Giving Black Ops a try

This is a brief battle report, that has been hiding in the draft section for more than two years, covering Black Ops.

The wargames series by Osprey covers small, compact rule sets. Usually around 12 GBP and 64 pages thick. Among them you'll find rule sets like the popular post-apocalyptic Gaslands or historical and fantasy systems like Lion / Dragon Rampant. But today we want to take a look into Black Ops. Between the holidays of 2018 and 2019, we used the spare time for a game of Black Ops. I've seen it at Crisis a few years back in 2015, was written by Guy Bowers. Not an unfamiliar name in wargaming, as he's working for Karwansaray Publishers on Wargaming Soldier & Strategy.

Black Ops is about tactical espionage gaming and you need only a very minimal set of items to play. A couple of D6, a ruler, at least 4 miniatures per side and a board, set up to your likes. When you're thinking about a gaming Black Ops, think of games like Commandos, Metal Gear Solid or Rainbow 6.

Therefore, I mustered a couple of miniatures, that I even had painted, in this case the Bundeswehr Kampftaucher (German Marines).

Florian, who would be my counterpart in this game, kit bashed a couple of terrorists from the Frostgrave Cultist sprues and from the Wargames Factory Modern Military / Project Z Spec Ops range.

We set up a game table of around 4 by 4 ft, using a Micro Art Studio mat, a couple of Dust Warzone Tenements, the Walking Dead scenery booster and some Russian die cast cars.

And we need the proper gaming accessories, we grabbed a laser line, a deck of cards and dice bag.

And as you shouldn't game with an empty stomach, we set up a bit to eat and drink. The rum was a birthday present for Florian, and went very well with the dark chocolate. Along with some oven baked vegetables and some wagyu filet.

Well-fed it was time to begin the game. Black Ops uses cards for activation. Specialist are matched with cards like the Jack, regular grunts to the lower numbered cards. This breaks up the regular I-go-you-go of many games, and I like variants in activation or some non-dice process (as for example Freebooter's Fate does for battle).

So, we went for it and played a couple of turns, mixing up rules, writing notes down of unclear situations (that Florian would ask Guy about) and had some bloody fun. An elite warband like my marines can do quite a lot of damage to some fanatic cultists.

It was quick and easy fun. The first turns were a bit slow, as we both hadn't played the rules before, so it was a lot of learning by doing, try, error and repeat. The benefit of the compact Osprey type wargame rules is, that you have a lean book. Florian came to the conclusion, that he had to rebuild the warband with other weapon options. I'm looking forward to give this rule set another spin and see how it will compare to Spectre Operations second edition.

Beyond that? It was entertaining, we had proper food and drinks and setting up a game like this is lot less hassle than mass combat back in the day. But I need more painted miniatures and terrain, so I'm off to take care of that.

As this was a try-out game, similar to the one I did with Dino and some of my work buddies for Cruel Seas, we were more about learning the game than actually writing down information or taking more pictures for a battle report. But I like the idea and it is something that I would like to extend in the future, of course - always paired with drinks and food!