Monday, December 12, 2022

AAR part 4: Battle for the Telefonica - The conclusion

 Chris, John, and I came together for one final go at the Battle for the Telefonica. You can find the previous report here.

John and I had begun this Scenario back in July. We were testing out the single-player mechanism for the campaign, and decided to play cooperatively, fighting as the workers and loyal officers against the mutinous nationalist army. We ran through two days in this way, until Chis joined at the previous game day, and volunteered to be the bad guys, knowing his odds were pretty slim. We didn't argue with him too hard. The third day of the game, then, went about as expected. Chris tried his best to break through our defenses at the edge of the Plaça Catalunya, but did not succeed. In our last round, the north half of his frontline collapsed, and his forces were well worn-down on the south end as well.

Our scenario called for the arrival of three squads of Civil Guard at the Plaça Catalunya to begin round 13. As during the historic event, the loyalties of these officers was in serious questions. For us, a roll of the dice would determine who they fought for. 


Even though the Civil Guard were walking into the Plaça in the open and well-surrounded by pro-Republic and anarchist forces, in the service of Chris they could have at least caused some trouble for John and I. We rolled the dice to see which way the Civil Guards would go.


Chris lost the roll, and John (who has been playing these games against Chris now for about a year) wasn't interested in offering mercy. So the Civil Gaurds added their number to our throngs of angry and armed workers, and marched due west toward the frontline. John and I also won the roll for Round Initiative.


The tavern building sitting across the street from the army headquarters, which I had reached during the previous game day to fire on Chris's artillery before lighting it on fire and withdrawing, continued to burn. Chris was eager to see it come down so his cannons could get a better shot at my position in the red house behind it.


In the meantime, Chris was able to fire off his fifth and final cannon, which he had set up in the north-west corner of the table at the end of the previous round. 


The cannon blasted a shot at the gray building just across the street, and with a perfect roll Chris landed a shell through the window, killing both workers inside. 



With the ranged phase behind us, John and I proceeded with our turn of the movement phase. We were focused on the Hotel Colón (pictured below), which Chris had reached in the final round of the last day. This was his most advanced position, and from the Hotel's windows he could see the Telefonica building, still his ultimate objective, and fire at anyone in the open Plaça.


I sent my squad of assault guards pouring through the first-floor windows of the hotel. Chris and I determined that the structure on the roof of the hotel would represent the lobby on the ground floor, and that our forces could fire at each other through the lobby via the doors we each occupied on either end.

Meanwhile, John sent his POUMistas sprinting across the open Plaça at the hotel, as they had actually done on July 19, 1936.


The skirmish phase began with the soldiers and assault guards firing at each other across the hotel lobby. Neither side scored any hits. 


The next skirmish area was the front line on the south-west edge of the Plaça. This had been the site of most of the fighting during the entire three previous game days, and John's workers militia had held out doggedly against the professional soldiers. In round 13, Chris won the initiative roll, but his machine-gun on the roof jammed and couldn't fire. John got a chance to respond and killed both crewmen.


 Chris tried to fire off his second machine-gun, in the doorway of the building next door. It too jammed, and John again mowed down its crew. The soldiers' rifles then opened fire, killing two of the workers near the door.


During the regroupment phase, John brought his defenders out of the radio station building to regroup in the intersection below. Chris withdrew a section of his infantry on the southern frontline. They moved back toward the headquarters. 

Round 14 began with John and I winning the initiative roll again. During the ranged phase, Chris trained his fifth cannon at my attack group #1, which held the barricades at the north-west corner of the Plaça. 


The round fell short of the barricade, causing no damage or issues for the anarchists.


Chris then fired his first cannon at the tavern, still trying to clear it away. This shell fell short, too, though it landed close enough to contribute to the damage of the structure. Combined with that round's fire damage, the tavern had but 1 damage point left and was guaranteed to come down on the following round.


The movement phase commenced, and John and I continued our charge on the Hotel Colón. I turned the Civil Guard down the road south toward the hotel, crossing through the smoke of the shell which had just landed in front of the barricade. 


John's POUM militia continued to move straight at the hotel. They were nearing the building, but were now in open view and at close range of the soldiers' guns inside. 


Further south, the workers militia John had sent toward the ground-floor machine-gun managed to dismantle the barricade protecting the doorway and the machine-gun. 

Then it was Chris's turn to move. He realized he needed to set up his cannons in better position and make use of his superior firepower if he had any chance at victory. He moved a truck toward cannon number two in order to reposition it.


Chris also sent his spotter down the eastern road to climb a gray building, so that he could set up indirect firing for his artillery battery. The spotter also carried a message from headquarters to abandon the gray buildings at the south of the front line, and to withdraw to a more advantageous defensive position. 


On the north end of his line, Chris sent his falangists, who had fled the long building near the radio station a few turns prior, into better positions inside the gray building on the corner. A few surviving soldiers and some of the officers of the headquarters section took positions by the corner of the long gray building across the street. Earlier in the round, my attack group three had advanced inside the northern long gray building, and a fight for the intersection seemed imminent.


The skrimish phase began where most of the skirmishing had been, on the southern frontline. John won the roll, and killed the machine-gun crew on the rooftop. The machine-gun was left unmanned, with the other survivors of the infantry platoon and artillery escorts having already abandoned that building. Chris still had some numbers in the shorter, gray building next door. They fired at the workers approaching the door, killing one. It would not be enough to stop their progress, however. 


Across the street to the north, the battle for the Hotel Colón heated up. Chris fired his soldiers at the POUMistas in the grass outside, killing two. The assault guards inside fired first across the lobby, killing two. 

Further north, my attack group 3 in the long building reached the western corner, and fired out the window at Chris's cannon #5. I killed three of the four crewmen, but missed point blank when trying to kill a horseman just outside the window.

During the regroupment phase, Chris sent some of the retreating infantry on the southern rooftop back to the abandoned machine gun. I moved half a squad of assault guards through the lobby, and they burst through the door behind the soldiers covering the Hotel's southern windows.


Round 15 began with Chris firing off his cannon number 1 at the northern gray building, where my attack group three had just killed his crew from cannon #5. It was a desperate and ill-advised shot. While he managed to hit the building, he was not quite accurate enough to land the shell through the window. Instead of killing my anarchists, he killed two of his soldiers who were pressed up to the outer wall below the windows.



John and I continued to move our units across the Plaça to the hotel. The socialists and Civil Guards neared the windows. Chris's soldiers inside, on overwatch, fired out at them, but killed only one of the POUM workers.


At the southern frontline, John's reinforcements had reached the rallying point at the u-shaped building. Up ahead of them, John's advanced group moved into the doorway of the shorter gray building.


When the skirmish phase began, Chris and John traded shots inside the building, each killing two.



My assault guards continued their attack on Chris's soldiers in the hotel. They fired at the backs of the soldiers who were caught looking out the windows, killing four of the five. The lone survivor won a morale test. During the regroupment phase, he would flee from the hotel, leaving it in the hands of the assault guards.


Chris's attack was all but broken. Here, John stands on the precipice of victory, with resolve in his eyes. before him, the forces of the Republic and of Barcelona's organized labor hold the Plaça with a strong front line.


Round 16 began with the tavern finally coming down. Chris sent some soldiers from the blue building to take cover behind its smoking ruins. They were exposed, however, to the line of sight of the assault guards now in control of the Hotel Colón.


During the movement phase, my attack group #2, who had been the most successful of my groups this game, exited the red building and sprinted up the road toward Chris's cannon #5. They came face to face with one of Chris's officers on horseback, who killed one of the anarchists.


In the south, John's militia charged Chris's positions in the gray buildings. Chris began to prepare his artillery to withdraw. He drove one truck into the southern doorway of the hotel to protect his retreating forces. Inside the Hotel, however, one of the assault guards attempted to throw a grenade out the window at the soldiers hiding behind the destroyed tavern. The grenade detonated prematurely, killing four of the officers. The squad's other grenadier attempted to lob a projectile through the window of the truck Chris had used to block the doorway, but this too was an abject failure. The grenade bounced back, killing three more officers inside the Plaça. The few surviving assault guards passed the morale check and held onto the building.

One block to the south, the final struggle for the gray buildings began. Chris and John's forces fired at each other at point black in the shorter building. John killed both machine-gun crew, and Chris's infantry returned fire, killing two workers. On the rooftop next door, the soldiers managed to fire off their machine gun, killing two more workers. John's workers on the rooftop, however, fired back and finished off the last of the soldiers by the machine gun. 


During the regroupment phase, my attack group #3 jumped out of the windows of the northern long-gray building and reached cannon #5, capturing it for the CNT-FAI. With the writing on the wall, Commander Lopez-Amor rode off on his horseback, abandoning the battlefield to the workers and allied-loyalists.


The battle ended as we had always expected it would, with a resounding victory for the workers. The scenario was always unbalanced, as was the historic battle it was based on. This was one of the reasons why John and I had initially opted to play it as a cooperative game, using the solo-play rules to govern the movements of the attacking nationalists.  Our strategy had been sound, too, with John effectively holding the southern line while my attack groups harassed the nationalist artillery and caused issues for the army in the north. I was able to do more than force the army to pay attention to the north section of the table, rather than concentrating their full forces on the southern road into the Plaça; I managed to knock out cannon #2 for most of the game, and to capture cannon # 5. John and I will enjoy that extra cannon during our next scenario.

Chris did about as well as could be expected, given the circumstances he walked into. He would have had a better chance, however, had he initially established all of his cannons up on the hill by the headquarters and gotten a spotter on a rooftop with a view of the Plaça. Then he could have rained artillery shells down on our forces at long-range, making it more difficult for us to charge across the Plaça and bring up reinforcements, or allowing him to target and potentially destroy some of our defensive positions or even hit the Telefonica itself.

If we played this scenario again, we would move up the Nationalists starting point so that they would begin right in the Plaça, as had occurred during the historic events this game was based upon. This would have given Chris more of a fighting chance to move his infantry toward their objectives, though it may also have spelled doom for his artillery if they were set up that much closer to the strength of our numbers.

Playing out this scenario also gave us a few ideas for rule changes to mull. At one point we discussed the idea of allowing units to fire twice a round. It would cost 2x the ammo points. Perhaps firing twice should cancel out the unit's ability to regroup in the final phase of the round.

Speaking of regroupment phase, we discussed how overwatch units should be able to interrupt regrouping forces that cross their overwatch, if those on overwatch haven't fired that round (and were thus still on overwatch).

Another rule addition we discussed was spiking artillery pieces. This would cost 1 turn for 1 unit, similar to other engineering tasks in our ruleset. 

Finally, we've only recently gotten into playing the Spanish Civil War. This was our first scenario (even though it took four days!). We began by playing out the PLM's 1911 campaign in the Mexican Revolution, largely because it was a smaller and simpler conflict with far fewer categories of weapons, almost no artillery, and no tanks or airplanes. Moving into the Spanish Civil War, with its SMGs and LMGs and HMGs and different sorts of vehicles, the game quickly becomes more complicated. The guys suggested including in the ruleset a "Quick game" version that treats most weapons as rifles and perhaps ignores morale. We must consider these ideas further and adjust our house rules.

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