-ROCKETMAN III-

And so we reached the penultimate chapter of Rocketman III with our hero's and their allies attacking Korsakov's secret base in the depths of Kazakhstan. Having very little idea as to what its actually like in Kazakhstan, I envisoned a large pine forest surrounding a secret airfield and judging by this picture, thats probably not completely impossible.


Player One
Rocketman
George McArthur
’Mad Dog’ Mitchell
Lady Carfax.
Lady Carfax’s driver: Meadows
1 touring car
1 truck
1 armoured car with HMG
1 Ilyushin DB-3 long range bomber

Player Two
The Colonel
Sgt Sternov.
10 x Kazakhstani Bolshevik soldiers (with HMG)
1 truck
1 armoured car with HMG
1 off table mortar crew (requires spotter)

Player Three
Korsakov
Yuri
10 x Iron Guard riflemen
2 x Iron guard machine gunner
1 staff car
1 International Mark 7 Heavy tank with multiple weapons.

Player Four
Olga
10 x Kazakh tribesmen.
1 supply truck
1 Renault FT-17 Light tank with 37mm gun

Chapter four was another successful game, though I didn't fair to well in the beginning. I was player four, so I had the lightest weapons of all. I did have my FT-17 tank, but this only managed to trundle out into the open before it was taken out by the enemy mortar supported by both armoured cars. This was bad enough, but alas, my truck was then trapped inside the tank workshop behind it and couldn't get out. Thus by round three I was reduced to rifles and genades whilst every one else was still intact.

The good guys were attacking from the tree line to the west and had to break through the perimeter fence (easy enough with trucks and armoured cars). Due to the rest of the airfield (off table) being attacked by air craft, the people at the base were already in cover so Oleg and I had hidden just about everything we could. Korsakov, in his armoured suit was in the guard house opposite the tanks which were in their sheds. The idea was we'd lure them out into the open and hit them from all sides once they'd penetrated the base.

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Alas, the game was a complete bloodbath. I jumped the gun and charged out with my light tank, only to have it blown to pieces. The aeroplane was shot down as it made a run against the heavy tank, the heavy tank took out one armoured car before also being hit by the mortar and the last armoured car was taken out by a volley of granades thrown by my Kazahkstani tribes men (their first successful attack in three games). We had a fine time with cotton wool smoke and a good few laughs, but the end result was some what inconclusive, The good guys won a technical victory though neither side managed to meet their victory conditions. Alas, these large scale skirmish games are taking longer then usual because we've been trying out new rules and elements and the complexity tends to slow things down. We could use the chess clock to keep things brisk, but its a bit redundent when so many rules questions need to be clarified.

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This time round, every one managed to hold their own to some degree, hough we all lost our heavier elements as these were the obvious priority targets. A lot of the rules really needed to be tested because they didn't work as well as we'd anticipated. Vehicles carrying deployable elements are a problem and the rules needed to be stream lined. This took up a while as we debatted back and forth and some of the weapons are imbalanced. The 60mm mortar for example was way over powered. I think we do need to consider war head types and qualifiers, but thats for the future. For now I'm preparing chapter five, and hopefully it will be as much fun as chpater four was. Practice will no doubt make perfect.