Northern Fury – Bump in the Night
Playtest Report by AndrewJ Mar 2017
Well, that's certainly different from ‘The Longest Battle!’
I played as the Russians. My initial plan was to use the quick-reloading Hinds to safely shoot up enemy warships from a distance, before bringing my own warships to bear as necessary. Unfortunately, the Hinds being on quick-reload doesn't actually matter, because their reload capability is day-only, so the Russian will only get to use them once at the beginning of the scenario and once at the end. So much for that plan!
Anyway, as the AEW went up and turned on its radar it saw the first Penguin came in on one of my trawlers. I fired back with the Sepals sinking the Hauk. My Hinds then made a run on the Sliepner using their Spirals, scuffing it a bit but doing no truly significant damage. The main thing they learned was that the Norwegians are great at shooting down tiny supersonic missiles in the dark with basic gunsights. Hmmm.... It took more Sepals to get rid of the Sliepner. Once they'd finished with their missiles the Hinds went and shot up some of the lesser ships with their rockets and guns, stopping the Valkyrian dead in the water, before proceeding to shoot down the recce Lynx.
Most of my ships were operating to the E of Storfosna Island, so I sent my Shmels to go around the N end of the island and then down the W side. As they were rounding the N tip they were fired on by a barrage of torps (detected courtesy of the Pauk). Being sensible fellows, the Shmels ran away, scurrying back around the island to put it between them and the torpedoes, and thus escaped unharmed. (The Haze's then took care of the sub.) Pretty much everyone went down the E side of the island then, for a general engagement with the NATO force. Being a dummy I let my minesweeper get out in front where it was shot up a bit (an engine kill, no less) before the Pauk could race down and rescue it. The Pauk actually turned into my pocket battleship, which is funny for such a little boat, but with nothing left on the NATO side to outrange its 76 mm gun it could beat up whatever it wanted, and retreat unmolested at flank speed while its damaged foe fell behind. The Shmels then came down in line of battle to finish off the bulk of the enemy by doing most of the final battering and sinking.
At the end the reloaded Hinds made another appearance to sneak inland and gun down the Huey as it made another cargo run.