The Axis attack the central pass.
They can make a flanking attack, but it didn't do them any good.
At the same time the Axis attacked the main pass (the eastern part of the battlefield).
The Axis maintain their attack on the main pass.
The central pass is holding well.
The view from the Axis side as they press their attacks.
The forgotten 16th RCT of the 1st Division, The Big Red One.
Again the Axis of attack on the central pass is repulsed,
however they have started to infiltrate around the flank of the US position.
On the US third turn we fail to roll the full complement of ops points
(any result but a one will provide an ops point)
On the fourth US turn we get the same miserable result.
Lack of ops points means reduced movement and availability of combat tactics.
Those miserable rolls contributed to the Axis capture of the main pass.
The central pass is now under extreme pressure.
With both of these passes now lost, the US must try and regroup to protect their supply lines.
The US infantry start to move up on the central pass for a counterattack.
Another poor US attempt to get ops points.
There has actually been a US counterattack,
but it is really just trying to get in some kind of position
to support the infantry attack on the central pass.
Which was repulsed.
The US penultimate turn is miserable.
(Note there are eight turns in total)
The Axis have been able to reinforce their hold on the central pass.
Another US attack, while promising, just lacked troops and ops points to be of any value.
The attacking US force is isolated,
this means it needs more ops points in order to make an attack.
And the last US roll...
Hopeless!
When I got home I sat down and calculated the army points for each side and they are about equal.
The Axis can use both their artillery units, while the US is split between their two combat elements. This meant that Axis attacks went in with significant weight and if successful were deadly. The US lacked that firepower, especially towards the end after they had taken some losses.
I played out this battle about 40 years ago using the WRG rules, the Axis got annihilated despite the Americans being totally green. The automatic knock out of German army on every hit was impossible to counter even when we used smoke. Thankfully rules have moved on a lot since then.
ReplyDeleteThe battle really requires a multi-day, which Rommel can do. It also lends itself to a mini campaign which would be nice to organise.
DeleteI feel that the points maybe equal but that the US have 9 non fully functional infantry units as these can be neutralized by 3 italian tank units.
ReplyDeleteIt may be worth playing with a requirement for the Axis to get the 4 victory points. This would be significantly more difficult.
Also US units are ok for defence but not attack which makes counterattack very difficult. Having said that the M3's high anti tank value causes casualties to Axis armour. Significantly the Axis lost only a couple of units but they were all armour.
As Mark said the Axis artillery are also able to stack attacks which makes them more useful.
All in all an interesting scenario. In both games the US was cursed with bad die rolls but even so Mark certainly had worse luck as the US player than myself.
Still, great to get a game on the table!
simon c.
I need to continue my research, but it might be appropriate to split the Axis into two commands. They have all the tactics that allow them to overcome that, but it would apply a slight balance.
DeleteYou were very good in not exploiting the terrain like I did in the previous game. The terrain is also worthy of some more research.
The poor rolls were only to be expected as in my previous wargame (the Basic Impetus 2.0 game with Dave on Wednesday) I had been very lucky).
We also should try Rommel using hexes.