Dodgson's World: The Hellfire Campaign Part 5

I seem to be missing an AAR and the accompanying photos. Hmm. Ah well, never mind. Last time around, we fought a battle north of Alacrity. The insurgents held the field but at some cost to themselves.

After the last battle in Alacrity, both sides pulled back to lick their wounds. Casualties had been heavy and neither side felt ready to try again immediately. The rebels camped north of Alacrity while the Company occupied the town, only to retreat southwards to give themselves time to recover before assaulting again. While the two main forces recovered, other elements of both sides began converging on Alacrity once more. By the afternoon of the fifth day, the insurgents felt able to move their main force into the town. ShortCom responded by sending in the remnants of Jessop's Regiment. The insurgents hunkered down, ready to make taking the town costly while Prince Bishopette Athaniel Moor tried to complete her mission of kissing babies and raising the flag for the insurgents.

In the meantime, Liberty Battalion of the insurgents had made its way by secret mountain trails to the outskirts of Alacrity. It immediately moved to pin the remaining ShortCom forces.

In Alacrity, the insurgents had occupied a number of key buildings. They dug in and hoped to weather the ShortCom storm just as they had before.

Unfortunately for them, the ShortCom commander had finally got to grips with the technology available to him. The artillery barrage quickly destroyed one company of insurgents, while the long range shelling for the supporting light tank saw off another. The insurgents had nothing with which to counter this long range assault, so they girded their loins and moved quickly forwards from building to building until they were within range of the enemy and could attempt to take out the enemy with their short-range RPGs. Sadly this did not work. There was nothing for it but to try to break out by close assaulting the vehicles and making a gap in the enemy's lines.

The company guarding the Prince Bishopette charged forward to engage the enemy mobile infantry. They outnumbered the enemy 2:1, their blood was up, and they were fighting for something they believed in. They could not lose. Reader, they lost. As the melee raged backwards and forwards, they held the upper hand at all times but could not quite close the deal. Then disaster struck. A ShortCom snatch team grabbed the Prince Bishopette and bundled her into a waiting APC as the insurgents were driven back. As they caught their breath, ShortCom troopers covered the withdrawal of the APC. The campaign was over. The insurgents had failed and ShortCom could now dominate all of Fidelis Superior.

This was a fun little campaign. The rules required a certain amount of interpretation and sportsmanship on the part of the players, but that suited us nicely. Hellfire itself is a pretty good set of rules. The combat calculations felt a bit clunky at the start but we soon got to grips with them and I'm sure that the mental arithmetic has rejuvenated our ageing brains a little bit. The only problem with the rules is that they don't quite play quickly enough to fit the time available to us, but that won't stop us playing them again when we have more time.