Wot, no Prosecco?

At one point on Tuesday night I had decided not to bother braving the weather, the 'Beast from the East' as the weather pundits are calling the cold snap. We had had a flurry of snow and I don't like driving in snow conditions, I used to do it a lot driving to Aberdeen and made an attempt to get to Scotland a few years back which frightened the hell out of me, so I am loath to do it. The snow was powdery and the roads clear and I had arranged a game so off I went.

I was at last about to meet Julian's Italians in a Bolt Action game, this is a very nice army with real character, the Italians for several reasons picked up a bad rep during WWII and most of it was not earned. Anyway I was the British and took three squads along with an MMG, a Bren carrier and a Humber armoured car, I couldn't afford a tank at the points we were playing, but I was worried that one of those Italian tankette things would turn up so took a PIAT team as well. Julian had three large squads, two veterans and one regular, a sniper and an armoured car. We both had an objective marker in our own areas and one in the centre of the table, you got two points for capturing the enemy marker, one for the centre and one for each unit destroyed. We used Julian's lovely desert/Spanish/Mexican/Italian scenery which is lovely, especially the beautiful bridge which he intends using for Gangs of Rome, an epic piece very well painted.

The wooden pieces are a dry waterbed.

I put my forces down intending to protect my own marker while destroying the Italians in front of it, my right would simply await an opportunity to do the same to the enemy defending their own marker, I would wait and make a decision on the centre later.

Things went very much how I planned them although I had to become very aggressive on the right, the Italian armoured car took up a good position on the bridge and I would have to deal with it before I could get anywhere near the Italian home objective. I had a free artillery barrage and unloaded it on the bridge, at best it took some paint off the armoured car, but I had also managed to get my PIAT into range, bang, a hit, but it bounced off. I now threw caution to the winds and advanced my two squads in that area, Julian was a little hesitant with his veterans on this front which allowed me to assault the annoying armoured car, this time the menace went on fire, which the crew would put out during the next turn, so it still blocked the bridge.

 

I moved my infantry past the vehicle and they now took the Italian infantry under an accurate fire which caused them to return to the shelter of a small copse and their objective. The PIAT took another careful shot and this time the armoured car exploded, the bridge was clear. Over on the left my Humber and troops had wiped out a squad and the sneaky sniper but it had taken too long, Julian made a run for my objective while wiping out my MMG on the way, I could have run my squad back to contest the marker but I was too intent on killing the men in front of me. In the centre we both had men near the marker so it was contested, I had slipped up here but Julian had not and made his moves calculating that I would not be able to get back in time, he was almost correct.

 

On the right it looked like the Italian objective would again simply be contested, so I threw in a squad to close quarters, they got beaten and routed, bad move, but Julian, now flushed with victory decided to clear my other squad in order to keep the objective to himself, this time I won and his men disappeared.

A good game on lovely terrain with lovely troops, Julian had some dire luck on his dice during parts of the game and my assault on his right went really well apart from the blip of losing one squad, he almost pulled off taking two of the objectives and at the end of the day we were even on those but I had killed off one more unit than he had, so a British win, if a very narrow one.

I was painting like a mad man over the last few days and have now finished all my phalangites and a second elephant for the Seleucids although god knows when I will be able to afford to have two on the battlefield as they are point hungry beasts.