This game played over skype against Wayne Baumber in 1 session.

First battle I have played from this supplement and my fears were confirmed as MB's mighty Poles cleave through weedy Italians.

The game is based on a rumour rather than an actual battle and in real-life, the Italians never made an attack. This scenario amply showed me why !

The Poles in Britain's service are in the desert and set-up on a hill. They are high-moraled and very well officered. As well as hill and morale advantage, they can all set up entrenched and are protected by minefields and wire. Its horrible !

The Italians probed in the darkness for a weak spot, but with the Polish hill-top quite small, they are able to fill their lines ready for any Italian attack. The Italians finally throw themselves at some of the Polish positions, believing them to be their weakest points, but unfortunately, the Poles fought better in close combat and continued to rebuff any Italian attempts.

After 10 turns of utter frustration, getting a good kicking, and seeing that any headway made was at terrible expense, the Italians retired after seeing that the Poles were continuously getting the jump on them each turn.

If the Italian wins this scenario in the future, I'd be fascinated to see how it was done. My effort was simply atrocious !

Played in one session with Her Hughes, this pits a small highly motivated Polish force entrenched on a hill top surrounded by mines and barbed wire against a slightly less motivated group of Italian who have to take this hill in 4 hours. The only Italian advantage is that the attack starts under the cover of night. As the Polish player I went for a simple box defense with the wire and mine in a U shape around the front line, this would force the Italians to take a longer route to attack a less well defended part of the line. This simple defense was enough to do the job as the Italian attack failed to make any in roads into the Polish perimeter, and prior to the game I had resolved to use the Polish better morale and assault out of the trenches in a bid to demoralize the enemy. This worked and after only two hours the Italians retreated to lick their wounds. **A very average scenario, seems unbalanced, though it was very unlike Vince to give up so early in the game, I too could see no chance of an Italian victory at that stage*

It seems clear that the Italians would have looked at the Carpathian Brigade box and walked away. Even with the attack going forward at night with the possibility of finding and attacking at the weakest point and an admittedly botched Polish setup (instead of compact the Poles were linear permitting their line to be invested without the ability of the Poles to reinforce assaulted hexes) they really can't get any legitimate hold on the Poles.

The Poles set up, as mentioned above with a linear formation fronted by the wire and with the minefields set up to direct the flow of the Italians either into the front of the line where the HMGs can have a field day, or around to the back end of the formation where a box sits on the high point of the hill.

The Italians, seeing this, realize that the worst thing they can do is to comply with the Poles' wishes. They do take the roundabout approach but instead of attacking the small box on the hill they continue around to attack the line from the rear forcing the Poles to send out a couple of infantry platoons to disrupt their plans. All along the path troops are getting disrupted and demoarlized.

The maneuver, however, is successful and the two RIG platoons are destroyed and the big right hook gets into assaults with entrenchments manned by a single Polish RIF platoon. This is not as good as it seems, however, xince the units which are sitting behind, marking the maneuver's wake are the HMGs. This leaves the Italian assaults on the 9 column despite the presnece of the engineers. These predictably fail, in some cases spectacularly as the defenders start on the 9 column with first fire and on occassion can counterattack with a morale, leader and, sometimes, demoralized bonuses.

In the end the British planes begin hitting the demoralized units and the Italians fall apart. Their only points came from the 4 steps of Poles destroyed trying to halt the right hook. The Italians lose twice as many steps and do not manage to take a single entrenchment. The Poles are just a little too strong and just a little too highly motivated for the Italians to pull out a win on this one. I can only give this a "2" as it became a chore towards the end as every clever tactic I could use ended up pilloried on the poor Italian morale.

Played solo in 2 hours.

I posted a few images in this thread. The Poles set up in a 7-hex box with minefields in the front of the position and on the flanks, and an outer ring of wires.

The Italians split their force into three groups. The artillery and the mortars stay in their initial position. The other two groups move under cover of darkness to the flanks and the rear of the Polish position.

The Italians move a leader with 400 meters of the Polish position to act as a spotter. After three turns of ineffective bombardment, the Italians move in for the attack. They managed to contest 2 hexes for a while but strong counter-assaults by the Poles make the Italians wish they did not get out of bed before sunrise.

The Italians and Poles reinforce the assaults, and the Italians send a detachment to attack the now weakened Polish front. The detachment finds two powerful minefields and their attack ends before it even started. A few more turns of the effective assaults and fire from the Poles and the Italians gave up.

Poles 24 victory points (7 for the entrenchments and 17 step losses), Italians 0.

Polish major victory.

I rated this scenario a "2". It plays fast but I fear the Italians are at a serious disadvantage in this one. Nevertheless, it was fun to use a technique Vince used against me so shortly after our Skype game.