Great Northern War Gaming & Other Projects: The Road to Corrunna Part 1

I was very excited to get an invitation to my first wargame for nearly a year. Ken Reelly of Yarkshire Gamer blog fame invited me over this Sunday to Castle Riley, as a bonus we would be playing with his Spanish Civil War, a really fun and colourful period I had long wanted to game with Ken and the rest of the guys.

There were only4 of us for this game, Rob and Steve would be the Liberales whilst Ken and I would be the Nationalists. Rules, as usual with the Yarkshire gaming crew, were loosley based on a set with lots of changes to suit what they wanted, in this case the base rules that have been re-designed are Iron Ivan.

You can see more here with Kens blog http://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.com/ and no doubt he will have a much better game report than mine on there in due course.

The table is 12 feet long by 6 wide (give or take) and today had a river through the middle seperating the table into two halves, with a ford at both sides of the table taking the dirt tracks across.

Kens latest painted unit, the Nationalist cavalry, were already on table ready to go. Lovely figures, ideally I needed to leave them on their pretty horses as long as possible for visual effect.

At the right hand side of the table we can just make out the metaled road from Madrid to Corrunna, cutting this road would be the main objective of the game, there is a dirt track running roughly along either long side of the table the one on the far side has three villages along it and this would be the extent of initial Liberal deployment.

Ken and I would deploy the Nationalists on the extreme left of the table just off shot in the below picture. The troops facing us initialy on this side of the table would be Anarchists commanded by Steve.

Straight away I began to see how different these rules were, giving commanders much to think about. Activation is randomly generated by unit cards, ammunitions is diced for as the units enter table too with an average dice, every round of firing uses a point of ammo so if you are blazing away you can very quickly run out of ammo. Each side has ammo donkeys but these have to contact units to re-supply them. At the end of every go commanders dice for money which they can then spend on various things, including more ammo. All adds to the chaos and fun.

My first unit on were a company of ForeIgn Legionaires, they were hit pretty hard almost straight away by the first voley from Steves leading company of Anarchists taking them from 8 to 4 figures. I managed to inflict a casualty in return.

We are rolling a D10 to hit with firing, as I am at long range and the Anarchists are in hard cover I need a 1 to hit then a re-roll with a 50% chance of converting that to a casualty.

As more cards come out I am able to get the rest of the Legion battalion on table and put some more fire into Steves first unit and he starts to take a steady toll in casualties.

My command call in artillery which is also quite interesting. As we roll two d6 for deviation you have to be pretty careful where you try to land your shells, each subsequent turn take 2 inches off of the deviation as you range in. Ken reandomly generates the direction of deivation with a nifty tool on his tablet. I miss by a country mile of course.

Meanwhile the first two troops of cavalry having skirted all the open ground are now on the flank of the first Anarchist unit and dismount in cover.

With the Legionaires established and putting some suppressing fire onto the Anarchists whilst they skirmish forward the next battalion of Nationalists starts to arrive in the form of the hard fighting Morrocans (Some of my favourite troops for this period). The Anarchists are running out of ammo and starting to take casualties, things are looking a little grim for them, my final shot at them sees them loose their Seargent and they are getting very wobbly indeed.

I have been a bit free and easy with my Ammo so far, being so near the base edge and having a donkey with ammo to hand its been easy to re-supply so far. I suspect that may not be the case as we press on.

I get another shot in and the Anarchists break, we have our first success and occupy the building they have left. Steve however has not been idle and one of my dismounted cavalry units has been pinned by accurate fire.

I now start pushing the cavalry forward to skirmish with the next Anarchist units whilst the main forces push forward to support. The dismounted unit skirmish forward into woods next to the next village whilst the one unit still mounted pushes towards the far side of the same village. My HQ remains in position to cover them and call in ineffective artillery.

We also get an event card at this stage and get lucky, a roll of a D10 gets us 8 boxes of ammo dropped next to our advanced cavalry unit (they are the black counters) so now we have a store of ammo for the advancing troops to collect as they reach it, thats going to be pretty useful I feel.

I know I tend to concentrate on my own little bit of the game but over on the other side there has not been much for Rob to do with his Liberal troops other than dig in and get ready. Thats about to change.

A card for Liberal armour is drawn and a troop of two T26's hove into view. Queen of the battlefield at this stage in history, fortunaely for us they are about as far away as they can be at this moment in time.

Lovely models these and with their 37mm gun and coax machine gun a tough nut to crack for the Nationalists when they eventually reach us. Not for a while we hope.

Things are getting going on the Nationalist side as well, Kens Carlist battalion now starts to enter our side of the table and push along the road towards the ford and the Corrunna road.

The advanced cavalry are pinned by the Anarchists, I roll to unpin them and then fire into the house killing the Seargent. We then get a plane in the card deck and roll a 10 to get it on table, the bombs of course miss entirely but the MGs pour some very effective fire into the Anarchists in the lead house and they break, leaving me free to move the cavalry forward and occupy the first house.

The late biplanes of this period are lovely things. Robs son William is rolling movement dice in the background for a bull that has randomly turned up, I imagine this will play a caotic part as we get further into the game.

I have been saving my cash and now have enough to buy a tank, with the T26's trundling into the first Liberal held village I decide we better have one as well and spend pretty much all of our ready cash on a captured T26. A lovely paint job on this, lets hope it is as effective as it is nice. Typically for anything useful its card then refuses to come out for the next two turns and it sits on the table edge waiting for a chance to move!

My Legionaires and Morrocans push forward to support the cavalry and Ken gets his Carlists moving along the road towards the ford in the river, another really good roll from Ken gets us a stack of cash and we decide to spend it on some more armour In the shape of an armoured car. Fortunately the Nationalist armour card eventually comes out, the T26 pushes along to support the Carlists whilst the armoured car races up the table to support my troops.

It will be a couple more moves before I have enough troops to attemot to push the last of Steves Anarchists out of the village but it feels like the net is closing in.

Meanwhile Rob has the Liberal propaganda truck along with their own armoured car in place with cameras and political advisors ready to bolster his troops prior to the Nationalists trying for a river crossing. We know that the International brigades are marching up the Corruna road to support the Liberal front so its all building up to some serious action when we re-convene for part 2.