Taking the High Ground. Or Not

Chris put on some more NQM for us this week. This time we were with the British in Tunisia, fighting round Longstop Hill.

Steve & I were the British - top left - and Phil & Tim the Germans. They were in the town mid-top, up the big hill, and behind the barricade on the road.

I know my troops look like they're in the river, but they're actually on the other bank. Honest.

Steve's job was to secure the mountain, mine was to break out down the road. Steve tried to rush the village at the foot of the hills with a small brigade.

He got rebuffed, having been caught in a German artillery barrage. In practice what this proved was you need to know how to set up an attack under NQM, and this was probably only going to work if he got really lucky. And he wasn't.

I was slightly better set up than Steve, supported by a couple of 25pdr batteries across the river, but Tim had some concealed artillery, which broke me up a bit. However I was able to throw Tim out of his defences, but I rolled a few "out of ammos" on my firing and our Log was limited (one unit with three resupplies was all we got) so I had to hold off in the pell mell pursuit.

Tim, being in command of the Germans, then rolled up some armour. Of course. Don't they always. Our single armoured unit was at the other end of the board, lining up to support Steve.

Steve went in with all arms and all guns blazing for his second attack. He wasn't very lucky, and deserved more success.

I'd got all my kit across the river by now, and driven Tim out of his positions. I was able to resupply - I let as many units run down as I dared before spending the resupply point to top them all up - and set up for a second go at him.

Steve smashed through the village at the third time of asking, and was driving through to the hill top stronghold. He was running low on ammo, however. Luckily the Germans were having issues too.

My attempt to push Tim off the board and his counter attack both foundered in a hurricane of artillery fire.

Both sides had ground to a halt by that time. Historically both armies were at the end of their supply lines on difficult roads in rough terrain. The best you could say was that it wasn't raining all the time. Time to consolidate and call for back up.

This was a playtest of a scenario Chris is hoping to take to The Other Partizan as part of the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society stand, as the Northants Regt were there. I'll be at the show too, with our 28mm Edgcote quick play game, last seen at Campaign in May.

Chris' rules are now available for purchase, either from Lulu publishing NQM Hardcopy or from Amazon . They should be available as a pdf on Wargame Vault, but as of writing this blog post I couldn't find them.