Testing with the Lab Rat

Sometimes my Tuesday night games are bit hectic for me to truly test bits of the rules I want to poke at properly. Plus players won't always do what I need to test bits of the rules they aren't familiar with. What that means is every so often I have to play a one on one game with someone, where I can play a side and push at the bit of the rules I'm interested in.

We've had an issue on Tuesday nights for a while with troops defending buildings being rather too easy to evict or destroy. I've commented on the solution several times, but players don't always take note. There are numerous instances of overwhelming forces in a battle failing to defeat troops well positioned in their defences, and the rules need to be able to simulate that.

That meant a one sided scenario where one player sits on his heals and waits, and the other has tons of stuff to push around. Jon kindly agreed to push the tons of stuff around for me one afternoon. That meant an early start for him, but he was cheerfully up for it, so away we went.

The town in the middle is Ebresa, and it is held by a Nationalist brigade. To the right, two brigades of Republicans (one International) and two battalions of tanks are poised to attack it.

Jon started by deploying his artillery on the flank, and placing his Observer on a hill top. Good shot of my rubber trucks there. I should probably have swapped them out.

He then sent some International Brigade battalions off to turn the left flank.

Then his artillery started to clobber my chaps in the town, pinning everything in  place. This is how artillery is supposed to be used.

Out on Jon's right, a column of armour led by one of my brand new Bilbaos went to turn the other flank.

Then a wave of infantry, two or three battalion's worth, started to rush across the open ground, preceded by tanks. I can't shoot at them as I'm pinned by artillery.

Then some luck. I turned up a joker, that gave me some off table heavy artillery support. With my FOO suppressed by fire, the ranging in was poor - I hit my own troops in the buildings first - but the second salvo hit those advancing infantry.

Out on Jon's left, his infantry turned off the road, and started to work their way through the olive grove.

Air strike! Jon nominates 3 targets...

...and hits his first choice. Curses, my only unpinned unit.

On the other flank the armour turns in through the other olive grove.

I'm beginning to look a little hemmed in.

The airstrike causes little damage, and flies off, leaving my men free to open up on the troops emerging from the depths of the olive grove.

I was then able to drop some artillery fire on them, from my friends off the table.

The bombers came back, and pinned me again.

As my central barrage lifted, it was clear I'd inflicted some damage, but not enough to stop them coming on.

Under cover of their artillery, the Republicans pressed closely to the town, supported by their armour.

As they approached the town, they could see that the Nationalists were defending well back from the forward edge of the town, meaning they couldn't be shot at by small arms (cunning, eh?). The armour rolled up, only to receive a nasty shock from an anti-tank gun.

As I was so far back from the edge, Jon couldn't support his close attack with his armour. He went in gamely any way, only to be thrown back with a bloody nose.

We had to stop there, but that had proved very helpful for me. I hadn't told Jon that I was testing some specific rule mechanisms (I had a LOT of off table artillery) and that this wasn't a fair game and that he was being treated as a guinea pig (or a lab rat). He took it very well.

We need to play this again, but it went well. Typically the Republican attack bogged down as it became harder to co-ordinate all the required actions, and it became difficult getting the armour where it would be useful. I had a couple of eureka moments and fixed a couple of problems, but overall it went really well.