Scouts Out!

Scouts Out!
C Troop musters for action

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Using Loud Ninja Games' Chuhuac: Troop Stats and Organization

Back in 2012 I jumped in one my first Kickstarter: Eli Arndt's 15mm Space Raptors- the Chuhuac. Well, just a few days ago I finally got my new toys.  Awesome stuff and well worth the wait.  Note that all pictures here are from LNG's website.


 Chuhuac Infantry


Chuhauc Battle Suits with Herdmaster

Now I'm mostly a FUBAR player these days, so after looking through my recently gotten loot and visiting LNG's blog ( link ) I've decided on some rough stats for my Chuhuac company. I'm going to start with the infantry and then work my way to the other units, then I'll go to the vehicles.

Chuluac Infantry
Activation: 4+
Expertise: 4+
Suppress: 3
Armor: 4+
Special Abilities:
Fast- Move 6", Duck and Weave 8", Assault 8"
Shocktroops- +1 to activate with actions that allow movement.
Raptors!- +2 in close combat.
Equipment- Plasma Rifle 24" (long range) FP 3

I think that captures the essence of the Chuhuac. They are fast, hard hitting, aggressive, and fairly well protected troops. The basic raptor is a pretty tough critter to begin with, but after joining the "military" they are physically augmented to a level that makes them super human. Toss in armor and you have a pretty tough soldier to kill and a holy terror in close combat.

I'm taking the Plasma Rifle right out of the sci-fi supplement, but I'm wondering if that might be a bit over powered! I may scale them back a bit to being "laser" armed. They're really scary at any range and with an activation of 4+ they are going to get to the action, especially with the "shocktrooper" rule to keep them going!

Eli gave me a powerful hoard of the things, but I doubt that I'll ever use more than a dozen or so in my games… they're just too powerful to see in platoon + games.

Now to start thinking about the heavy weapons, battlesuits, jet bikes, and the grav APC!

Now the question comes:  How to organize them?  Here's the organization for a Chuhuac infantry company from LNG's Kickstarter.

Below is the proposed TO&E (Organization) I used to build this.
The 67 figures will be made up of the following-

1 Company Commander

1 Company Command Element (4)
1 Command Security Team (6 troopers)
2 Platoons of 28 figures each.
Each Platoon breaks down like this –

1 Platoon Command Elements (4)

4 x 6-man Squads

Code wise I believe this is:

1 CRA-004 Herdmaster (1 fig) – $1.25 USD
2 CRA-003 Command Section (4 fig but only 3 are Raptors) – $5.00 USD
5 CRA-001 Troopers (6 fig) – $6.00 USD
5 CRA-002 Leaders/Weapons (6 fig) – $6.00 USD

Not a bad deal for a roughly $50 USD pledge. Now I'm going to look at my pledge In FUBAR terms (I'm going to skip the close combats and special forces). So I'm looking at fielding:

4 mecha (power suits fielded as individual units)
3 jet bikes (maybe the whole lot is a unit)
1 company command team
3 apcs (each an individual unit- but only enough to lift a 'short' platoon of 16 troops)
12 fire teams of three troopers
2 fire teams (really short command squads) of four troops

That's 23 units in FUBAR terms! True, I could cut the infantry unit count in half by fielding full squad units, but that would be killer in FP terms if I go plasma. And yeah, it's way too much to put on the board at once in FUBAR. While I think FUBAR could probably handle it I'm not so sure that I could! But I can see myself fielding a reinforced platoon with an extra rifle squad, APCs, mecha, and the jet bikes. This force could look like this:

1 platoon command team (4 troops).
4 (or 5) rifle squads split into 3 trooper fire teams (that's 8-10 units)
1-3 APCs (if I go three then I might reduce the number of squads to make a mechanized platoon).
1 Jet Bike squad of 3 (although I think that's actually just a fire team)
1-4 Battlesuits (with each being a unit of its own).
Maybe even 1 special forces squad too!

Not a bad mix at all! I can see this force giving my Neo-Soviets and US Marines a serious run for the money. Now if only they had some sort of MBT/mecha for some extra oomph! But then again, I could stat out the battlesuits so that they can be serious tank killers in their own right. That would make sense from a Chuhuac point-of-view I think. They might balk at some sort of armored clanker of a tank that's probably too slow and too much of a target. They might prefer a smaller, swifter battlesuit carrying a tank killer plasma gun or missiles/ATGMs. I'll have to look over those battlesuit bits again and hit the LNG site ( http://loudninjagames.blogspot.com/2013/05/chuhuac-support-units-part-one.html )for more info on these guys.

Anyway, I'll post my FUBAR stats for the vehicles and other units.

Semper Fi, carry on.

2 comments:

  1. I can suggest that battlesuits should work nicely in pairs and the bikes in threes. I tried to get the packs to correspond to effective military units.

    The bikes were designed with the idea that each packs the equivalent of four of the weapon that the Chuhuac use as a SAW. I imagined them zipping about the battlefield, laying down close air support in a way similar to US Army "Little Birds".

    The battlesuits were designed as the Chuhuac's main infantry support weapon asset. They can run along with the infantry and should pack enough firepower to work as anti-vehicle (Accelerator Cannon), heavy support (Heavy Plasma Gun) and indirect fire support (Drones). The drone missiles could also be played as anti-tank assets as well. Add in the two plasma SAWs that each of them packs and, whether you dedicate both their back mounts to the same type of weapon or mix and match, they will do you space raptors proud.

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    1. Good stuff Eli. Thanks for the input. It makes these unit's tactical use much more clear. I like the idea of the bikes being light gunships.

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