Desert War Wargame using WWII Rules from Introduction

I felt the urge to put some more of my Xmas purchases to good use with a confrontation I'd been contemplating for some time. I got some H&R 8th Army and Afrika Corps and combined with the armour I already had this amounted to enough fighting power to put on a good sized Desert War game.

I used to play a lot of this in 20mm and used rules such as Operation Warboard. Before that I experimented with the John Sandars rules in An Introduction to Wargaming. These really captured the feel of the conflict for me and combined with some inspiring pictures of his scratch built tanks and airfix figures and models it still strikes a very nostaligic cord.

So I recreated something along the lines of the battle in the book using the WWII Rules in the Introduction volume. Not quite the Jock Column against the German recce unit but more a full on battalion sized engagement involving some Matilda and PzIII armour support.

The British were set the enviable task of securing a sparsely occupied ridge and

driving through to the end of the board. I had the long edge as the sides so the

battle was a bit different from my usual setup.

The British started well and got better as the game went on. The luck factor was

evident or should I say the lack of it on the German side. They lost a clear chance to stamp their dominance early by losing their 88m gun. This was spotted by advancing infantry and once located fell prey to a host of small arms and mortar fire with very poor saving throws eliminating the entire crew before it had fired a shot. Worse was to come when a long range Matilda shot took out one of the PzIII advancing in the open from the German base line.

The Germans tried to regain the initiative but the superior numbers of British forces were starting to tell. They had more units deployed up front and within firing range while the Germans still had two armoured infantry units and a PzIII

moving up from the rear.

The Germans managed to hang on for another couple of turns but soon it was clear, once they were reduced to two effective units and no armour support, that

the British, who still retained all their vehicles were going to prevail and comprehensively achieve their objective.

This was a bit of a surprising result as the British looked as though they were going to have a real tough time advancing on the German forces, however, the early elimination of the rather exposed 88 position which wasn't adequately protected and losing a tank proved to be decisive factors in what eventually became a bit of a rout.

Hurrah to the British, however, I'll play the Germans a bit more thoughtfully next time. Better anti-tank preparation seems to be in order.

This was a great game and I was playing it on my reversed sand coloured board

with homemade dunes and rocky patches. I'll get round to producing some desert scrub and the odd dwelling for future games. The rules as always played well. These are probably the ones I've modified the most and I'm reaching the point now where I'm very comfortable with them

Cheers

Brian