Charles Vasey  - Jun 16, 2007 5:25 am (#177 Total: 194)  
I worship His Divine Shadow 
	 
I managed the first ftf play of A LAS BARRICADAS after much solitaire
pain. The rules do need sprucing up to cover a number of Great Unsaids
and a number of Repeating Differently problems. That said (and assuming
Assault is part of a Movement Action) we were ready to go. We played a
small scenario is which a force of Republicans (led by me) had to clear
some horrid Falangists from a village before the rest of the Nationalist
infantry and HMGs arrived. Naturally with a first game of a new system
we made a complete bog-up of the correct strategy but the result was an
engaging if undemanding tactical game that went down to the wire. 

A few points registered with us (Caveat: we may have monkeyed up the
rules). 

• This isn’t Squad Leader and you don’t vanish like you can in that
game, so be prepared for a longer fight and be prepared to close for
action. [Each counter has three steps and each stack is likely to have
three counters. Morale only seems to cut in when you lose a unit, so
that could be the seventh step loss – based on one bit of the rules, or
a bit earlier if the two players choose losses, based on another bit of
the rules.] 

• Range seems shorter than in Squad Leader. [Of course I could check the
scale but I left my copy at St Georges Drive. We failed to remember that
we can fire out to double range at reduced value. Artillery tend to
shoot out to 7/10 hexes and rifles out two hexes as an indication.] 

• The initiative system determines who moves one stack next. There’s a
plus 1 for being scenario attacker. [In our scenario the stated attacker
looked to be the wrong way round so we altered it]. And you get a +1 for
having the initiative last time. [Note caveat above]. This meant as
attacker I tended to do all my stuff then the Narsty Nationalists did
theirs. I wonder if this was intended. 

• The command control rules involve some very low figures. [Possibly
confusingly you count the range including the hex you occupy, so a 1
means just your leader’s hex]. This can mean some units, like big
Communist 6 counter units, cannot manoeuvre as one stack. They wander
around straggling. I am not sure as a model this works, do poorly led
units break apart – or move more slowly together? [Of course I just
cheat and break the stacking rules, but I doubt I’ll get away with that
again.] 

• There are choices between assaulting or firing at every stage, and
when the initiative starts to change you can get some very exciting
passages of play. 

• The combat system is tot up fire points, roll 2D6 and take the score
(if any) and divide by your target’s terrain divisor. [Out in the open
the divider is 2, but in forest it’s 3]. But you round up fractions. The
result is that at most combat levels if firing with a reasonable stack
you’ll get one hit. It can be a lot of work to get there; but snakes
eyes is correspondingly cool. 

• The battle tends to proceed with both sides popping away until you
both approach stack collapse when it all gets splendidly chaotic. This
compares to Squad Leader where sudden collapse of a part of your troops
is always possible. This does mean that the morale difference between my
Carabineers and my Communists does not appear until fairly late on. But
an assault does modify for morale and I can imagine a few banderas of
the Legion going through militias in short order if they survive fire
(as they will early in a battle). 

• The game looks splendid, although the markers are too big and too
bright and get in the way of the Cool Counters (which go to 11 for
coolness but a wee bit less for legibility). 

We’ll be playing it again.