A detachment of British Armored cars intercepts a mobile Italian column. The armored cars inflict some losses, but overconfidence lets the disembarked Italian infantry into assault range, and the armored cars are defeated. British tank reinforcements arrive too late to join the battle.

The paucity of British units makes this scenario more interesting than it otherwise would be. Basically, as the Brits you haven't enough muscle to force the situation, so you're maneuvering at speed to try and split off weak Italian units and then surrender them.

Very much the way a pack of lions would attack a herd of buffalo, now that I think about it...

The British armored cars advanced quickly, but the Italians split up into officer led groups and dispersed just as quickly. The battle became a chase through the desert. The British were able to eliminate the 77mm and a couple of trucks, while losing no steps of their own. The Italian strategy of avoiding contact, and using L3/35’s to delay the armored cars was effective. The British reinforcements arrived too late to join the battle, which ended as a draw.

Author	plloyd1010 (Italy)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	Italy
Participants	NBGB
Play Date	2019-10-09
Language	English
Scenario	AfKo015

I don't think this scenario was completely baked out. The tank leaders for the 11th Hussars and the reinforcement instructions seem to indicate that. The real flaws lie in that neither side has an offensive objective and victory is based on not taking losses.

The British start with an armored car squadron an the edge sight for a small group of Italians. The Italian main group is about 3 turns march away to the north. I quickly pulled into a defensive knot and started digging while my L3's interposed themselves between my motor column and the British. My tankettes got an opportunity when they were able to assault a lone Rolls Royce. The result was one step loss for my opponent and a demoralized tankette for me. Combat was broken off. I was left trying to recover the L3, my opponent waiting for reinforcements.

The L3 never does recover. On turn 13 the British reinforcements arrive. The demoralized L3 runs from the A9. The other L3's abandon it as they maneuver in support of the central position. The A9 does eventually kill the demoralized L3. The British chase of the L3 and surrounding of the hedgehog has brought British armor in range of my 77mm gun, but before I get my first shot off, FoW ends the turn. Next turn I take a chunk out of another armored car and British armor starts to close in.

The British attack leads to some Italian morale problems, including the loss of 20mm portee gun. (It panics and falls victim to the A9.) By now the the British have run out of time and the Italian position has survived. The British have lost a couple more steps, bring their total to 4, while Italy has lost 3.

I used to note in various books and articles how the Italians were often derided deploying in defensive infantry formations in the desert. It is poor tactic of course, but there seemed to be no other option in this case. At least I got to put a new flag on my map.

With this scenario, I saw the the British have won all the play, but in this one the Italians won. I agree with Shad that this is like lion hunt, but I believe the buffalo's have the edge. The Italians look to be in a tough position with leaderless troops stranded in the middle of the board that need to get back with the main force. The British "lions" are the Rolls-Royce scout cars, but they don't have much punch and there armor is thin. Reinforcements appear later but they might be to late.

In my play, the Italians setup with the 77mm front and center to try to cover as much of the ground between them and the stranded force. The other units position around them and will try to dig in on there first turns. The British moved first trying to get between the stranded Italians and the main force. The Italians start moving away from the advancing scout cars and eventually turn the corner and get back with the main force. This means trouble for the British as the 77mm gun has enough force to kill the scout cars if they get within 6 hexes. What can the British do to attack the Italian hedgehog that they have built? The scout cars probe around the Italian lines looking to attack, but buy time for the British reinforcements. By turn 15 the other British tanks arrive, but they are too far away and will not be able to affect the fight. The Rolls-Royce need to do it themselves, unfortunately there first move toward the Italians one it hit by the 77mm for a step loss and the game.

I felt that this scenario can be predictable and needs some help. If the Italian player sets up to cover the stranded force and get them moving back as soon as possible, it will be a long day for the British. The Italians can easily get back their main force while the British will be stuck staying outside the 6 hex range of the 77mm gun (BTW the range of the 77mm is a printed 4, but remember extended range makes it 6, still with a FP of 1). I believe an SSR that restricts the stranded force to not moving unless a leader is present would help balance it. This would give the British a chance to cut them off but still give the Italian player chance to get them out of trouble.

Played this one over Skype with Wayne Baumber.

This pits a lowish moraled and surrender prone Italian force against a mobile British force of armoured cars and mainly weak MG wielding tanks. What COULD have been an interesting scenario though has been made lame with VC's for both sides that basically, in any 2 player game would frighten any would be attacker as the chances of a loss as the attacker far outweigh any chance of a win. As the details of scenario VC's can not be discussed on this site, all I will say that some kind of proviso should be entered along the lines that one or the other side should have been allowed to absorb more step losses before victory could be claimed by the other side.

In a solo-player game, the player may well be happy to get both sides to just blithely advance to contact and have a shoot-em up, but when two players are pitted against each other, then its not so clever to non-sensically advance to your defeat KNOWING FULL WELL ITS GONNA HAPPEN.

The reinforcements are very limited too. In our game, Wayne threw a 6 straight away and thus got them on turn 9 of 20. Even with that, their impact was limited due to the time of travel needed to get to the battle area. Personally, I think the British should be allowed to enter on turn 9 and not be diced for. Meanwhile, the Italians must simply set up in a hedge-hog compact formation and wait for the British advance before blasting at the thinly covered armoured skins with his artillery.

In the end, The Brits waited till they had all their forces available and tried a nibble here and there. The result of this was a mildly entertaining final 5 turns where the British lost a Rolls-Royce Armoured Car step and the Italians lost a step of L3/35's and the miserably cowardly 77mm gun crew pelting off the battlefield as fast as they could.

Neither side attained their VC's, though I guess the Italians probably came closest when needing a 11 for a 2 step hit on an A/C with AT fire, they rolled a 10 ... Oooh, so close.

In the end, a not very surprising DRAW

Rating for this. It was looking like a '1' for the first 15 turns due to the ill thought out VC's and complete lack of meaningful action. However, the interest raised in the last 5 turns added an extra point leaving me to rate it a 'just about a 2'.

I'd recommend bringing on the British reinforcements on turn 9 without any dice rolling and adding 3 step losses and 2 step losses allowed extra to the Italians and British respectively.

I see no need to add much to Vince's AAR except to agree with his comments. What follows is an extract from the memoirs of Sir Algeron Blewden-Smyth Major 11th Hussars (Rtd) who commanded the armored car company in this action. " I was on patrol with my company in my Rolls-Royce armored car "Bessie" on the Egyptian border when through my binocular's I saw the enemy. A group of obviously lost Italian units ripe for the taking. Tally Ho I radioed to my platoon commanders and off we jolly well charged . Needless to say the wops high tailed it off and then I noticed a larger group of the enemy and they were armed with bloody big guns. I ordered a halt and called up for reinforcements. Eventually the tanks of the 7th Hussar's pitched up and we attacked the now dug in cowering Italians. The plan was that I would flank the enemy with the Rolls Royce's and the tanks would take on the Italian tin cans and machine gun the the artillery crews. This plan worked, nearly, the Italian tanks withdrew very quickly leaving a couple of burning wrecks and the artillery crew ran off as quick as they could. However in my haste for glory we had ventured to close and lost poor old Bertie and his crew to a stray artillery shell. This dampened our enthusiasm a little and we withdrew to the south having given the Eyeties a lesson in fire and movement" In game terms, the isolated Italian units fell back to the main group who had dug in.For the next 12 turns there was little or no action. In the final few turns a flurry of shots resulted in one step loss to the Brits and two to the Italian. Not the most exciting scenario I have ever played.

We played this short scenario over 2 sessions on consecutive days. As others have reported, this scenario is deeply flawed and was probably not decently play-tested. There are no geographic objectives to be occupied and the victory conditions are based entirely on the number of steps lost. It is not possible for either side to win without taking losses. Historically this is a movement to contact and reconnaissance mission for both sides. Hence, the victory conditions should be about determining the size and make up of the opposing force, perhaps on the basis of spotting individual units and reporting their locations. Maybe a specific set of observation hexes must be passed through by the British armored cars, and the Italians must prevent this from occurring?

In our play-through, the British armored car company approached an Italian infantry platoon and an L3/35 platoon on Turn 5 in Hex 0918, this was just after the Italians had managed to set up and dig in with the 20mm portee unit in the same hex. The balance of the Italian force was dug in on the higher slopes of Hexes 1017, 1116 & 1115, where they managed several successful non-adjacent AT shots from both the 77mm gun (hex 1017) and the 20mm portee platoon in Hex 0918. The intrepid Brits charged home an assault on Hex 1018 and forced the surrender of 1 infantry platoon, 1 Capitano, a pair of trucks and the resolute 20 mm portee.

British armored reinforcements did not arrive until Turn 15 -- far too late to materially affect the outcome of the scenario as published. Final losses for Italy were: 5 steps lost, including 2 steps of tankettes, 2 steps of infantry (surrendered), 1 step of 20mm portee (destroyed), 2 trucks (surrendered) and the unfortunate Capitano (captured). The British side lost 4 steps of armored cars, which meant that both sides failed to achieve their victory conditions, and the game ended in an unsatisfactory draw.