Trumpeter Salute 2026 - Close Quarter Battle AAR (Narco Terrorist Port Raid

April 2026 Trumpeter Salute occuring in Burnaby BC at the Bonsor Community Centre. I had the fortune to get into another game hosted by Darren (of strategies hobby store & the author of Close Quarter Battle). Darren runs the games with his own published ruleset probably as a mix of funnsies, as well as advertising for the game and it's associated minis. 

 

 

insertion via clipping the wire

 

He runs a good game. He know the rules and has devised some challenging, convention friendly, scenarios. They usually is a time crunch, in terms of terms/action economy, and it's very easy to get bogged down and over extend. The agents are much (MUCH) better than their opposition, but the opposition is plentiful. It's really the threat of the timer which is the biggest constraint, unlimited turns would really only see very unlucky agents getting taken down. 

 

This particular mission had the agents infiltrating a local port that is under the influence of a drug cartel. There is a cartel boss on site, but the local army base is on call to assist. The agents have a certain number of turns to achieve objectives AND LEAVE THE TABLE before the army arrives. Should the Jefe manage to make a phone call the number of turns available decreases quite a bit. 

 

 

 

Objectives included: search the sea cans and find 1/. drug money (and blow it up) 2/. drugs (and blow it up) 3/. refugees getting trafficked (and get them off map) 4/. Russian weapons (take an example weapon and blow up the rest). Also, assassinate the Jefe OR abduct the Jefe for interogation back at base. It's basically impossible to acheive everything. 

 

 

 

Insertion is via a boat or the road. Chainlink fences must be cut through. Sea cans must be picked (or cut if you use your equipment slot to have bold cutters). The area is lit, though the generator can be blown meaning show sight ranges (and you can use an equipment slot for night vision goggle making you a lethal hunter in the dark). Vehicles can be hot wired. Lots of interaction is possible with the scenery.  Also, each agent is run by a different convention player, so it's easy to have imperfect communication and planning. I love friction in games, so this is wonderful to me. 

 

Prior to the alarm being raised the GM's and players would dice off for each cartel members, high roll would control where they talked.  

 

 The alarm would be raised if the cartel members saw the agents at the beginning of their turn. So the agents had a whole turn to react and try and cap anyone who saw them. Explosions would raise the alarm (and did). 

 

 

 

 

Bodies also needed to be dragged out of site of cartel members which was pretty dicey at the beginning. We went for the generator early, which was good and bad. Line of sight went down, alarm went up (explosion), engagement range went down (safer), the jefe started walking towards the phone with intent (more dangerous). 

The jefe and his bodygaurd (more competent and dangerous) were on the boat. They walked towards the construction office (sea can with stairs on the left). 

 

Meanwhile the agents were searching sea cans, struggling with picking locks, and queuing up more explosions. We almost got blown up more than once. The explosives have a timer which is slightly counter intuitive (I didn't use them but it's a set one turn and it counts down at a weird time, so it's easy for you to short yourself the time needed to get clear).  

The guards at the front gate I think were a touch more competent, and EVENTUALLY, there was a firefight across the open area. 

 

 Count down timer seen on another sea can. It was awesome as the agent just got far enough away, but the cartel members swarming like vermin towards another agent mostly were blown up. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Refugees were found. My agent managed to hot wire the truck and back it up close enough to load them up. As the jefe approached the office all the agent were running for the slowly departing truck. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We ended up doing a driveby shooting of the Jefe, one of the agents in the front cab was wounded during the firefight, but we were racing out under the wire. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  There was a moment of collective breath holding as we hit the barriers. It was entirely possible to whiff the damage roll and mess up the truck enough it wouldn't move anymore (or worse). It would take catastrophic unluck to roll that bad......and thankfully it didn't happen. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Victory picture! 5 of 6 objectives achieved (no kidnapped jefe). Wounded agents but no deaths. Lots of fun. 4 stars, would recommend.