Batalla Por La Fabrica 1936

Dave duly popped over for our Spanish Civil war game, has I mentioned in the previous post we used Bolt Action rules with some of the suggested modification from Jim Hale. The game would be an encounter with both forces advancing on the local foundry early in the uprising (?).

The Nationalist force comprised of a section (Grupo) of Requettes, led by a Sergeant (Sargento), the section comprised of three squads (Patrullas) each comprised of a Corporal (Cabo) and five Requettes armed with rifles. On turn three they would be joined by a Foreign Legion Rifle Grenadier Section (Peloton) led by a Sergeant (Sargento), the section comprised of a Light Machine gun squad (Escuadra de Fusil-ametraladora) a Corporal (Cabo) and four men serving a single LMG (in this case a Chauchat) and two Rifle Grenadier Squads (Escuadras de Fusileros Granadros) each with a Corporal (Cabo) and five men.

The Republican force comprised of an under strength section of three squads of Anarchist milicianos each of ten men armed with rifles, these three squads were led by an elected leader (Delgado) it is assumed for game purposes that each squad would have its own Delgado too. On turn three they would get the support of an armoured truck (Tiznaos) with a turret mounted LMG.

 Republican squads could be and were up to twenty men, in Bolt Action a unit needs to test its morale when receiving 50% or more casualties from shooting from one source, this makes the 10 to 20 Republican squads very robust while the small Nationalist fire teams become very vulnerable indeed. To off set this Jim suggests that squads who are within 4" or 8" if there is line of sight can take a shooting casualty from another squad within the section in any turn. Jim also suggests that the the morale check threshold be changed to 25% so instead of three casualties on a five to eight men squad, now only two casualties are required (which I think balances the above movement of figures between squads out too) for ten figure squads it is changed from five figures to three, this means that any twenty men squad now only as to lose five figures rather than the very unlikely ten.

   The armoured truck is rated as unreliable with the following rules

• Every time the vehicle moves roll a D6. A roll of "1" (or 1 or 2 if it is making a run move) indicates that it has stalled or otherwise been halted temporarily.
• If the roll is failed again on the next turn, the vehicle breaks down completely and may not move for the rest of the game.

Jim also suggests the following for improvised armoured trucks

• The damage value of 7+ becomes 7+(Soft)
• Rifle calibre weapons: rifles as well as light and medium machine guns do gain the same +1 modifier when shooting at these vehicles and still need a modified roll of 7 to cause damage.
• Rifles (but not machine guns) require a successful "Exceptional Damage" roll in addition to their "To Hit" roll, in order to cause damage.
• Rifle calibre weapons of all types do not gain any other modifiers to cause damage to the vehicle or crew. Effectively this limits their effect to "Superficial Damage" only, with the normal -3 modifier applied to the "Damage Roll"

Jim also has rules for Peoples Militia which I will not go into here, it is becoming a ramble has it is ;-)
Here then is how it played out

 Turn One - Nationalists
The Carlist Militia squads head for the high ground on the left, the foundry in the centre and the olive grove on the right, immediately negating the benefit of being able to switch men in the case of high casualties!

Turn One - Republicans
One squad is sent to the left to engage any troops sent out through the olive grove, meanwhile the other two squads head towards the foundry and high ground.
Turn Two - This mainly consisted of manoeuvring into position by sides

Turn Three - La Legion and the Republican Tiznaos arrive, seeing an opportunity the Republican squad, just in picture lower left make an headlong charge into the Legion squad, a bold move intending to cause havoc in the Nationalist rear, they were no match for the hardened men of La Legion and were despatch in short order (atrocious dice luck for Dave just one casualty achieved from ten dice)

  Turn Four - The Republican squad at the olive grove get the better of their Carlist counterparts, who disintegrated (punishment for me not keeping them within 4" of their comrades) However Dave was not really able to exploit this, going through the olive grove would take to long and the open gap between that and the foundry was covered by a Legion squad. Over on the Nationalist left, rifle fire stunned the crew of the armoured truck and inflicted many pins on the supporting infantry making them virtually ineffective.

Turns Five and Six we played out but there was no way that the Republicans could win, like Dave's dice luck in the close combat his firing dice on his right was just as bad.

It was difficult to tell if Jim's modifications work well from this game, though it certainly helped being able to effect the armoured truck with no heavy weapons. I kept my Legion squads in the right proximity to support any losses from fire but as Dave's dice rolls were so poor I did not need to switch figures, but it would have kept my Carlists in the olive grove in the game at least another turn I think, so they get the thumbs up from me.

An enjoyable game for us both, despite the dice gods deserting Dave en-mass. It did reiterate the fact that I need to paint more Spanish Civil war figures!

TTFN