I thought you might like to read about our little encounter last night. We had six brand new, right-out-of-the-box players including a USAF LtCol and a 1LT and a USN LCDR (in civilian clothing). I think they had a good time. I had available downloads of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reports about the "provocations" of last June, including four communiques of the Korean People's Army Navy. Great stuff!
Our scenario started at 0430 (local). Players were asked to plot 15 minute periods (five Tactical Turns). The DPRK forces split immediately into two groups travelling on perpendicular courses. The RoK forces stayed pretty much together, transmitting intermittently to gather information on the North's forces.
There was a lot of radar clutter due to commercial fishing boats (abstracted by me) and numerous small islands. Radar ducting also rendered radar returns ambiguous. Since there was the Korean Peninsula behind the DPRK boats, this really affected the RoK operators.
0500: DPRK boats which were not transmitting on their Rangout SS radars used them as 1st Gen. ESM devices to pick up the intermittent radar transmissions of the RoK vessels. They did not know how many ships were present but they did have a clear idea (thanks to the RoK radar cheat sheet) which types of boat were present.
0515: Both sides had radar contacts but these were pretty much bearing only (but neither side was told this as I had given warnings before and wanted to keep things vague at this point). One minute to sunrise, surface visibility was 1.1 nm (2,200 yards).
0530: Two DPRK missile boats driven by Terry Kimes crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) and were challenged by RoK vessels to turn around at once or be fired upon....
English translation of the radio traffic (courtesy CNN):
"We are a civilian fishing boat with a rudder casualty and we cannot turn around."
"Halt your engines so we can send an engineer to assist you."
"Um, no, that won't be necessary. We think we've got it about fixed."
[RoK player rolls D100 for detection = 01!]
"You are two North Korean patrol boats intruding into South Korean waters. Turn about at once or risk being fired upon."
0533: Terry reverses course and increases speed to 21 kts.
0536: 1LT Cooper (now on active duty with the Korean People's Army-Navy) turns on his radar and prepares to fire at the RoK vessels south of the islands.
0537: Hot firing solution die rolls (two "1" rolls) result in missile launches from two directions on two radar contacts. One contact is only 1.65 nm away, though, and the missile's minimum range is 2.5 nm.
0537.5: The RoK Sea Dolphin (commanded by PV2 Scott Thorne, a cavalry scout with the US Army, what's he doing here?!) manages to shoot down an incoming Styx SS-N-2C missile (which is pretty good considering there was 15 secs from launch to impact). However, the shoot-down occurs within the last three seconds of flight and missile parts, fuel and other debris rains down on the tiny boat, causing enough damage to render it useless. It's going to sink very soon, in other words.
The three remaining Styx missiles, unable to acquire, fly right over the two ships. They fall harmlessly into the sea about 43 nm down range, killing several crabs.
0538: The other four Styx missiles launched at 0537 pair off (random die rolls didn't help the RoK crew) and smash into a Sea Dolphin and a Paek Ku doing 200 DP's each worth of destruc-tion on boats worth under 10 DPs. Ouch!
0541: The remaining RoK boat, a Wildcat, fires two Exocets at a fleeing Soju patrol boat which ironically opens the range to 2.7 nm (from the 2.64 nm range at launch) allowing the Exocets to acquire! The Soju fires her aft gun at the incoming missiles twice. The first is a miss and the second shot malfunc-tions (dice roll of 00). 33 DPs each send the Soju and her crew to Crab Heaven.
0542: RoK aircraft (F-4s and F-16s) are detected coming into the area on afterburner. DPRK ships scurry under the SAM envelope, ending the day's fun.
Final Score:
DPRK: three ships sunk
RoK: One ship sunk
Diplomatic victory for the North, a ratings victory for CNN, a good meal for the crabs, lots of pizza deliveries to the Pentagon and White House, more patrol boat orders for the South Koreans (and they'll be better boats than the ones they lost, too!) and a good time was had by all. I don't know a good way to teach plotting without being really boring about it and the background noise at Game Empire was a bit high. Thanks for sticking with it until the shooting started. It does get more entertaining as you get more familiar with the rules, etc.
A ration of grog for the men!
BT
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