Freundel was on his own for this one. It was a small mission where too many soldiers would be obvious. His mission was to sneak through to a small airbase on the edge of the small Eastern European town of Tristness, where he was to hijack a helicopter and get it back to base. He needed to move silently and quickly. With any luck, he would not make contact with the enemy at all, but he was geared up for bear just in case. A hunting knife at his side and his MP7 were all he really needed, but he also had his night goggles, the best boots money could buy and a selection of ammunition and grenades in case the proverbial fecal matter hit the whirling blades.
The chopper touched down. There was a road block ahead. He moved into position only to realise that there was a sentry right beside him. Fortunately, the sentry was more interested in his Gauloise than in keeping look out. A single shot from the suppressed MP7 downed the sentry, and Freundel pulled the poor sod into cover.
"Hah, I did that one left-handed," he muttered to himself.
Just as well he had concealed the body, because a Hind was hovering over the street. It circled a couple of times before flying off. Lucky break.
Moving past the road block, Freundel wormed through the drainage ditches of a busy highway. Properly busy. Did everyone in this damned country drive BMPs? It sure seemed like it. BMPs, just the job for the school run. He ducked a couple of times as the BMP drove past, followed by a GAZ jeep. The vehicles roared off into the distance as several Gauloise-smoking civilians wandered down the street. They never even say Freundel, cloaked in the shadows as he was.
A suspected enemy soldier resolved itself into a rotary clothesline. Freundel mentally kicked himself for getting jumpy as he approached a checkpoint ahead just as a T72 passed through. It drove on, but paused as Freundel shot another guard who got to close. The commander got out his binos and scanned around but did not see Freundel. Moments later the T72 moved on and was soon lost from sight.
As he approached the airfield, Freundel heard another helicopter taking off, but it headed off in the opposite direction. He took out the guard at the airfield and began breaking into the helicopter. It did not take him long and very soon he was flying along in the nap of the earth towards his base. Mission complete.
I had a yen to play Warfighter: Shadow War this evening, so I dug it out and set up a solo mission. I was allowed one soldier and as much equipment as he could carry. Well, as much as I could afford for the fairly generous points allowance anyway. What has put me off playing this more so far are the extra rules for night actions. These cover noise, unaware enemies and what happens the balloon goes up and they all suddenly realise you are there. Luckily, in this game I did not need to worry about this last. It could have gone very differently if all the heavy machinery that I encountered had hung around.
Warfighter: Shadow War is a game of sneaking. You try not to make noise and look for ways to mitigate any noise you do make. If you make too much noise or hang around in areas where there are too many enemies, you will get spotted and then you will have to shoot your way out. I suppose with a full team, that might not be so bad, but I was playing with a single soldier, and would not have the firepower to do any more than take out individuals. So, sneaky was the watchword.
One potential problem for the player in this game is that the unaware enemies move randomly. I got lucky and many moved off out of the combat area, but I could easily have wound up with tanks and combat choppers hanging around in my location making life difficult for me if the dice had been a bit different.
All this makes it quite a different game from the daytime version of the game where blowing things up is de rigueur. This is a good thing. Shadow War is the scenes from the start of the movie where the heroes are stealing into the enemy compound to rain all-out thermonuclear heck down on the bad guys. Warfighter is the climactic scene at the end where everything gets blown up. There is room for both in my world.
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