Sicily 1943 : Taking the Initiative Part 1

For a while now I have been pondering the long and conflicted history of Sicily and more specifically how I have three collections/periods who all fought for Sicily through the ages. The Greeks Athenians and Spartans, the Norman’s and Arabs and then WW2 Allies and Axis powers. I thought it would be kind of fun to try and find a scenario that we could play the same battle but over the three different periods ?

I found a scenario which I think might work in this little book I have had for ages

The scenario is described as taking the initiative a small force is holding out against a much larger attacker while reserves are brought up to try and hold the river crossings. As is my want I tweaked things a bit, the Italians would be defending in this battle the Americans assaulting. The river would be crossable for infantry. I added in the potential for both American and German paratroopers to arrive. Basically a D6 would be pulled from the bag each turn and rolled, this gave an increasing likely hood as time went on that more American Paratroopers would arrive but a fairly unlikely chance of Fallschirmjager arriving ! The American objective was to get to and capture the two nearest bridges.

The terrain setup for 1943, the small Italian force is dug in the far village with some artillery and mortar support near their baseline.

They have also sent two small tankettes forward to help the defence ?

Turn one starts and the allied commander rolls a ‘one’ bringing on a unit of Fallschirmjager 😂 the Americans start their advance to the first bridge crossing armour and infantry in trucks

Second turn and the Allies manage to call in some American paratroopers as well who immediately assault an Italian sniper position on the hill

The battle is just starting to hot up and the Italians bring on some reserve infantry to guard one of the second bridges

A British Hurricane flying over from Malta supports the assault

The American armour make it into the village but foolishly pause at the junction to fire, the Italians have positioned an antitank rifle in the olive grove and a lucky shot knocks the track of the leading Sherman, it is immobilised for the whole battle and completely block the road, everything else will now have to skirt around the village wasting time !

After this success the Americans counter and manage to land a mortar round directly on the Fallschirmjager squad they are wiped out

The American log jam is kicking in and slowing their progress down. To add to this the small Italian flame tank melts the tyres on the M8 Greyhound, it too is no immobilised in the village.

General Patton rushes across the bridge to find out what the hold up is (at this point I put all my efforts into the Fallschirmjager capturing the General but sadly this was just a dream), the Second Sherman starts to move around the village to progress.

Some Italians were hiding in the village which is targeted setting one of the buildings on fire

The Hurricane sweeps about trying to pin down the defenders

Whilst the Henschel attempts to shoot down the Hurricane. The Italians in the forward village hold on as along as possible

Chaos in the village with burning vehicles

View from the church

Italians strategically pull back from the village to create a second defence line. Sadly and but perhaps not before time the flame tank takes a hit and whoosh !🔥🔥🔥🔥

The Americans are now starting to outflank the village

But at this point they are still some way from the two objective bridges

A shot from behind the American lines

Unlikely as it seems second and then a third unit of Fallschirmjager are activated on the table, but these are then attacked by American paratroopers who also arrive on the table

The Americans advance slowly but relentlessly towards their objectives, much of their infantry has been thrown back but the Americans push forward with their armour. Claiming both bridges

The bridge on the left is still contested but the Italians have made the Americans pay dearly for the victory.

Once again a fun game played out over the day. Bolt action giving quick and flexible rules. The plan is to reset the table at some point to play broadly the same scenario but in the two earlier periods, this will probably be in 2026 now.

We had a trip to Manchester on Saturday, a bit of shopping a splendid Model Railway show and an Art gallery where we saw this lovely Lady Butler picture of the Crimea. I would definitely put this on the wall if I had it.

Finally have been been painting some units are only partly completed but these WW2 German zombies are the only unit to get finished so far ……..not sure when they will get some action if ever ? But I did have some good ideas about how I would use them…..we’ll see.

Once again thanks for popping by and reading my progress

A few more games and things before Christmas, I have no real intention of stopping over Christmas anyway

Thanks Matt❤️

Somewhere in the Scottish Borders 1947 : Konflikt 47

When Warlord brought out their Konflikt 47 system it was an obvious expansion to their vast WW2 bringing in a twist of sci-fi. I didn’t rush out to buy any stuff but one of my mates hasn’t been painting up a German force (this is of course what I would prefer to be collecting) so I cobbled together a British force. Now there are some really neat stuff in the “game system” for the Germans, Russians and Americans but it is obvious the designers ran out of enthusiasm for the British. But I had a Churchill tank waiting to be completed and stole some suitable walkers from my Tau army.

When I put the terrain together I didn’t really have any idea but it quickly developed into a secret British weapons establishment. Who knows what terrible experiments are taking place. Who knows how the Germans have invaded .....that is for another story.

The Germans have arrived heavily armoured a Panzer IV

They have also brought a large horde of Russian zombies with them after all you wouldn’t want

To fight along side your own dead buddies would you........let’s hope they can be kept under control.

The Brits as well as normal troops have three state of the art Guardian light walkers, these are effectively

Mobile armoured Heavy Machine guns ! Nice 👍 and some Armoured infantry

Also new to the battlefield is a German Antitank Walker

The British have approached the crossroads.

One of the Guardian walkers has advanced to capture the central objective (fuel dump)

...bout then he gets over excited and charges forward into the horde of zombies

Who manage to set him on fire 🔥 that’ll teach him

The armoured British infantry advance slowly in formation towards the objective

 (we had thinned the number down a bit as they seemed too powerful)

The Panzer IV has circled around the flank, the two big tank spent the entire battle

Trading shots without even a scratch. I didn’t get a picture of it but the German walker

Rolled a fubar and scuttled off the battlefield 😀😀

Germans infantry has made it to the objective now but the Heavily armoured Brits are pushing

forward to get them out the way.....hopefully

They have done it ! Hoorah the smoke you can see is from all three of the British guardian walkers 

Who have been knocked out of the game, shortly after the zombies were also wiped out 😱

A successful mission can be radioed back to British command the Germans have been pushed back, reaserch on the new 

weapons can continue ! Over and out ........

A fun game and I think we might well see a few more games in the future, rather than a large on going campaign I think I see these as one off battles taking place at different locations all over the world. Perhaps the North African desert next time ? We hadn’t costed the points very carefully and discovered the British were probably a bit ‘overweight’ mainly because of the Churchill tank. Definately some scope for the future....but I really want to collect Germans ☹️

The Walking Dead : All out War

I am big fan of zombies but I just haven't managed to get my german WW2 zombie force sorted out for a larger scale game, this will come one day...... in the meantime I picked up the Mantic All Out War starter set back at Christmas. We failed to play it back then as it unfortunately arrived with Italian event cards. They were kind enough to replace them but by then Dungeon son had gone back to the smoke.

Having now finished his degree, and with time on his hands we managed to get a game in.

You get loads of stuff in the box...we played the simple test scenario and it didn't take too long to get the hang of the rules

We were then onto a more complex scenario, this was quite a challenge as the game it supposed to end when the threat level reaches maximum and this seemed to happen really quick !

Importantly we had quite a lot of fun....here Rick and another guy fight whilst surrounded by zombies who have been attracted by the noise

.....and Carl got eaten too later on 😀

As a little taster it made me want to paint the figures up and sort out some slightly better terrain, we'll see if this happens anytime soon ?