The Falange have a first outing

Yesterday evening I James and I had a game of Spanish Civil War using Chain of Command and I got to use both the recently painted Falangists and the flexible gaming mat I made for the first time.

First of all, that gaming mat, I pretty much used the 'recipe' that Tobi detailed, apart from rather than canvas I used black-out material and rather than bird-grit I used fine granules of cork. I think it came our pretty well and I plan to use it in the Spanish Civil War game that I am putting on at Partizan on September 7th.

We set up the table as per the aerial photograph and were on to the game. I would be using my Falange Espanol, while James was using his International Brigade, picked from the EPR list. As there was a force difference of 4 I boosted my troops with a Flag and the Cara El Sol option.

We decided to randomise the mission and rolled up the Probe and randomised that I would be the attacker. This would be an experience, attacking with Green troops - gulp!

I rolled a five for force support and chose to add a section of trusty Moroccan Regulares, to cries of 'crutch' from the peanut gallery. James spent his two points adding an LMG to each of his sections. I rolled up Force Morale 10, James rolled an 11 - bugger.

The Patrol Phase was played out and the Republican jump-off points are shown in red while the Nationalists are shown in blue.

The Republicans double-sixed their first phase and were able to get a solid defensive line in place before the Nationalists were even on the field of battle. I rolled my first phase and deployed the Sub-jefe and a section of Falange on the left out of site of the Republicans. I was not getting much joy with the Command Dice, that section on my left continued to advance through the woods while the Moroccans were deployed from the jump-off on my left and were soon ensconced in the hedge bottom trading shots with the two Republican LMG teams. As they were in the open, one of the LMG teams was soon destroyed, but the casualties were mounting on the Moroccans - lots of sixes being rolled on the casualty table. Soon one of the Moroccan squads was broken and the Sergento was dead. My Force Morale started to plummet.

The Command dice rolls for the Nationalists did not go very well at all this game, although the Republicans also had some dreadful rolls - in fact all game I never maintained the phase once.

The second section of Falange were finally deployed on my left to support the section that was now deployed at the wood edge and engaged with the Republicans to the front and their right flank, organising the troops the Sub-Jefe was shot down dead and I had to use a Chain of Command dice to avoid the Force Morale test. The Jefe ran over to the Moroccans to rally off some of the shock and merge the survivors together but was hit and took a wound for his efforts.

Things were looking bad, I was reduced to Force Morale 4 while a series of rather excellent Force Morale test rules meant that the Nationalists were still on Force Morale 11! With the Sub-Jefe down one of the Jefe de Falage took the initiative and launched a charge against a section of Brigadiers who had backed away from the hedge-line they were holding. In the ensuing combat the Republican Sergento was killed and their team broken, but the Jefe de Falange was killed and the team wiped out. The Nationalist Force Morale collapsed and it was time to put the toys away.

Here are some more images of the game.