Andalusian Motorcade – A Crossfire Battle Report

Chris Harrod and I played my Andalusian Motorcade scenario with Chris as the defending Militia and me as the advancing Column Ascensio.

The game dated from when I gave SCW platoons up to four squads. I now give them up to three.

Plans

The table reflected the map, of course. We used Objective Flags for the three Terrain objectives.

The Nationalists are assumed to have driven up the road to the left, and then debussed off table when the local Militia refused to surrender.

Chris elected to deploy entirely within the town to maximise his morale (Regular in the town; Green outside) and defend the three terrain objectives. Because the capacity of each building sector was two squads he elected to deploy his platoons overlapping. This meant two platoons occupied three building sectors between them:

Building 1: Two squads of Platoon 1 plus PC
Building 2: A rifle squad from each platoon.
Building 3: Two squads of Platoon 2 plus PC

I chose to ignore the terrain objectives and go for kills. Rather than attack on all fronts I thought I’d get local superiority and deployed with the bulk of my troops on the left to thrust towards the Church. I only deployed a holding force facing the town.

The holding force contained two platoons of Moroccan Regulares. The left hand platoon had a HMG attached and was deployed to be able to bring fire onto the hill in the foreground of the Republican deployment zone. As it happens that hill was occupied.

The rest of the column was on the left. It contained a company of Legionaries and a platoon of Moroccan Regulares to draw fire.

Phase 1

I kicked off my advancing my right hand force to the place where they were intended to hold. This wasn’t too far forward, but was intended to pose a threat to Chris front and left.

The Main force then advanced, with the Moroccans leading the way. I was pretty sure Chris was in the Church so tried to tempt him into reactive fire (he declined to start with). I also used the woods, where I could, to shield my advance.

My troops pretty quickly occupied the woods facing the Church and a fire fight broke out.

The Church was actually occupied by parts of two platoons. They were facing my big fire power platoon plus I had another two platoons to draw his fire and use as the situation warranted.

Not sure why, but at one point a Militia stand popped across the road at the back of the town.

The fire fight at the Church continued for a whilst but Chris started to get the worst of it. Chris could get at most two squads firing at one time, where as my big fire power platoon had 4 squads and a HMG! Plus my other two platoons each had three squads.

After a few losses Chris decided to bolt for safety in the town. Unfortunately the hill wasn’t rough ground and his men got pinned down on the slopes where they were eventually picked off by my fire power platoon.

Then my Legion reserve platoon pounded around the side of the hill and cleaned a militia squad out of the first of the town buildings. At that point Chris had lost 10 stands and lost the game with them.

Conclusions

The game was short and brutal and the result very one sided. I was expected a close game was got a surprise at the ease of the victory. This makes me wonder about the scenario balance. We’ll probably try it again with the sides swapped to check.