Being a Cold War seasonal entertainment staged for the MondayNight group …
The game combined some elements of the celebrated Operation Cold Feet and some real and fictional mayhem from Ice Station Zebra. The rules were AK-47 classic with a few scenario tweaks (plus a personal EDNA die roll which was set too easy so allowed a fair degree of role play to direct the narratives*).
AK-47, of course, is designed for Post War semi-historical African Warlord battles … but in its earlier format (sometimes referred to as classic) has a simple and swashbuckling style that translated comfortably from the savannah to ice flow. 3 of the 4 players were new to it but picked it pretty quickly.
(Ice Station Cold Feet)
Briefly, something has fallen out of the sky somewhere on the ice flow, and a Soviet Ice Station has gone off line. Nato has sent a mission to find out what is going on – and maybe gather some goodies.
The Nato mission is … parachute in – find and check out the Ice Station – skyhook out any sensitive gear** – RV with the submarine for extraction …
There is a Soviet mission which is after the same materials and is charged with denying the Nato mission.
(the Nato troops dropped successfully close to the station and only lost one member on the ice)
(Nato operatives secure the Ice Station and search for clues)
There then followed a preposterous aside where they find a dead Soviet astronaut who has crawled in for shelter … In the ‘real’ narrative, it is a spy satellite, but Ian, on his departure, passed me some old Airfix astronauts which he not found a use for for years, so I painted one up and got him straight into a game (however circuitously).
(Space debris found at Ice Station Cold Feet)
By this stage the Russians were aware they were coming second in the race and had begun to mortar the Station and called up reinforcements …
(the Soviet team were quickly reinforced by a 1940s style detachment of ski troops and aerosans)
And everyone was surprised when some light tanks turned up to support the Nato contingent. A miniature battle on the ice broke out and a couple of airstrikes caused havoc (the professional Soviet special force had few heavy weapons, but proved good at rolling the ‘Double Four’ with their small arms fire – which in AK-47 wins then an airstrike special effect: very handy when you have some tanks to quieten down!***)
(Cold War: battle on the ice)
By this stage the Nato force was having problems … the skyhook mission had been aborted due to the presence of enemy Ground Attack fighters over the RV so everything would have to go out by submarine …
(Cold War getting hotter … Flogger strike coming in on the Nato tank support)
But, thinly disguised as Soviet, the extraction team shows up in the nick of time (and the random roll put it very nearly adjacent to the the Nato team which was all but pushed off the end of the ice) …
I won’t include full details of the debrief (as we may run the game again, so reserve the right to recycle some of the twists) but we ended up with a clear outcome for the mission and a thumbs up from the players who seemed to have got into the swing of things.
Of course both sides subsequently denied everything and such is the nature of the pack ice that eventually it will all have disappeared without a trace …
(Ice Station Cold Feet: a last man seen leaving the chaos)
AK-47 ‘classic’ seemed to work very well for this freewheeling evening game … and has a ‘cope with anything’ simplicity that enables the game to bundle along …
*******
*purely to avoid those catastrophes where players get killed early on, everyone was allowed a ‘get out of jail’ argument plus an edna roll – as nobody failed the rolls, that aspect morphed harmlessly into a more ‘matrix’ style mechanism and allowed players a little role play.
** the Fulton Skyhook … it was real but had to be aborted due to the crowded skies ..
***basically we played all the bits of AK’s main rules bar we ignored the ‘choice’ morale test (so as to keep the small number of units we were using all in the game – for a good while at least) …
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