Northern Fury – Keflavik Capers
Playtest Report by AndrewJ 20 Apr 2015
I just finished this one last night - what an excellent scenario! All sorts of interesting things going on.
The Russians definitely had me off balance at first. I managed to put a pair of Harpoons into the suspect trawler up north, but despite a desperate afterburner run I was just moments too late to deal with the plane-full of fun down south, and some of the eastern Badgers kept launching just as I got into missile range so I lost radars there. The eastern sub landings went off without a hitch (for Russia, that is...), although a coast-guard helicopter did manage to spot the Echo at periscope depth on the way out, and called in a P-3 to sink it for revenge. Spetznaz ruined various comms stations in the west, despite helicopter patrols specifically looking for them in the area, and my ground troops only ever caught one squad of them.
My sub up north managed to sink a Udaloy with a salvo of 4 Harpoons, but then got nailed by what I assume was an SS-N-14. (Edit: nope - MAD hit from a heli, then swarmed.) My desperate BOL shots as the torps closed in managed to sink the Slava right next door to the Kuznetsov, which must have raised a few Russian eyebrows, so some honour was restored.
The main air war went reasonably well for me. (Thank heavens for the tankers. Those saved me more than once.) I managed to fend off the northern Badgers and Backfires, massacre the incoming Yaks, decimate the ASW heli swarm, and even get some good kills by coming up behind Su-33s that were headed back to the carrier, all for the loss of three Eagles. Some Eagles even got up near Jan Mayen, and managed to slaughter the incoming An-26s with gunfire, so none ever reached Iceland. The first appearance of the Foxhounds was a rude surprise, but some of those Eagles coming back got in behind them, and downed the first two. The next two damn near killed my AWACs though. What eventually saved me from the Foxhounds was my pair of AMRAAM-toting Eagles, which came on the scene just as the Russian tankers arrived, and the Foxhounds were lining up to drink. Between them they managed to kill 8 of the tankers in a spastic AMRAAM salvo, before dying in the swarm of Russian fighters. But that was enough to strip the escorts away from the incoming air landing, and another cargo-plane massacre followed. None of them crossed the Icelandic coast. It would have been absolutely impossible to accomplish all those tanker kills with Sparrows.
That was so much fun I'm going to go try another one!