To Capture Castellanos

Yesterday's game, which was a part of our Venezuelan campaign was played by Peter and Magne and featured infantry, field guns, armoured cars and a few aircraft. Magne played the Venezuelan National Army Colonel Castellanos who had fled to a small hill top army out post and Peter played the Communist armoured company sent to capture him. The general idea of the game was for a weaker force holed up in a hill top fortification facing well equipped mechanised infantry. I took the part of referee, though I also controlled the aircraft of both sides too (the idea being, neither side had radio communications with their air forces). 

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Though the rules are designed to be simple and quick, the game was actually quite slow since neither Peter or Magne are confident with the smaller details and I spent a lot of time discussing various points of contention with Peter. In the end we ran out of time and so it was a win on points for the communists. 

Rojo Milicia /Communist force	VNA Colonel Castellanos’s force
1 x Infantry commander 1 x Artillery spotter 4 x Mortar teams 2 x HMG teams 9 x Infantry fire teams 3 x LMG teams 4 x BA-6 armoured cars 2 x BAI armoured cars 2 x ZiS trucks w/AA machine guns. 3 x ZiS trucks.	1 x Infantry commander 1 x Out post commander (mounted) 20 x Infantry fire teams 4 x Schneider field guns 2 x AA mount machine guns 1 x Armoured car 1 x Armoured staff car

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The new terrain worked brilliantly and from the level of the ground forces, the way the hills, hedges and trees give a sense of obscure realism is very satisfactory. 

There were two points of concern raised by the game regarding the rules. The first was land mines, which need to be worked out as they are not really covered in the rules at all - and this despite how often they get used. The second point was strafing. The P-16's attempted to stafe the communist mortar battery but our rules have always been weak with regards to using machine guns against multiple targets and the P-16s were entirely ineffective.

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