Flying Lead - First Game

"These Government cutbacks will be the death of me!" thought PC James as his backup arrived. HQ could only afford to send out 2 SWAT members, which seemed woefully little. He almost wished he'd never called in his sighting to Capri Bonnetti and her 4 henchmen entering the old industrial area!

Having a couple of hours "free", I thought I'd trial run my recent purchase of Ganesha Games "Flying Lead" ruleset. With their "Songs Of Blades..." (SoBH) rules being the one I play with the Arabiansquire for Fantasy skirmishes and having also MDRG, the changes hopefully wouldn't be too brutal but different enough to capture the flavour of the action.

Anyway, thoughts after the report.

Forces were kept small to around 250pts.

Cops:

Beat Cop: 26pts Q4+ C2 - Pistol, Handcuffs

SWAT Member: 80pts Q3+ C2 - Flash Bang Grenade, Pistol, Shotgun, Body Armour, Handcuffs, Personnal Comms

SWAT Sniper: 134pts Q3+ C3 - Semi-auto Rifle with Scope, Body armour, Marksman, Sniper, Personnal comms

 

Villians:

Capri: 112pts Q3+ C3 - Large Cal. Pistol, Leader, NCO, Steady Under Fire

Mafia type (x2): 56pts Q4+ C2 - Large Cal Pistol, Sawn Off Shotgun, Mook

Street Thug: 15pts Q4+ C2 Strong, Mook

The Cops entered the industrial area from the South Eastern corner. The Villains could be set up anywhere on the board.

Cautiously the law officers made their way up the eastern side of the site, looking for some of the gang.

They soon found a thug waiting in ambush behind a wall and started to encircle him.

The tough realised and made an escape up a ramp into a nearby building

Meanwhile one of the shotgun welding ganger members tried to move round behind the cops, but the SWAT sniper saw him and gunned him down.

With the police officers stalling or being drawn out in the centre of the site, Capri and an enforcer moved in from the northern edge where they'd been hiding.

Meanwhile PC James spotted a second thug lurking in the eastern building shadows and brought him down with a single cap from his pistol.

With the SWAT member giving chase into the building and no ambushing companion now available, the escaping thug droped down prone behind a crate and crawled for a back ladder.

Meanwhile the sniper had manouvered into a position to take a shot, but missed.

With this threat exposed, the mafia man stepped out of cover to bring the SWAT man into range of his Sawn Off shotgun and blew the sniper away, before running into cover of the crumbling wall.

The remaining cops manouvered themselves round to make a co-ordinated flanking move on the criminal.

Realising this, the crim stepped out of cover to remove the softest target, poor PC James. Miraculously the Mook missed, as did Capri, who moved up to take a shot, as victory presented itself.

With lead flying round his ears, PC James steadied himself and squeezed off a shot at the shotgun wealding goon, taking him out. Capri, finding herself now in sights surrendered, and the remaining thug ran off.

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Thoughts:

On reading, Flying Lead doesn't seem that different to SoBH. There are different special rules to take into consideration, but basically SoBH with everyone having bows.

WRONG!

Guns are dangerous, kids! It's been commented on that in SoBH that an extra combat stat can make a heck of a difference. Well in Flying Lead (FL) all gun attacks carry an added C bonus - a pistol is C+1 whilst a Sawn-off shotgun carried a whopping C+3 at medium range. Gun ranges are usually double that of SoBH ranged attacks, so the standard medium range weapon has a full strength attack at 2xMedium range. Also the SoBH "knocked back" combat result has been replaced, for ranged attacks, with a duck back/go prone result. Our lack of modern (ie gun) gaming experience showed with this latter one, as we could have been taking shots to keep the enemy down or ducking for cover. Especially as you can now move and shoot in one action for a only a C-1 penalty.

There are obviously loads of rules we never touched on - vehicles for one, overwatch for another, but this was a first trial game and I wanted it to stay within the boundries of SoBH (ie 2 small groups).

Still great fun and recommended.