Adventures on the Wargames Table

With the attacks going in on the Olive Oil factory it was important to try to keep Jerry off balance. The Australians of 2/1 Battalion must not let the enemy consolidate the their positions. So, orders came through for the reinforced 3rd platoon to begin the attack. I had hoped to paste Jerry with some naval gun support but the meagre points available for this scenario meant that the matelots would be pointing their guns elsewhere. More on “support” later. Here’s the table. The brave Australians would be attacking along the road from the left in the second picture. The patrol phase went rather well and I was able to get a couple of JOPs in the gardens around the house with the lavender. The other being next to the little culvert. Dave had his in the vines and amongst the buildings which certainly suited him. First in the field was a section whose aim was to defend the right flank and/or harass FJs in the buildings with covering fire whilst the real attack went in on the left, where the...

Following on from the earlier unsuccessful attack on the Olive Oil Factory , the Australians of 2/1st Battalion have regrouped, called in armoured support (just like the real attack) and launched another assault on the heavily dug in FJs. Here’s the table laid out the same as before. Orange Dave played a very aggressive patrol phase, pushing his markers forward along the road with all possible haste. He was determined to make the Aussies cross as much open ground as he could manage. This resulted in my JOPs being mainly in the sunken lane (out of shot, left) and adjacent woods whereas his own were nicely placed around the olive oil factory (ammo trolley in the gardens, the motorbike in the courtyard and the camo tent just outside the walls) Jerry gets a succession of double turns and soon has plenty of men ready to give the Australians a warm welcome. Due to casualties one of his squads is half strength and the other two are a man down, but that’s still an awful lot of firepower. I bri...

Game four of our exciting "Kampfgruppe von Crete" Campaign sees some of the Australians of  2/1st Battalion diverting from the main attack on Pervolia to tackle a German force holed up in an Olive Oil factory. I got a hefty 13 points of support for this battle and was very tempted to bring along either the Matilda or the MkVI again, but as this action was initially considered to be a sideshow to the main performance, I felt that the scarce armoured resources should be unavailable, at least to begin with. This seemed to fit the narrative best. So my choices were: Additional section of regulars with JL,Vickers MMG & emplacement, Universal Carrier with Bren Team & JL and Crafty Cretans - Stavros the elderly sniper. Dave chose an LG40 recoiless gun & JL. We kept our choices secret as that seems more fun. Morale: I rolled a measly 8 whereas Dave edged ahead with 9. Clearly my Aussies were disappointed to be missing out on the advance to Pervolia! Here's the si...

After some post-game-two refreshments we got right on with game three, "Probe among the Olive Groves" (we also threw in a nice little vineyard for good measure). Here's the original map from the KgvL PSC. For our game, the FJs deploy along the North Eastern edge whilst the Australians advance along the road from the South West. Some of the hedges were replaced with low stone walls but we agreed the same level of cover. The field at the 'top' was replaced with a vineyard. Dave had also made a splendid sunken lane stone wall feature so that helped remind us to treat the lane from the fork to the edge of the buildings as having restricted visibility and improved cover. Dave kindly reset the scenery and I have to say we were quite pleased with how our combined scenic efforts looked. As I mentioned before, my pics were not really good enough to use, but here’s a couple of pics of the ‘prototype’ battlefield that Dave and I used to figure out what extras we might need. ...

Friday morning dawned bright and early so Dave and I planned to get a couple more games of Crete campaign completed. After the first battle my Aussies were now ‘as keen as mustard’ to give Jerry ‘what for’. Luckily for the Allies some heavy support was now available in the shape of a Matilda. Historically these were stationed near the airfields, but remember, our campaign is a 'what-if' based on the theme of better coordinated and more aggressive Allied counter-attacks. Before we set to, Dave rolled to see if any more of his men reported for duty after the scattered drop but alas for him they did not. Including the men lost or missing after the first battle, he was now fielding just over 50% of his total forces. However, having seen how much firepower even his depleted squads could manage to throw out, I knew I'd have to be extra careful to avoid unnecessary casualties. Early in the battle the Australians bring on the Matilda! There's also a 2" mortar team but the...