which they place on the roof where a fire team is already providing overwatch.

The overwatch position gets line of sight on the leadership cell in the objective building, and with the additional firepower of the Troop Quality d10 special ops team, promptly wipes out the Mahdi militia leadership cell.

Well, I've never seen so one-sided a game.  Every die roll, from reinforcements to initiative to shooting, went the Americans' way.  The boys playing had a good time, but I'll have to recalibrate this scenario if we play it again.

If you want to see a library of other games set in Iraq that aren't so one-sided, check out my Force on Force:  Iraq page, where I've already added this game.