Mayday Game

On Saturday, I hosted an Ambush Alley: Force on Force sci-fi scenario for Mayday, a local gaming convention here in Edmonton. I mainly used the Force on Force rules, but with an adapted original Ambush Alley scenario, "Sweep and Clear".

The scenario, set in my sci-fi campaign universe, now consists of regulars from the San Carlos Colonial Legion, with a human command section and two units of alien Fir (GZG 15mm Ixx) warriors, trying to clear a town held by Anarchist partisans.

The map is based on the original "Sweep and Clear".
Because of a change in the objective to neutralizing all the hot spots instead of three of five, I allowed the regulars to draw an asset card at the beginning of the game. The three regular players (I let the four players go three vs. one) got really lucky and drew an armoured car, which greatly increased their options.
The regular units at the starting line. Each alien Fir (Ixx) unit had five warriors, with one heavy weapon. The human command section had four men with one SAW.
The regular players went for a plan of sweeping one side of the table with all their infantry units supporting each other, while the armoured car blocked any partisan attacks from the other side. The partisan player placed most of his hot spots inside buildings for the cover bonus. However, since all of the said buildings were in line of sight, this turned out to not be a good idea.
The armoured car engaging a partisan unit.
The start of the sweep, with a Fir unit moving behind cover and firing, then eliminating the partisan unit behind the building cluster.
And the command section moved up to support them.
The regulars then moved forward some more, while the armoured car covered their flank.
A Fir unit moved up and fired into the partisan unit guarding one of the hot spots. The regular players were extremely lucky with their reaction rolls. They managed to beat the partisans and fire first almost every single time, with very bad results for the partisan units.
One interesting moment occurred when a partisan unit from a nearby building fired on the armoured car and hit the unbuttoned commander. However, on the medical roll the regular player rolled a 6 and he was okay!
The partisan player also did badly with his reinforcement rolls. He rolled 6 twice and didn't get any reinforcements, then he rolled a SAW gunner only a couple of other times. He was never able to build a good enough force to whittle down the regulars. He also had very poor luck with getting anti-tank weapons, and had a lot of trouble handling the armoured car. The above was one of the rare times when he did have a nice shot. He had an RPG gunner with a good line of fire, but only got a "ping" result against the front of the vehicle.
In the end, the regulars swept through all the hot spots, eliminating most of the partisan units along the way. Here a Fir unit moved in to finish off a shaken partisan unit.

The game ended up being an overwhelming victory for the regulars, with the partisan player complaining that the scenario was rather unbalanced against the partisans. However, when we playtested the game the partisans won easily. A lot of bad luck was involved this time.

A unit of partisans hiding behind a building.
Partisans gathering around a hot spot.

All in all, it was a great game. I'm thinking of balancing out the chance appearance of armoured vehicles by giving the irregulars some sort of anti-tank unit bonus for their reinforcement rolls. That may make things a bit better.