This scenario was played over Skype in 1 session against PGHQ member, Nebelwurfer. This was our second scenario and Brett was looking forward to utilizing his growing nouse of the rules in another PG encounter. This scenario is all about an Australian dawn raiding party with intent to inflict some damage on the Italian lines and then flit back to their own. In doing so, neither side must lose 4 step equivalents or else they lose. (Unless you reciprocate the 4 step loss on your opponent in which case it’s a Draw).

The Australian raiding units are high-moraled 8/8’s mixed up of some infantry platoons, engineers and some light tanks. They are adequately laced with good Australian leaders, two of which had that horrible ‘2’ morale factor. Their home lines are also a strong force of everything really, but these will sit in place unless the Italians are forced to chase the raiding party back to their own lines and come within 3 hexes of Australian positions. Because of that, it has much importance for the Italians not to allow the enemy to get their 4 step-losses on you first otherwise they will probably run back to their own lines forcing you to advance within activation range. The Italians? Well what can I say? Their morale is 7/7 and consists of 12 x INF platoons, some HMG’s, and quite a few pieces of ordnance. They have 4 entrenchments strung out and can start dug-in. But their officers? Good grief. Of 9 Tenentes’ in the game, no less than 8 of them had the zero modifier! (drawn by Wayne Baumber for me!!!) Fortunately, a Capitane and Maggiore had a ‘1’ so all was not lost I suppose. The Italians decided that with both sides able to muster a 30col OBA attack, they would be better off placing their ordnance in three of the entrenchments, thus reducing OBA attacks to a 21col and making it far harder to achieve an X result. The fourth entrenchment was abandoned as it was too far away and would stretch a pretty low efficient force such as they were. The infantry and MG’s dug-in around the front and sides of the trenches to at least ensure a large direct-fire hit on any assaulting ‘Cobbers’.

At 0500 hours the raid began in darkness. The night would persist for the first 3 turns and this worried the Italians. They assumed the high-moraled Aussies would go for it under darkness and benefit from the col.shift on DF and bombardment, but once again, Brett surprised me with his opening gambits as he did with the last game and instead of a direct night-attack, he sent them out on a flanking maneuver. This would at least eat the night away for the Italians. For their part, they sent out a leader to go spot for their artillery. The spotter, through Aussie OBA was soon disposed of before he was able to call in Italian OBA and on-board shots, and this began a string of no less than 4 x leaders in total suffering the same fate as spotting suddenly became a dangerous activity due to Australian OBA accuracy and also being captured. When the Italians did spot, the fire effects were negligible. This all meant by the end of turn 3 (0530), the Italians had lost a Captain and three tenentes’ and the Allied force nothing!

However, at 0545 hours, the light began to breakthrough and with visibility 4 hexes, the raiding group came into sight. Once more Italian OBA was ineffective. The Australian then tried to get their armour into a position away from Italian 47mm AT guns, but whilst doing this a step of A13’s were hit (counting as 2 steps) putting the Australian raid in jeopardy as they had only to lose 2 steps more over the next 8 turns. The Australian infantry now started to form long range fire lines rather than go for assaulting their enemy and this now meant that both sides started to exchange DF at each other. There were a few cases of disorder caused through this fire, but the well-trained Aussie officers generally kept their troops in good order. At 0615 (turn 6) Australian OBA scored a hit on the dug-in AT gun that had taken out the A13’s. This produced a cheer around the Australian lines but it was soon hushed when Italian OBA likewise came down on them taking out an INF step too. (3-1 Italian favour). Italian honour was ensured the same turn when their on-board 105mm in tandem with a mortar also hit the Aussie infantry for a 4-1 step-loss lead and a guaranteed draw their worst outcome possible. Knowing this, the raiding force now had nothing to lose and set about attacking weaker parts of the Italian set-up. At 0630 hours, turn 7, Australian OBA again displayed their accuracy by smashing down on the Italian infantry to decimate a step (4-2). It did the same next turn too, again removing Italian infantry (4-3 now the score). The Italians hit back still in an effort to at least weaken Australian infantry positions that were firing at them. With this, an Aussie ENG platoon double-demoralised from the Italian on-board mortars to lose a step (5-3 Italy).

At 0700 hours, Italian OBA finished off the damaged ENG platoon with yet another X result.(6-3). Now the Italians would need to hunker down and see if they could avoid a step-loss over the next and final three turns. Whilst all these shells were being thrown out by both sides, the infantry of both combatants and the Australian armour were gripped in a direct-fire battle with mainly low-odds throws. Overall, I think the Italians surprisingly got the better of it, but neither side inflicted a step-loss this way. What both sides did do though was to cause disruption and demoralization. This in turn weakened the Australian line as some of these, including officers, had to flee out of enemy range, and for the Italians too, they had to retreat a hex. On a couple of occasions this meant they would stumble into the ordnance occupied tranches thus making them a 3-unit stack. It was at one of these stacks at 0715 hours (turn 10 of 12) that the Australians zeroed their OBA. Rolling a 12, it meant that an Italian mortar had to perish for a battle tally of 6-4 in the Italian favour. Nonetheless, both sides needed to inflict just 4 steps for a win and with both sides now recording a win the game was officially a draw. That hit closed proceedings as the raiding party melted back towards its own lines. The Italians had fared well, but a little short for a winning performance.

Personally, given my leaders and the fearful prospect of a whole force of 10 moraled Aussies coming at me in the darkness, I was happy to get a draw. Of course, having attained the 4 step-losses on the enemy before he did, you are going to hope you can hold out for the win. But I’d rather lose that 4th step on the 10th turn rather than the last throw of a game and therefore any such disappointment was avoided. I thought I would rate this a ‘2’, but after playing it and having fun in a fairly close battle, I’ll give it a decent ‘3’. One last thing to mention. As can be seen if you read the whole report, of the 9 actual steps that were removed as caualties in this game, no less than 8 were from some form of artillery bombardment. The other, an A13 step came from a 47mm AT shot. Bombardment was certainly the queen of the battlefield in this encounter.