This is a pretty straightforward scenario. A large Australian force (with a few Desert Rats Matildas) needs to take 3 hills from the Italians. The terrain in totally flat except for those 3 hills (one of which is 2 hexes large) and the Italians are entrenched on and around all of them. Thankfully for the British, the Italians on 2 of the hills are subject to the surrender rule. The ones on the third hill will need to be kicked out the old fashioned way. In addition to the troops on the 3 hills, the Italians have a small force entrenched across a road.

I split the Aussies into 3 forces, a medium sized one to capture Hill 1 (subject to surrender), a mobile force of Matildas and Armored cars with just a bit of infantry trailing to take Hill 2 (subject to surrender) while the rest marched up to hill 3. For their part, the Italian set-up is mostly dictated by the scenarios, which forces on all 3 hills, plus the aforementioned force across the road. Taking Hill 1 took about 7 turns, a lot in a 16 turn scenario, and those Italians refused to surrender. However, the relatively light firepower of the troops on this hill wasn't able to do much to the attackers.

The Matildas sent to take care of Hill 2 took a detour to force the Italians in the 3 trench hexes across the road to surrender to make sure they didn't cause any trouble for the infantry. This turned out to be a terrible move, as the Italians laughed at the demands for surrender and then swarmed out of their trenches to destroy the Matildas. They later were able to also take out some of the Rolls Royce armored cars that followed (this is what happens when you roll 11s and 12s multiple times in assault combat). This put the plan to take Hill 2 behind schedule, as more tanks had to be sent, along with more infantry. The Italians did have to scurry back to their entrenchments where they remained the entire game.

When all was said and done, Hill 2 never fell, as the Italians with their whopping 7 morale, kept not surrendering. Oh, a whole bunch did during the scenario, probably about 30 steps, however the ones in the critical positions were very stubborn. And the assault on the 2 hex hill (Forte Pilastrino) and its environs was going nowhere fast. The Aussies had the Italians outgunned and out moraled, however first fire and the 2 column shift for attacking trenches meant that actually getting a good melee attack was tough. Plus, demoralized troops don't have to flee an entrenchment, which meant that the only way to clear them out was to kill them all, and that required either really good rolling, or compound morale failures, and the Italians were having none of that, and kept recovering (the +1 to morale for being in an entrenchment was huge). The tops of Hill 3 were never seriously threatened.

However, the Italians could only eliminate 7 steps of Aussies, 3 short of what was needed to win, so the scenario ended up a draw. I suspect this one will be a draw most of the time (although other published AARs don't seem to support that). Yes, I could have bypassed the entrenchments that cost me a platoon of Matildas, and yes, I could have seen more Italians in critical places surrender. However, the grinding assault on Forte Pilastrino itself is going to be tough to accomplish, especially with Italian artillery harassing the advancing troops. And the British OBA and on board mortars aren't really enough to deal with entrenched troops. There were some morale checks, and 7 still means the Italians pass more than half the time, and recover more than half the time.

Still, it was fun. It might be better solo because of the limited movement options for the Italians, and there are too many entrenchments to defend fully, so the Italians do have to decide where to defend, and where to concede.