1500 hours, 4 October, 1935: Italian officers lead Serae Banda troops from Eritrean tribes to clear a path north to continue the advance into Ethiopian territory. Ethiopian Imperial irregular troops hold positions on the high ground along the trail and the Daro Tacle fort (the entrenchment in hex 0709). The Serae Bando attack in troop groups and approach under steady fire from the Irregulars.

1600 hours. The Serae Banda attack on the left flank forces back the forward Ethiopian position but meets accurate fire from a dug in HMG on the reverse of the hill slowing the advance. But on the right flank, the a tenacious Ethiopian platoon holds fast in it's position holding off an assault from the attackers and inflicting casualties upon them.

1645 hours: Unable to overcome the HMG fire on the left flank nor the tenacious defense on the right, the Italian officer morale breaks effectively halting the attack. The Serae Banda melt back into to the bush to await reinforcements and armor in order to renew the attack the next day (which is pretty much what happened in the actual battle). And interesting quick scenario which shows how the subtle differences in morale, movement and range can have great effect.

The terrain and the victory conditions are centered along a winding trail between two high hill masses. In the center of the mountain pass, there's a fort (entrenchment) and they give me (Italian) just 8 turns (gulps) to prevent 3 ferocious ethiopian infantry platoons + 1 HMG platoon to be able to direct some fire on the trail. I have to be fast and daring... The HMG and a big leader (morale =10 !) are dug in on top of the slope dominating the trail : I send all my infantry against them ; they fire and miss ; I manage to win the assault and to kill them but several of my "banda" are disrupted/demoralized (my morale is 6/5 !!!). Further on, I manage to lock down one Ethiopian infantry in the fort but these two pesky remaining ethiopians began to run madly on the plateau to reach the extremety of trail. Then I eliminate the guys in the fort but I still need to win the initiative on the last turn to win the scenario. Missed ! He wins the initiative and runs away along the trail. Short and fun scenario. Beautiful maps, excellent counters.

Conquest of Ethiopia, scenario #1: Initial Troubles

My first play in this game and I have been looking forward to it as the subject really interests me but I was just too busy with other things until now. I played the first scenario, with low counter density, one map and only 8 turns, so combat has to be fast and furious!

The Ethiopians have a smaller force but a huge advantage, with being dug-in, a fort, higher morale and time is on their side, as all they have to do is defend and be able to put direct fire somewhere on the trial at the end of play to win. The Italians have a large group of colonial BAN/Eritrean tribe troops with two Italian officers but a very low morale of 6/5. To make matters worst I drew a Italian TEN with a 6 morale value which looks to be of little help. The cool Amba’ circle terrain is ignored, so I’ll have to play a different scenario to try this type of terrain out but the maps in this game are awesome!

The first couple of turns the Italian maneuver on board but must attack immediately to have any chance of achieving their victory conditions. With a range of one, they have to pull adjacent to the Ethiopian troops and take a beating and what survives can attack next turn but with such a low morale most are demoralized and retreating with no chance of coming back or are disrupted. The Ethiopian win a clear and decisive victory. Even if they scenario was lopsided, I still really enjoyed it and the fast play of this small scenario.

4 October 1935; Daro Tacle fort, Ethiopia. The battle starts at 1500 and is only two hours long (8 turns). So the Italian forces, the Serae Banda of II Corps, who are attacking have no time to waste and have to get going. The Ethiopian forces, elements of Sahale's forces garrisoning the fort, really have their job cut out for them: hold. The Sahale's force is made up of Impererial Irregulars led by a Shambel (captain) with the help of one Metoaleqa (lieutenant). They are a small company reinforced by a HMG platoon. Their advantage is the entrenchment of the fort and being dug in. Also they set up dug in on higher terrain. They are tasked with holding the fort and keeping a LOS/LOF on the trail leading to their rear areas. The Shambel decides to spread out, occupying not only the fort but the high ground to his right flank. He places the HMG there under the Metoaleqa. This position covers most of the trail with fire. The HMG is the only really "modern" weapon in the battle as the Imperial Irregulars are mostly armed with pre WWI rifles while their opponents even have spears and bows! Meanwhile the colonial Italian forces are made up of three companies. A total of ten platoons of Bande (irregular tribal infantry). Advantage in numbers for sure but attacking a strong position and up hill to boot. And worse of all the troops are weak in the knees with a morale of only 6/5. But this is slightly offset by having two pretty solid leaders. A Tenente (lieutenant) with a morale of 10 and a +1 morale bonus and an Sergente with +1 morale and fire bonuses. As a historical side note the Tenente was named Morgantini and was the first Italian officer to die in the war. The Tenente decides to split his force. One group of five platoons to attack the HMG position on the high ground and the remaining five to go for the fort. The Native Sergente leads the attack on the high ground and has success in routing the Ethiopian's off of the hill. But takes almost the entire two hours to do so and by the time he stands over the foxholes of the Ethiopians the majority of his platoons are back at their starting positions cowering in the rocky cover. He is therefore unable to reinforce his Tenente who is attacking Fort Daro Tacle. The Ethiopian Shambel's troops hold the fort to the bitter end (and thus keep the trail under LOF) but not because of the Shambel's efforts. He actually spends most of the action hiding in his bunker: he stays disrupted or demoralized for the entire attack! Even though the Italian Tenente leads several attacks against the entrenched position he is unable to overcome the Ethiopians. After all is said and done very few losses occur. The Bande loose half of a platoon but more importantly have half of their troops flee. The Ethiopians only loose the one position of the HMG when it flees. A nasty little fight with poor quality troops in a unusual scenario that was fun to play.

This was the introductory scenario for Conquest of Ethiopia (CoE). I was very eager to start this series of scenarios as I had a relative who served in the Italian army throughout the war, and I was very interested to experience, through the game, some of the challenges he faced.

Fairly straight forward scenario... at only 8 turns, there is little time for maneuver and strategy. The Italians start out with a battalion of colonial Banda (10x platoons worth) and no heavy weapons or OBA. Their mission is to clear the trail of any Ethiopian troops. The Italian colonials are opposed by a reinforced company (3x Inf, 1x HMG)of Ethiopian irregulars in a fort astride the main road.

The Italians split their forces to envelope the Ethiopians from both sides of the pass. While the concept looked good in planning, Mr. Murphy had other ideas. Right from the start, very fortuitous Ethiopian opportunity fire served to disperse and demoralize some of the Italians on both sides of the fort. As it was a fairly short scenario, the Italians threw caution to the wind and launched very hasty, ill coordinated attacks on the fort. At no time were the Ethiopians in danger of losing the fort, and at the end of the scenario, most of the Italian Banda were in full flight.

In reality, with the very telling initial fire from the Ethiopians, even a novice commander would have seen that the initiative was lost and would have pulled back to regroup his forces. However, when playing against a set time (in terms of the game, 8 turns) I was forced to attack quickly in hopes of a signal success that would turn the tide in the Italian favor. Unfortunately, the Sons of the Negus had other ideas!!!

A low morale Bande force with mediocre leadership tries to assault a tiny Ethiopian force either dug in or entrenched. Nothing the Italians bring with them has any impact on a dug-in HMG with a morale 10 leader and infantry support. Italy loses 8 of 20 steps, Ethiopia 1 step out of 6. If I play this again, I might try forming a fire group to wear the defense down before assaulting, but with a weapons range of only 1, that doesn't sound too promising. Quick, easy, small introductory scenario to learn direct fire and assault.

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.

The Italians are supposed to be the scenario attackers, but, they suffer with 6/5 morale and have only 2 leaders. While they greatly outnumber the Ethiopians, (10 BAN infantry vs 3), the Ethiopian’s have a MG and better morale, being 7/7. Also, the big difference, the puny Italians have to clear 2 dug in positions and a fort, represented by an entrenchment. And they have only 8 turns to do this.

Unless your extremely lucky (or un lucky…), this isn’t going to happen. And didn’t in my game. The Italians managed to clear one dug in position, but the fort and other dug in spot were not touched. Italian morale was so bad that by the end of the scenario half of the infantry had routed away, further weakening their ability to take anything.

I guess this played to history. I don’t think there is much replay value in this scenario, but it is a good introduction to this theater.

This was a quick, single session, face-to-face, play-through with the cunning, Tambu, leading the defending Ethiopian side. I commanded the Italian-Aligned native force. The Ethiopian defense was focused on Daro Tacle as portrayed by the entrenchment in hex 0709. From the beginning, the attackers were under accurate and deadly fire that resulted in discombobulated attack sequencing, a leader killed, and substantial casualties for both sides. Italian Serae Banda morale collapsed and nearly all morale recovery attempts failed during this game.

As others have reported, this is a fast-moving & interesting scenario that I rated as a 3, mostly because I enjoyed the play-through, and my playful opponent's risky-but-successful, counter-attacking style of play.

This is a really tough scenario for the Italian/Colonial side...your entire force has a range of 1 and a morale of 6/5. So you must move adjacent and take +3 opp. fire (+2 adjacent, +1 for moving). The only mitigating factor might be a -1 for a slope. At this point half your units or more will get hit with dem or dis results and the whole thing falls apart.

I'm not even sure if it's possible to take the fort, although technically a fort locked in assault would probably count for the win (as the units in the fort can't fire on the path when in Melee).

A solo puzzle that probably is historically accurate...and actually interesting to see it work out in play, but as a competitive scenario this one won't work very well...the Ethiopians sit in their positions and fire away and I'm not even sure if it's possible for the Ital/Colonial side to win.