Sunday 24 March 2013

A Clear Victory - Now the People Demand Investment in Infrastructure!

We played a game of AK47 Reloaded yesterday and for the first time ever I managed a clear victory in a cross border incursion. My combined FAPLA-Cuban force successfully defeated a largely infantry SADF force despite losing two of the three objectives to the enemy.

The South African Paras were very professional, quickly occupying their objective, a built up area near a road entrance, without casualtiesand digging in. This deterred a Cuban tank unit from trying to take them on at close quarters. A good tactic for infantry faced with tanks in AK47, as in real life, is to hunker down inside built up areas so the armour has to close with them, allowing the footsloggers to close assault.



In the above picture you can see the Paras deployed in the built up area with the tanks approaching. The South Africans have just called in an airstrike, hence the explosion near the T-34s.


Elsewhere, a big unit of FAPLA militia successfully destroyed an SADF infantry unit in close combat although a second SADF unit secured the objective (the built up area with the crashed Mercedes objective marker). The destruction of this South African unit was to make a big difference to the Cuban-FAPLA victory points total.


In the above photo the marauding Cuban T-34s have just seen off a unit of SADF armoured cars. The vulnerability of armoured cars against tanks was underlined in this encounter. The South Africans were very brave in that they closed quickly with the tanks in order to maximise the effectiveness of their firepower. Unfortunately for them, this wasn't enough to knock out the  Cuban armour. What followed was swift and deadly - professional units get a re-roll when firing and armoured cars are not very well protected against high velocity armour piercing shot.

The game ended shortly after this with FAPLA having secured only one objective, digging in on the reverse slope of the gentle hill in the centre of the photograph. Communist casualties were light though and it was the body count that made all the difference in the end.

The upshot was that the SADF retreated back across the border at nightfall and the locals welcomed their liberation with calls for the Cuban engineers to sort out the roads and water supply!

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