I had to get a scenario in on Cassino, even if it was small one. This one has Allied armor; New Zealand & American trying to get through the Cavendish Road, control it and a few more victory point hexes and eliminated German steps. The German Forces consist of all Infantry and a few small guns but have a very high Morale and terrain on their side and they basically have the same victory objectives.

To make a long story short, my Allied armor got chewed to pieces, in mostly assault combat, as I seemed to push them too close to enemy stacks of Infantry to get those adjacent bonus modifiers but would usually pay for it latter in Assault Combat. The Germans just kept feeding fresh Infantry: INF, ENG, HMG right into new stacks with three units plus leader usually in their stacks, why not. Two of the assaults really broke the allies backs, with the Germans rolling 6’s on the dice with one 2x and another 3x result. The wrecks stacked up and the German even scored with a 1 value AT gun, rolling a 12 on the dice. The Germans did loss some Infantry steps as well but nothing like the Allied losses and the German kept possession of most of the victory hexes as well. In the end, it was a Major German Victory.

I think I rushed forward too fast with my Allied armor but they had no support what so ever, not artillery, infantry or air and the Germans had nothing but time on their side, which the Allies did not. I kind of saw the hand writing on the wall on this one, but it was so fun to play, an interesting puzzle to try to solve for each side.

The big hexes are so enjoyable to play on, especially in assault combat. The terrain took me a little while to read through the scenario book before I could play but this was awesomely fun to play, even if the results were loop sided this time. Hey, it was most likely my aggressive play that made it that way!

We wanted to play Cassino 44 again and we chose this short scenario that seemed to be fun enough. The Allied order of battle includes only tanks (mainly shermans) and one Priest platoon. These tanks are stuck on a mountain road/track, in a deep gorge, on the way to the monastery. German paratroopers defend that road, the surrounding heights and an isolated farm. Problem : the victory conditions give VPs for control of a nearby summit and the Cassino 44 special rules for mountain terrain prevent any vehicle to cross a mountain elevation without a road or track... The task is therefore simply impossible for the Allied player. It is clearly a development error since the original scenario published by David Murray doesn't have that summit on the victory conditions list. When we realized the impossibility, we decided to continue to play and allow the tanks to cross the mountain slope hexsides with a penalty. Then, a maelstrom hit the Germans. Something like 18 lucky dice rolling (2, 3, 11 and 12) by the Allied player in 6 turns only, with an average of just 4 dice rolls per turn ! But even with that very hot dice rolling, the task was probably still too difficult for the Allied player and we decided to stop the play and accept a draw.