Bob and Cleo Liebl set up a game for their new Spanish Civil War Rules, which I’ll term SCW. They use Pay Condray’s 20mm figures, singly-mounted, with around 8 to 10 men per squad. The terrain was very nice… a series of 2-by-2-foot sculptured boards… two boards wide and 4 boards long. About 10 minutes into the game, and I completely lost interest. The presentation went to pot from the very first exchange of fire. Bob and Cleo had painted lots and lots of nice looking 20mm figures, and here’s what they did with them: a. When one of the men in the squad was wounded, they plopped a huge casualty cap over him. b When he went prone, they laid him down on his side. The bases of the 20mm figures were as large as the figures themselves, and so all you saw was a giant base staring up at you. c When he was wounded, again he was tilted over, placed on his side. How do you tell a wounded man from a prone one? They’re both tilted over. This was solved by placing wounded mens’ bases facing toward you, while prone mens’ bases faced away. d And if a guy was both wounded and prone, not only was he in the tilt position, but he bore the ubiquitous casualty cap. Figures lying on their sides are anathema to me… if you’re going to present a skirmish game, then, for crying out loud!, get a buncha casualty figures! Why go to all the trouble of laying out some superior-looking terrain, and painting your figures in great detail, when you’re going to toss them out in such helter-skelter fashion? As I said, after the first exchange of fire, the game was visually transformed, to me, into a Class AAA Abomination, and all was downhill from there. Now, having got that off my chest, let’s talk about the sequence. Each player (4 per side) had 5 units, and each man in each unit was identified by a colored spot on his base. Five colors were used, and so, in my own case, I had a red squad (all the guys had a red ID), a blue squad, a yellow squad, a green and an orange. Bob had a deck of 5 cards, one for each color. He drew a card, and all squads with that color on the field, both sides, were activated. Now that you knew which of your units were to be placed in action, what did you do with them? Your squad, during its activation, was given three “impulses”, and during each impulse, it could advance, or fire, or go prone, or fall back, etc. For example, when the green card appeared, my green squad was given 3 advance orders. a On the first impulse, it advanced about 6 inches. Also on this first impulse, the opposing player, whose green unit had fire orders, fired, and my little guys took casualties. b On the second impulse, my green guys, with their advance orders, moved up again, while the green enemy guys fired again. c On the third impulse, we went through the same routine. Prior to the draw of any of the sequence cards, I had written out orders for all of my squads for all of the impulses for the entire turn, so that when any of my squads’ colors showed up, they were “locked into” their previously issued orders for he turn. This was not what Bob wanted… orders were not to be written until a particular color card appeared, and it was only then that, knowing what unit you had on tap, you assessed the situation, and gave the active squad its orders for each impulse. And so, around Turn 3, I finally found out what to do, and how to do it. The SCW rules use 20-sided dice… and they’re a die roller’s paradise. For example, here’s what you do when you order your squad to fire: a First toss a die to see if your unit obeys orders. Most of the time, it will. What does it do when it doesn’t want to obey? This was never made clear to me. I asked Bob about this… sometimes the men stayed in place, sometimes they ran back… somewhat of a mystery. b If your unit passes the test and will obey its fire orders, grab the fire chart… toss a die for each man in the squad… around 10 dice. A rifle squad, firing at a 20 inch range, tosses one die for each man, and needs a toss of 1-to-7 to hit. A machine gun itself tosses 4 dice, a man with an SMG tosses 3 dice. c Now, for each “hit”, go to another chart, and toss a die to see what happened to the target figure. The result ranged from a kill, to a wound, to a morale check, to a “go prone” command, to a “you missed’ annotation. Whadaya mean “you missed”?… I thought that my hit die had already told me that I had scored a hit! Another mystery. d Now, for each result, toss a die to see which particular man in the squad was affected. This was important because if a man suffered 2 wounds, he was killed. e For each result mandating a morale check, toss yet another die to see if the man runs back or holds position. f But don’t put your dice down yet. Repeat steps (b) through (e) for the other two impulses in the turn Too much dice rolling! Too much firing! Too much! That’s my own opinion, of course… all the other players were eating this stuff up, shouting and tossing dice and laughing and killing each other. Here’s why I wasn’t laughing. The sketch shows the position of my troops on the field. I had given 4 of my 5 squads orders to cross at the Ford of Death, and proceed to the north east to Nueva York, my objective. The 5th squad, the Red Squad, was set up north of the river as shown to provide covering fire. I think it was the opponent’s green unit that was partially set up behind the Wall of Death. The first sequence card of the game that was drawn was green!, of course, and the enemy opened fire… lots of dice tossing for the first impulse, lots of dice for the second impulse, and even more for the third impulse. After this first series of blasts, not too much remained of my Red Squad “covering fire” unit. The second sequence card was yellow, and my yellow squad moved onto the field, advanced across the ford, in column of march, and moved up around 6 inches for the first impulse. Unfortunately, the enemy’s yellow squad, perched in the Tower of Death, now opened fire. Mucho dice! The second impulse, and again my squad, following orders, moved up and the enemy yellow squad fired again. And the same for the third impulse. At the end of the third impulse, my yellow squad, or what remained of it, had almost cleared the Ford of Death. Now the orange card was drawn, and my orange squad was supposed to move, but the Ford of Death was blocked by my yellow squad. Next, the blue card, and my blue squad tried to come on the field… it, too, was blocked. My opponent’s troops, orange and blue, used their orders to close in on my poor boys, trapped at the Ford of Death. This was not good for the home team, and at the end of the first full turn, I could only hope for better things. Such things were not to be. The wrong colors turned up. Wrong for me, of course, certainly not wrong for my opponent! His infantry advanced, his armored cars came up and fired, his machine guns tossed their 4 dice… slaughter at the Ford of Death! For years, I’ve tried to avoid setting up scenarios which employ blocking points, such as restrictive bridges and non-fordable rivers, on the field. All that happens is that a huge fire fight ensues… neither side can advance due to the restricting terrain, and the game bogs down. The sequence in Bob’s SCW did not lend itself to a scenario employing blocking terrain such as the Ford of Death. I noted that the other three players on my side were also hampered by restricting terrain… a couple of bridges, and a gully. The result was that our entire force simply bogged down, and wilted under the fire of enemy units already entrenched in place. Back to PW Review February 2002 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com