Throughout the history of warfare, information on the enemy’s disposition has been an important key to the success of any army. With modern technology, it is possible to listen in on the enemy’s messages, but these are often encrypted. The best source of information is still capturing important prisoners and taking them back to friendly lines for interrogation.
Spying and infiltration is as old as warfare itself. Capturing enemy intelligence and learning their plans is most useful. To paraphrase Sun Tzu: “What enables the good general to conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge. It cannot be elicited from spirits nor can it be worked out from experience or deduction. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.”
Set five minutes from now, in no specific time or place, two factions we will call Red and Blue are at war. The intelligence network of the Blue state has a long list of ‘persons of interest’ they would like to question. One of these people has appeared up on their network using an unsecured mobile phone. The coordinates of where the transmission came from have been narrowed down to a trenchwork close to the front line. A special team from Blue has been tasked with infiltrating into Red’s lines and capturing the person of interest, along with any documents or electronic equipment he might have. Once retrieved, the ‘Tongue’ will talk!
This generic scenario can be moved to several earlier time periods; trenches have been extensively used in warfare, particularly with the advent of modern high explosives. So feel free to change the setting to the American Civil War, the Great War or somewhere in French Indochina. The only major change you will need to make is the weaponry, so rifled muskets for an ACW scenario and bolt action rifles for the Great War and World War II. With a little more ingenuity, the time and place could be taken back to the Medieval or even Ancient period, by setting it in a village occupied by enemy troops.
Rules
This scenario has been written with Osprey's Black Ops in mind, but any rule set can be used by using the scenario and forces presented here as a guideline. Whichever other set of rules you use, they will need to have spotting rules and limited mobility for the defender until the alarm is raised. Black Ops stealth rules cover most situations, I have included some simple ideas here for other games.
Terrain
The terrain is a maze of trenchworks close to the front line, built into a strip of woodland which divides up two large fields. The trenches are screened by the trees and bushes, which helps prevent spotting by drones and satellites (change to enemy balloons for the ACW or spotting aircraft for the Great War). They, along with the trenches give some limited protection against enemy artillery. The trench network consists of several sections – go wild and use all the trench sections you have. If you do not have trenches, an alternative would be to mark the lines where they run with clump foliage or something similar.
Movement along the inside of the trenches is unhindered. Any movement getting in or out of a trench is difficult terrain. Movement through the trees and bushes should be difficult terrain except for the odd path which provides free movement. There are five bunker holes, used as refuges by the troops. These need not be represented on the board except for a marker to show where they are. They lead to small underground shelter holes, giving protection and shelter from the elements and shell fire, but easily dealt with by a grenade from the blue team.
Team Blue
Team blue has the following forces at their disposal. All are professional soldiers (ACC 4, CQC 4, DED 4) in body armour (SAVE 4), and both smoke and fragmentation grenades in Black Ops terms.
Blue Assault Section Alpha
Blue assault section Beta
Blue support section Delta
(All activate on a King)
Team Red
Team Red have the following forces at their disposal. They are all conscripts (ACC 5, CQC 5, DED 4) with no armour except for the Leader – the person of interest – who is professional (ACC 4, CQC 4, DED 4) in body armour (SAVE 4). They are equipped with grenades.
Red platoon HQ asleep in Bunker
Red Section 1 asleep in bunker
Red Section 2 asleep in bunker
Red Section three on watch.
Reinforcements
Red’s fourth section is out on patrol and may return sometime during the scenario. Black Ops has a mechanism for this, twelve points are needed for the full squad to return. For other systems, after a set number of turns (probably five), start rolling. The chance of the squad turning up is rolling the number of turns minus five. If the alarm has been raised, the chance is the number of turns minus three.
Red Section patrol
Objectives
The Blue strike team must infiltrate Red’s trench and find out where the person of interest is (the Red leader). Once found, he must be subdued and captured (defeated in close combat) and then extracted out of the trenches. The Red Leader also carries his phone and important documents, so should he be killed. Blue may gain a minor victory by retrieving these. To win, Red must prevent this from happening.
The Red team places five markers face down. One is where the leader is, two contain groups of resting soldiers, and two are empty – effectively these are decoys. These may be placed down in any trench area, but they must be at least twelve inches away from each other.Once the sentries are placed, team Blue can choose which table edge (or edges) their teams are entering from. Once the prisoner has been captured, they may leave by the nearest table edge.
Sentries
Most of Red’s forces are asleep. A few sentries have been posted and these can be put by the Red player anywhere on the board. The sentries should have limited vision (people do not have eyes in the back of their head) so should be limited to their forward arc. They should also move randomly until the alarm is raised. If your rules do not cover sentries, I would recommend rolling a D6. Evens they stay still, odds they move along the trenchwork in a random direction. If shots are fired, the movement can be towards the shots.
Spotting and alarm
If a sentry has an enemy soldier in his frontal arc, he may try to identify him on a leadership test. If failed, the enemy is either not seen, or mistaken as a friend. This should be modified by distance, a penalty of one for every twelve inches, and a penalty of one for light cover and two for hard cover. If successful, the soldier can take action and open fire. When they are activated, nearby soldiers can roll to determine if they can react, using the same method and penalties. Soldiers asleep in bunkers have an additional penalty of one – with their first success they are awoken and start getting their kit ready and on the second success, in a subsequent turn, they can leave their bunker and become sentries. If the leader is awoken and activated, he can raise the alarm and all Red troops can act normally.
The alarm is automatically raised if the leader is captured.
Hopefully, this scenario will have given you and your opponent some food for thought and it should be a change to going in ‘all guns blazing’. There are many gaps in my suggestions, but I did not want to just copy and paste the Black Op srules into this scenario. Some player or umpire judgement may be required. Have fun! WS&S
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