Spanish orbat

Spanish Foreign Legion Bandera
Command - Mounted colonel, 2IC, RSM, National standard, Bandera Std, bugler
Support - 3 x Hotchkiss MMG (2 crew each), 80mm mortar (3 crew), 2 pack mules + handlers, 4 ammo bearers, officer
Rifle company with -
HQ - 2 officers, bugler, standard
3 x 11 figure platoons each off - 7 rifles, grenadier, 2-man LMG team, officer/NCO

Army of Africa column
2 x 8 figure mounted cavalry troops
Infantry company with -
HQ - 2 officers, bugler, standard
Support - MMG (2 crew), 65mm mountain gun (3 crew), mules + handlers
2 x 10 man rifle platoons

Regulares Column
HQ - mounted Spanish officer, 2 native officers, standard
Support - 3 x 2-man LMG teams
5 x 9 man rifle platoons

Naval landing force
Support - "La Tiburon" (6pdr + 2 MMG)
3 x 9 man naval infantry platoons

Support services
`75 battery
Signals unit
Ambulance unit
Air support

Tifaruin Spanish forces

Infanteria de Marina (naval infantry)

Figures from Kelly`s Heroes and FAA

Spanish Foreign Legion

Figures from Bandera, Irregular and BUM

Spanish Army of Africa infantry

Bandera and Irregular figures

Army of Africa cavalry

Converted BUM plastics and Warrior minis SCW cavalry

Regulares (Moroccans spanish service)

figures from Bandera and Barcino (of Spain)

Tifaruin, a trial layout

With just over two months to go till Gauntlet I though I's better try a quick test of the terrain so I could see what was needed. The hills will go under the cloth, but I will need to construct some larger versions to correspond better with Richard B's map. This is all laid out on my 9' x 5' table tennis table

View from the west, Afrau on the coast and Tifaruin inland to the south

View from the east with Sidi Messaud

view from the north

Overall it's a bit tight on the north/south axis, so I'll either reduce the area covered by sea or expand the width to 6'.

So my immediate plan is to create the large hills needed, more palm groves to replace my deciduous trees (I've still got a pile in a box somewhere in the attic), then work on upgrading the villages, including addin a dock to Afrau.

More Krefeld Salient terrain

My larger river sections are going to see action in the Krefeld Salient game. They've given years of good service in larger scales but I believe this may be the first time I've used them in 6mm.

We need some at least another river crossing for the game so I decided to see if I could do something usable with an Irregular Miniatures railway bridge I've had for a while. The result (so far is this...

The base is an off cut of the same hardboard I've used for my other river sections. River bank is built up from tile grout and the railway embankments are expanded polystyrene.

The bridge and rail sections are white metal castings from Irregular. The rail sections I'm going to glue to thin plastic card to get them to line up correctly. Having go this far I'm now at the "I wouldn't start from here" point. I think if I ever did anything like this again I'd build the ramps from plastic card frameworks - the expanded polystyrene is just too hard to get level (at least without a hot wire cutter.

More pics later.

Looks like a fish...

... moves like a fish, steers like a cow!

This F104 has been sitting unused in my drawer of 1/300th scale aircraft for years. I think I bought it with an abortive Indo-Pakistan war project in mind.

Determined to find some oddball air support for the NATO side I did a bit of research and found that the Belgian Air Force had a couple of squadrons of F104s for the strike role. They could even deliver nuclear bombs if NATO released them to the BAF!

It will appear as an option on the NATO "Rare and improvised air support table" of which more later.

Some pictures of the Autobahn for the Krefeld game, just about 5 metres of it! including 1 Bridge Section and 2 slip roads.

Stuart