Force on Force: Special Operations

I've played a few games of Force on Force involving Special Operations Forces, mixed across the theaters of conflict I've played in.  Here's a run-down:

Cross Border Incident

I ran the Cross Border Incident scenario (twice) from the Classified:  Special Operations Missions 1940-2010 supplement for Force on Force.  The setting for this battle:

Eastern Syria, 26 October 2008
Syria's lengthy border with Iraq has long been a conduit for foreign jihadists entering Iraq to fight Coalition forces.  At the height of the insurgency, over one hundred jihadists were entering Iraq across the border every month.  Much of this activity was coordinated by an Iraqi-born al Qaeda facilitator known as Abu Ghadiya who had been working for the terrorist network since 2004.  Along with his brother and several cousins, Abu Ghadiya headed a small al Qaeda cell of Iraqi Sunnis and a team of Syrians who carried out much of the logistics work for the jihadists.  They maintained their headquarters and a safehouse for foreign fighters in the Syrian village of Sukkariya, five kilometers across the Iraqi border in eastern Syria.
Abu Ghadiya's cell had long been on the CIA and JSOC's High Value Target list and in October of 2008, a combination of electronic intercepts and overhead surveillance pinpointed their location in Sukkariya.  The capture/kill mission was handed to the special operators of the Joint Special Operations Task Force known at the time as Task Force 88.  Due to the time sensitivity of the target, a daylight raid was launched in the late afternoon of 26 October 2008 with four MH-60K special operations Blackhawks and two AH-6 Little Bird gunships entering Syrian airspace.

Task Force 88 Operators dishing it out in a rooftop-to-rooftop exchange of fire.

Historically, this proved to be a one-sided bloodletting, with reports of 8 al Qaeda members killed and possibly another 7 wounded.  Gameplay showed art imitating life in this instance.  Read the AAR here.

KSK Recon Team Rescue, Afghanistan, 2005

Here's a homebrewed scenario pitting US Special Forces and Afghan National Army troops int a desperate race : 

Paktika Province, 2005. A four-man German KSK reconnaissance team has been compromised in the hills of Southeast Afghanistan. Harried over difficult terrain and carrying one team member with a serious wound, the team has called for assistance and extraction. Air assets have yet to arrive due to weather conditions, but an 8-man US Special Forces ODA and an ANA platoon have almost arrived at the KSK team’s location at the end of a draw in the mountainous terrain. The ODA and ANA must save the KSK team before the Taliban can overrun the German position. US/ANA/KSK have initiative for the first round, subsequent rounds roll for initiative.

Taliban fighters duke it out with the pinned down KSK recce team.

The US/ANA rescue plan quickly turned into a frantic fight for survival.  Read it here.

Shoot and Scoot: US & Iraqi Armies vs. ISIS

I ran a scenario I drafted at the Colorado Springs Gamers Association on Saturday, which pitted US and Iraqi forces against ISIS fighters in the suburbs of Baghdad in the near future:

Iraq, 2015

A particularly wily Chechen mortar cell has been harassing Baghdad International Airport with indirect fire, then displacing in a station wagon to a new firing point.  The cell is currently located in a neighborhood protected by an ISIS GPS jamming device, further complicating US targeting.

An Iraqi Army unit advised by a US Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA) has advanced far into the ISIS-controlled neighborhood that currently hosts the Chechen mortar cell, skilled Chechen snipers and anti-armor teams, booby trapped buildings, and ISIS armor captured from Iraqi units that have either fled their posts or been defeated in battle.  US forces have committed a Bradley Rifle Platoon to reinforce the beleaguered Iraqi soldiers and their SOF advisors. Both sides have sniper teams hidden on the board (without hidden unit markers), but do not know of each other’s whereabouts.  US air support is on the way, but so are ISIS reinforcements.

US Bradley Fighting Vehicles advance into a brutal urban brawl.

Though this scenario pushed the scale boundaries of what Force on Force can handle, it still made for a good time.  Read it here.

Showdown in Baga, Nigeria

I took some license with the facts in a then-recent Boko Haram sweep of Baga, Nigeria.  I added a private military contractor (former SOF) side mission into a fight between Boko Haram and the Nigerian Army.

The Nigerian Army (NA) showed up with a force roughly equivalent to the Boko Haram (BH) elements in this part of town, and a third faction, the military contractors of Extremis Operations Group (EOG) had their own mission, the retrieval of an executive for OILCO International (the "VIP") who had the misfortune of being in Baga when the BH forces made their move.  The EOG and NA forces were not directly aligned, but wouldn't shoot at each other. 

EOG operators maneuver through the chaos of a civil war to extract the OILCO VIP.

The game came down to a very close contest on points as the Nigerian Army and Boko Haram battled it out for a hotly contested government building.  Read the whole thing here.

US SOF & Kurds vs ISIS, Memorial Day 2016

To commemorate Memorial Day 2016, the boys and I set up a game of Force on Force set in modern Syria.  As recently reported in the news, US Special Operations Forces have been spotted near the ISIS capitol in Raqqa, Syria, aiding Kurdish fighters.  We joined them in spirit with a game of Force on Force.

The US SOF and Kurd operations against the ISIS capitol have been hampered by a GPS jamming device that degrades accuracy of GPS-guided bomb.  A platoon (-) of elite Kurds and accompanying US SOF troops are consequently conducting a lighting raid into a town near the suburbs of Raqqa to facilitate future JDAM strikes.

Operators departing the objective.

Read the whole thing here.

Special Ops Extraction
We tried a new mission type for our latest Force on Force game, a special operations team extracting an enemy VIP in the Middle East.  In this case, it's a scientist with deadly WMD knowledge who the terrorists would rather kill than surrender to the Americans who came to retrieve him forcibly.

Read the whole thing here.