Shedquarters Day Q4 2024

It's that time again, when we are visited by our Friend From The West. Records indicate that we've been at this for over a decade now. How time flies.

For openers I put on another SCW game using NQM. This time at Divisional Scale Orbat (DSO). At this level a battalion is two bases and hexes are one kilometre. Each turn is two hours, and in this game, night was a four hours turn with restricted activity.

The game covers the opening of the Battle of Jarama in February 1937. You know, the bit everyone skips over to get to the exciting bits involving the British Battalion of the International Brigades. This is the attack by Varela's Division, which had three brigades. These are mostly the Spanish Foreign Legion with some other bits and pieces added on. They have Condor Legion support - Pz1s and an 88mm battery - and a lot of artillery. This promises to be quite different to previous games.

I've simplified the terrain a bit, and I'm only showing the far bank of the Jarama ridge/plateau. Richard and Phil took the Republicans. Chris A & Chris K were the Nationalists.

The Republicans have been told that there's a large Nationalist attack coming, and that they are trying to capture Madrid from the south. That's to the left of the picture. The rivers are in spate, which means they can't be bridged by engineers.

The Republicans are in error. The Nationalist real mission is to cut the Valencia/Madrid road, top left of the board.

Turn one, and the Nationalists move forwards steadily, leading with their artillery. Hmm. This is going to be different to the historic approach. 

The weather is foul - heavy rain - and the arrival of new Soviet planes has put the Nationalist Fighter Aces on the back foot. The only thing flying is a large patrol of Ratas. They do a good job of shooting up a Nationalist battery.

The waves of Nationalists surge forwards. I begin to wonder if I've put too much out on the table.

Chris K's cavalry is recce-ing prior to an attack on the bridge at Perales. Richard brings up a company of Pavlov's armour to discourage them.

The opening shots are exchanged. The Moroccans storm and capture Perales, but the Legion Bandera is surprised by the tanks, and suffers heavy casualties. A lot of ammunition is expended. The yellow counters are for "Out of Ammo". The tanks now overran the SFL Bandera.

The Republicans who were defending the village had been driven back on to the bridge across the Manzaneres, where they were heavily shelled.

Chris K has thrown a lot of strength at capturing Perales. This was part of a cunning plan to draw Republican forces into a protracted struggle, sucking in their resources, whilst Chris A went for a right hook around the left hand end of their line to seize the bridge across the canal, and then push up the railway to capture Pindoque bridge from the south.

The tanks take a risk and attack Perales unsupported except by artillery. They drive out the Moroccans.

The Nationalists start to probe the Republican defensive line further along. I think the aim was to keep them in place and divert attention from the flank attack developing on their left.

Rain persisted, reducing the airflights, but the Republicans get another attack run on the artillery. They are given a scare by the 88s, but manage to escape.

Modesta's 11th Division arrives to prevent the Nationalists crossing the river. Richard uses some of them to try to retake Perales. The artillery from both sides pounds the area, slowing everyone down.

At last! What everyone has been waiting for, a face off between German and Soviet armour.

 

As you can see, more and more resources were being sucked into the battle for Perales. The Nationalists seem to be here to stay, and have started to dig in (note the cut up lolly sticks).

The Republican tanks have been resupplied and reorganised, but this is becoming attritional.

Chris A has been feeling his way past Phil's defences. I think it was dawning on Phil what the Nationalists were trying to do, and he launched an armoured thrust to disrupt them. 

The Panzers were driven back, but this left the Republican armour a bit exposed.

Chris A rushed his cavalry regiment across the canal, and started a dash for the Pindoque railway bridge. Luckily for the Republicans help was on its ways, and the m/cycle recce from the XII International Brigade ran into them.

Here we see the XII IB moving up to secure the river crossing.

Everyone is dug in properly around Perales now, and the fighting takes a lull.

As the cavalry can move in the Recce phase they dash forwards and capture the bridge.

The lull round Perales ends and it all kicks off again. More and more veteran Nationalist troops from North Africa are thrown into the meat grinder.

Not content with taking the Pindoque bridge, Chris A is sending his Panzers across the southern bridge. It's a way off from his objective, but it is a telegenic moment.

Phil is fully alive to the threat, and uses his armour and artillery to disrupt Chris A's advance.

Curiously that's the last picture I have. The XII IB forced the Nationalist cavalry off the Pindoque bridge, and their engineers came up to mine it. Perales remained in Nationalist hands, but they were firmly on the southern bank. We were three days into the offensive, and the Nationalists had taken heavy casualties and failed to take their major objective. Accordingly the offensive was called off, and everyone dug in to consolidate the front.

This was a really epic game with a lot going on. We had a few rules points to consider to make this SCW not "WW2 lite", and we did identify one ambiguous paragraph in the rules which I'd taken completely differently to how Chris K had intended. He had his "Little Blacke Booke" with him and took notes, so no doubt there'll be some FAQs up shortly.

This is an action I could just about have done with FWTDR, but it would have taken quite a bit longer, and we may have needed more space. NQM fits this level of resolution really well, but it does need some specific scenario/period rules and tweaks to make it work. Historically the Nationalists covered 18km in the first day, and overran the entire Republican defence line. I'd done some quick calculations before hand and it was just about possible if everything was thrown at it and the dice went their way. As it was Chris K went for a more measured approach anyway, so that was never going to happen.

After that we tidied away, and Chris A brought out Nimitz to round the day off.

He'd set up a scenario in the Norwegian campaign. Phil & I had the Warspite and the Hood, trying to drive off the Gneisenau and a couple of cruisers.

We split up to do a pincer on the cruisers. They fired first, and Warspite took some dents.

Warspite's reply was altogether more devastating.

I pulled the Hood round and we both fired. Phil survived a torpedo strike at this point

This had given the Germans a lot to think about.

We managed to get both our ships in a position to fire at one cruiser, and sank it in short order.

We then did it all completely wrong, and the Germans "crossed our T's", inflicting close range damage.

Alas for them, even half of Hood's armament is devastating, and another cruiser went down, leaving the Gneisenau to high tail it out of there.

And then we went down the pub for dinner.