State of Play: AK-47 Republic (miniatures game)

   

 

Wednesday saw two teams duke it out for the soul of the (imaginary) central African nation of the United Socialist Peoples Democratic Republic of Zogtu. D, dictatorial president of the republic, and his strong-man head of the military, H, brought their forces to bear on the rag-tag rebel militia of the Marxist front to free the Republic of Zogtu from the clutches of its corrupt president, led by K, with me in the role of military advisor, with the view of installing our own Soviet-sympathising People’s President. B adjudicated he game from the sidelines.

AK-47 Republic (Second Edition; Peter Pig, 2006; originally RFCM, 1997) is an interesting rules-set. Much of the set-up is randomised, all the way down to the name (and flag) of the contested region. There are three qualities of troops; Professional/Elite, Regular (ordinary soldiers), and Militia. During set-up, a series of rolls on various tables can see your best unit downgraded a rank, one of your militia units get some extra training or some better vehicles, or in our case, some extra materiel support after a face-to-face with Leonid Brezhnev and the Politburo (two T-34s and a couple of transports for extra militia).

At the start the two sides take turns rolling to see how many units begin on the board. Both sides started with three units each. As the attackers, K and I chose three locations on the board to be worth 30, 20 or 10 victory points to whoever held them; the locations are known to the defenders, but not the points-value of each. We chose the provincial capital (the cluster of buildings featured in some of the photos), the hill overlooking the capital, and the elephant sanctuary at the other end of the table. This was the ten-pointer; we had no intention of contesting this target, concentrating on the Capital and the overlooking hill, but succeeded in getting D to tie up one of his units – a rather large militia force – there for the entire game. D and H had professional troops which they used to occupy the city, and a Cobra helicopter (lend-lease from the CIA, no doubt).

No elephants were harmed in the making of this civil war.

We fielded some regulars (mercenaries from a neighbouring country) and a pair of T-55s, and a Hi-24 gunship. In one of the quirks of the game, D got to roll to influence one of our units, he succeeded, and downgraded our Hind pilot form Elite to Regular (we’d already had a Regular infantry formation downgraded to a militia group). We were starting on the back foot, and things quickly got worse.

In the first round, our helicopters faced off. The Hi-24 fired at and missed the Cobra, which returned fire (exchanges are assumed to occur simultaneously, so a blown-up tank will still get one last round off if it hasn’t already fired that turn), taking down our chopper. Meanwhile K positioned our T-55s on the hill, and brought our infantry up to assault the capital. The second turn began badly, with the Cobra talking out one of the T-55s. But in one of those reversals of fortune with which AK-47 is replete, the second T-55 fired on the Cobra with its heavy machine gun, and managed to bring it down. This balanced the books for a short while. The troops in the city managed to keep ours at bay and whittled down their number, but our vehicle-based guns managed to take out their recoilless rifles (which presented the biggest threat to our transport). That surviving T-55 did stout work, surviving several attempts to remove it from the game, and picking off more than its share of enemy threats. But, alas, the Fates are fickle, and it was not to be our day of triumph.

Around the fifth turn, each team managed to bring on reinforcements. We had the two T-34s gifted to us to support our struggle by the Supreme Soviet, along with a couple of troop transports. The Government forces had one last unit of Regulars with a couple of 25-pounder anti-tank guns, relics from the Second World War. Accompanying these troops was none other than the dictatorial President, ostensibly leading from the front, but, in fact, well-placed to make a dash to the airport with a couple of suitcases full of Swiss francs if it all went pear-shaped.

Call Tech-support! (the Technicals didn't actually feature in
this exchange, but I couldn't resist the joke,)

We redoubled our efforts on taking the city, causing heavy losses on their fanatical troops. At the same time, the fresh Government troops managed to (eventually) get into position and unlimber their AT pieces. After some poor shooting by K and me, the 25-pounders made short work of our remaining tanks, but in the end, it came down to morale checks. The Government units kept their cohesion, but seeing their armour support smashed, our brave militia lost heart and melted away, (hopefully) to fight another day.