Northern Fury #17 – Poke in the Eye
AAR by fitzpatv, Dec 2021
This is a very short scenario that can be played in about half-an-hour. We return to the adventures of David Strong and his band of Anglo-Canadian special forces, who have now reached Reykjavik. Staking-out the harbour, they see an Oscar II SSGN arrive and begin re-stocking with missiles. Not long afterwards, they hear that a pair of F-117 stealth planes are incoming and are ordered to paint targets for them with their laser-designators.
In addition to the Oscar, there are two other Soviet ships in port – an Amga ammo ship and a Stenka patrol boat. No action is actually required from the commandoes and it is very much a case of mounting a strike with the Night Hawk aircraft. These each carry a pair of Paveway IIIs. I duly launched two at the sub and one each at the other vessels. Both the Amga (100VP) and the Stenka (none) were obliterated but, to my horror, the Oscar dived before the Paveways could reach her, quite a trick when she was in dock and re-supplying!. As a result, both weapons went blind and missed.
With no base to return to, it didn’t look good for the F-117s, which lacked the fuel to outlast the game time limit, but I needn’t have worried, as they were safely extracted by a scenario event.
It remained to get my four teams of operatives (a quartet of Canadians, two pairs of Brits and an Icelandic liaison/observer) to a marked safe house. One of the British teams requires careful navigation to get over a narrow bridge. On the way, the Canadians met a Soviet paratrooper patrol, but had enough firepower (high explosives with an 8nm range ??) to wipe the enemy out (no points).
In the absence of further hostiles, I tried to get the Canadians to attack the Oscar, which had re-surfaced, but the game wouldn’t let me get near enough to attack due to some kind of hidden exclusion zone. So it was just a case of rendezvousing at the Safe House, which was no problem and scored 25VP per team. This was enough to take the score to +200 and a Minor Victory.
I replayed it a couple of times to see if I could get the Oscar by taking more care or flying-in so close that it couldn’t dive in time, but this was fruitless, as it only takes a moment for it to get below zero depth and this is all it needs. Its 'Dive When Threat is Detected' needs to be set to OFF.
Anteater’s (should that be Aardvark’s?) Revenge is an altogether more complex affair...
[NOTE: Please use the latest version of the Community Pack as the scenario has been updated to fix the problem noted]