Wyre Forest Gamers - AK47 - A Declaration of Independence

AK47 - A Declaration of Independence

A game played at Tom's house in mid November 2021 in which Karl was the opponent. As usual, I am grateful to Tom for the description of the battle and the accompanying photographs.

So in the game today the Settlers made a unilateral Declaration of Independence and the populace supported the declaration meaning that one of their militia units was upgraded to regular. The Dictatorship responded with a crackdown resulting in their reserves being deployed at a point dictated by their opponents. The Colonialists get to be the attacker and place one objective in the village at the centre of the table and the two others on each hill at the far end of the table.

The Settlers get all three of their regular units deployed on table at the beginning of the game. The Dictator gets one militia unit with attached armour and one other infantry militia. The infantry unit deploys on the objective in the buildings, the other unit deploys in the jungle area to the right of the village. The Settlers' foot unit deploys in the wood on their baseline, their two armoured units deploy on their left flank so that they can move to the two objectives on the hill.

In the first few moves the Dictator's unit deployed in the jungle, bringing the Settler infantry in the jungle under fire with their armour and their HMG, while themselves being brought under fire from the tanks in the Settlers' two armoured units. The Settlers in the woods fall back while one armoured unit moves to the first hill to take the first objective while the second armoured unit moves very slowly towards the second objective. During this period no reserves arrive.

The first armoured unit (regular) deploys their infantry onto the hill, moves forward and gets into a fire fight with the militia unit in the jungle but a run of poor die rolls resulted in three sections of the regulars killed and only one pinned militia unit. The regulars fail two morale tests and retire behind the hill crest and 3” away from all the dead bodies in the hope of maintaining their remaining morale point.

This turn brings on both the Settlers' reserve militia units arriving in the corner in support of the shaken regular unit which is still tentatively holding onto its objective. The second armoured unit slowly moves forwards and eventually deploys behind the crest holding the second objective. At this point the Settlers are clearly winning with two of the three objectives in their hands and are praying for high die rolls for the end of game.

But the dice do not favour the settlers and over the next few turns the Dictator's reserves slowly arrive, one every other move, being placed at the far end of the table and having to slowly make their way towards the action.

The militia in the jungle slowly fall back and deploy at the back of the jungle to threaten the Settlers' second objective. A second militia finally gets into range with the turn counter on 30 (out of 33) and both militia units charge over the crest to engage the Settlers' armoured infantry in close combat (17 infantry & two tanks vs 8 infantry and one tank)

In the resulting combat the regulars suffer heavily but manage only to fail one morale test. They hold their breath as they roll the turn dice hoping for a 4+ to end the game while they are still disputing the objective on the hill. But they roll a 2 and the game goes into one last move. The Settlers charge a militia unit into the melee and their tank manages to kill one of the Dictator's tanks, but in the following close combat they loose heavily again and this time require to pass two morale tests requiring ‘6’s to hold on.

So at the end of the game the Dictator holds two objectives ‘10’ & ‘20’ while the settlers hold the other objective ‘30’. So the Dictator managed to pull a draw out of the bag on the last move. This is one step up from their heavy loss the last time the two sides met.