Paul came back to the club and walked us through his version of Chain of Command, for the Spanish civil war. I played the Nationalists (with 2 sections of Guardia each with 3 teams) an HMG and an armoured car. Peter with his social predilection played the Republicans (which had 3 big blobs of militia, some barricades, an LMG and an armoured car.

As it was out first game the scenario was pretty simple, a basic ‘kill the opponent’ while not dying type affair. The initial phase is the scouting phase. While i understood the principal I couldn’t grasp the nuance to gain any advantage. Once the deployment drop off points were set the command dice determined the arrival of the off table troops.

Tactically it was pretty simple. The communist militia were pretty poorly led (and that wasn’t just Pete!) and didn’t have much in the flexibility and were deployed in static blogs in some defensible positions.

Initially the Fascists had some early success catching one section in a crossfire between the armoured car and one section of the Police. They took withering fire, but hung on. On the other flank the other Police were caught a little in the open by the opposing armoured car, but did manage to make it into the large central Taverna (where they would safely stay all game)

The game deterioted into a firefight. The Repubicans just hung on the left flank by pullling back the section that had soaked up th attention of the Nationalist A/C and HMG , just before it was breaking an putting a whole new section into the same place.

On the right shots were exchanged, and while it did look back for the Communists, the casualties were racking up for the Nationalist, and with there more granualted force lost a rifle team and also the HMG team. So by the time we called it the VP were in Petes favour, so a winning draw for the forces of Socialism

Lovely terrain and figures from the extensive collection on Paul Scrivens Smith, very enjoyable

Come back soon