Through the Mud and the Blood playtest

The FGN Marines set up a forward base in southwestern Ar-Sülüm, and they encounter an Emirate attack by a rifle company with 45mm mountain guns and armored support.

Fleet Grey Marines Company I. OOB:

This will be the standard setup for this unit in future battles, of course countering the casualties with less troops per squad or worse quality. In this game, all troops were Regular/Reasonable.

Big Man Status III

Lt. Commander Jazak Helgrub

Rifle Squad (6)

Big Man Status II

Midshipman Horatius Vokot

Rifle Squad (9)

-          Sniper detachment (2) - when the Sniper card is drawn, the pair disengages from the unit and will work as snipers.

Big Man Status II

Midshipman Artur Imsür

Rifle Squad (9)

Big Man Status II

Midshipman Bloto Ergele

Shock Trooper ("trench cleaner") Squad (9)

HMG Squad (3) - 2 operators and 1 carrying ammo/replacement

Axvaci-4 Support Tank - Used the Renault FT-17's rules in this game but might come up with my own.

They also had an Air Support card.

Colonist OOB:

The colonists had two larger Rifle sections (11 riflemen+NCO), an Attack Trooper section (11+1), two 45mm Mountain Guns for support, a Great Ali (Airfix Mk I) tank. I gave names to the leaders but duly forgot them and hadn't saved the OOB document.

The attack troopers begin moving away with a pretty bad die roll.

Here they come! An Emirate squad dashes forward and lays suppressive fire, wounding a lot of men from Midshipman Vokot's squad.

The Air Support card is drawn and the Grey plane's MG fire decimates the attackers.

The two Marine snipers take out the high commander and a squad leader in rapid succession, then the heavy MG opens fire... the colonists lose their bottle.

The stormers turn back on a Storm card and begin hurling grenades towards the advancing tank. They stop the steel beast then their own tank destroys it with a lucky shot.

In the meantime, the colonist stormtroopers are moving on a blind and advance on Midshipman Imsür's positions...

After a fierce combat with the 2nd rifle squad (and throwing them back to the secondary trenches), all of the Marines' wrath is unleashed on the Emirate stormtrooper squad. They die fighting and do not surrender.

Overview: 12 wounded for the Marines, 22 for the Colonists with roughly equal forces but a better luck with cards.

This is now one of the few "commercial" (e.g. not homemade) rules I have played and the card/initiative element certainly adds an interesting flow. Still got to figure out some details but this game was good for covering the basics.