Western Desert 1940

Here is a battle report of a recent game using the Second World War Rules from
Introduction with my supplementary overlays and solo Command & Control rules.

At last this was a chance to field my Italian Libyian Desert force and take on
an Eighth Army formation under the illustrious Brigadier McDonald.

The Italian commander General Alvintzi was set a defensive task of holding a
long line of hills which overlooked a key desert highway running North which the
British wished to secure and utilise to move their armoured units forward.

The British had nine units on table, albeit a fair distance from the Italian
positions. In contrast the Italians only fielded five units on table, the rest
held in Reserve and released piecemeal under the reserve rules. This was to
prove significant as an early deployment of reserves, particularly armour
support to counter the British would have been timely.

The British made steady progress, the Italians remaining concealed on the ridge
and adopting prone positions where possible. The first decisive engagement was
with the Italian AFVs and in a short time they had lost a Recon and Tank unit.
Despite holding up the British advance with heavy casualties on the carrier
unit, the British managed to exert increasing offensive pressure on the ridge
line finally forcing the Italians by turn six to move into highly defensive
positions and keep their heads down. It looked doomed to mass prisoner capture
but the Italian commander had a brief flash of brilliance and managed to
extricate a couple of units of infantry and a tank. This was played out through
my solo Command & Control rules which worked very well throughout, creating a
number of interesting and, actually, quite logical situations to develop.

Overall another superb game. The Italians were not outclassed but the overall
quality of the British seemed to manifest itself throughout. With German backing
the Italians should be good in the defensive in entrenched or covered positions.