This is our second PG game, the first was Kokoda Campaign and we went from the jungle with having a plethora of leaders, to CoE where leaders are as rare as finding water in the desert.

The Ethiopian player sets up first they chose to occupy the fort with one unit no leader and put the other units in the adjacent hexes on the hills. The hex to the left had the Metoaleqa with one infantry unit while the hex on the right the HMG, infantry and the Shambel. This set up would allow the Ethiopian forces to support each other and if necessary to fall back onto an adjacent stack if needed.

The Italians split their forces into 4 stacks of 2 platoons each with the leaders and 1 Banda unit behind the 4 stacks, the officers were going to “heard the cats” to the objective. We chose 2 units per hex to minimize giving the Ethiopian player another +1 column modifier.

The Ethiopians held their opportunity fire until the Italians got to the adjacent hex to maximize the column shifts & targeted the closest stacks with the idea of disrupting or demoralizing to stop the advance. The HMG opened fire at this time & routed one of the stacks while the dug-in infantry routed the other stack, no steps lost just high morale rolls resulting in demoralization. The next turn the Italians tried to recover these units but to no avail, someone yelled “runaway” and so they did never to be a factor in the game.

The Ethiopians won the initiative on the next turn with the HMG targeting the Italian Sargent (7-0-0) and the lone unit stacked with him. No steps lost but both failed their morale checks, demoralized and when they tried to recover failed again, so off they went following their comrades.

The remaining 50% of the Italian forces tried their best to push back the Ethiopian forces and did succeed in eliminating two steps while almost capturing the fort, but could not meet the scenario requirements for a victory in the time frame for the scenario.

Very challenging scenario for the Italians, since this is such a short scenario might have to play again to see if the Italians can pull off a victory.