Conquest of Ethiopia, scenario #2: Prelude: The Wal Wal Incident

A nice looking, odd situation, scenario. I had to play this, it just looked too cool, 4 maps, the victory conditions where both sides can defend or attack, or both. I the Ethiopians have to go conquer Italian forts or eliminate more Italian steps then they lose. The Italians can win by holding one fort hex or by going and conquering one Ethiopian encampment hex. So certainly the Ethiopian side has it harder and must take more risk. Both sides get reinforcements but the Italian get a lot of air-support and some light armor, as the Ethiopian have a ton of Infantry type of units including Imperial Regulars & Provincial Irregulars but the Italian led Colonial troops (Dubats) (BAN) have a much better morale.

The battle is spread out over all four maps, so there is a lot of movement. In fact the first shots fired didn’t happen until turn four by the Italian air-force. The Ethiopians move a little over half of their forces forward to go after the Italian forts while still leaving a large portion behind to defend their encampment hexes which are many. Somewhere In the middle of the map the Italians and Ethiopians do battle, then the Ethiopians enforcements enter from the south and the Italian L3/35 & Lancia armored car enter from the east. Separate groups spread-out throughout the maps doing battle.

In the end the huge amounts of Italian air-power was telling and the low morale of the Ethiopians was hard to recover unit. This game needed more Demoralized & Disrupted counters. The Italians controlled three out of the four fort hexes and only needed to control one for a minor victory. They attempted to get at least one Ethiopian encampment hex for a major victory but failed and by chance lost the Lancia armored car units to the only gun unit on the map, a 37mm IG. The Italians didn’t want to lose their minor victory and pulled back their unsupported L3/35 out of harm’s way. The Italians lost 8 steps while the Ethiopians lost 9 steps and had many more demoralized, so they did not fulfill any victory conditions. The Italians win a minor victory.

I maybe should have not saved so many resources protecting the Ethiopian encampment hexes but still, those forts are difficult to conquer with low morale units and the Italian air-force pounding them in the open desert. But I love playing this wide open scenario and unique situation and would even be willing to play it again.