After inaugurating his new wargame room before Christmas with some simple DBA, Phil booked us in for a scenario based "AK47 Republic" game this week. He'd needed a couple of weeks to sort things out beforehand. My mind was a little bit elsewhere. My car had developed a fault with the EMS whilst driving back from the eldest daughter's after Christmas, and with holidays and everything I'd struggled to get it booked in. Anyway. I managed to get it fixed on the day, so I set off for Phil's, only pausing to grab a couple of copies of the rules. Couldn't find my QRS stash and my original rules, but no worry. Only needed them as a back up anyway
We had what amounts to a full turn out, with me, Chris, Tim & Steve. Alas Phil had fallen slightly short of his intended aim. He'd run out of time to set the game up as well as to ask me to bring along some bits and pieces he couldn't find. Which included rules and Pinned markers, so it was lucky I'd got the rules with me. He'd also been unable to get the full scenario sorted. I suspect he couldn't find a box of scenery with the various odds and ends to make it work. I know for previous games like this that he's got things like a DC3, loads of airfield bits and pieces and so on.
No matter, we agreed to play a "pick up" game instead as a rules refresher. Phil pulled out his pair of AK47 armies, which are a Dictatorship called the Pan AfricaN Treaty Organisation (PANTO for short) and a Colonial/Settlers army based around French paratroopers, which feature one of his favourite models, an RCL on a motorbike. We split up in to two teams, with Chris & Tim taking on me and Steve, with the aim of re-familiarising Tim & Steve who haven't played as often as the rest of us.
Unfortunately Phil didn't have the army sheets for the two armies. Pre-stroke he carried the details in his head and could write them out quite quickly with minimal checking. Nowadays, less so. With the clock ticking ever onwards Chris decreed we just play with all the toys in the box, and roll on the Political Charts regardless of Political Points. For what ever reason we ended up attacking. Foolishly I let the defenders put out the objectives having chosen our attacking edge, rather than the other way round. I think we were doomed from the start.
I only took the one photo. I had some regulars in the centre of the edge nearest the camera, and Steve had some militia to their right, and the French professionals to their right. We both started with three units on the table, which is never good for the attackers, as the defenders get to move the last unit each turn. We compounded this by rolling low movement dice and also by being unable to hit anything with our mortars (even the Professional one). Our only +2 weapons were some RCLs, which refused to move mostly as they were not provided with trucks, and some RPG units which we couldn't get in range due to the movement die rolls. We pushed bravely forwards, and then in the second turn Chris had a golden round with the three mortars in the central built up area, killing with each strike and getting a couple of collaterals due to my carelessness.
As we failed to get our tanks on at the start and they had theirs, plus an AA gun, we were comprehensively outranged and got badly shot up advancing over the open ground. I could have been smarter there, but having surrendered the entire table width to get at the objectives we would never have had enough time with a mainly infantry based army if we'd moved through the templates. Even so we only made 18" moving in the open.
The game came to a premature conclusion in abject failure for the attackers. Taking a massive portion of sour grapes I can honestly say that "AK47 Republic" doesn't work as a pick up game if you don't use the points and political table correctly. It was then time for a cup of coffee or tea and a chinwag.
Throughout the game we had occasional need to refer to the rules, and although the ones I took are the final iteration of the original rules (two different versions, in fact, Oct 2005 & May 2006) they aren't in my opinion, an improvement on the original 1997 version. The "clarifications" incorporated from the original group discussion don't really help and add complexity to little effect. I never did like the introduction of new/old guns and tanks, as the point was always that a tank was a tank was a tank. The recent discussion on the AK47 Republic FB group about how to classify BMP2s and AMX 30s or whatever really misses the point of it all. It's about the troop quality not different weapon systems. The change to line of sight into/out of templates, creating the "bubble" with the impenetrable edge instead of just having a 2" restriction was never an improvement either, and why the morale deduction for having a gap in a unit disappeared I really don't know. The truth is that Martin was losing interest in the mechanisms in the early rulebook and was starting to work on AK47 Republic Reloaded by this point, but that's another story.
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