Not Quite the Full Monte Cassino

We are off the MK: Campaign at the weekend, and Chris is once more taking a 10 minute NQM game  featuring the Northants Regiment in WW2.

The challenge with the game is that this is a BIG action if you want to include the monastery (and who wouldn't) and the river crossing (ditto). Accordingly a single infantry base is a division, and hexes are...quite large. The green areas are low lying and waterlogged and so impassable to armour formations. This is the situation from the German position, with the monastery in the centre.

This is intended to be lucky a punter v avuncular umpire type of participation game, but for the evening test run through Phil & I played it whilst Chris saw whether it worked or not in its current form. 

Here's the view from behind the allied lines. Left to right we have Americans (out of picture), Free French, Empire forces, including the Northants and some Kiwis, and then some Poles. The leading Empire units and the Poles are across the river already. 

Phil took the Allies, and I ran the Germans. The British and the Poles made rapid progress through the lower buildings, driving me out of my defensive positions with awesome efficiency (Phil rolled lots of sixes).

He then called in the USAAF to bomb the monastery to prevent my Fallschirmjäger occupying it. Chris had built a destroyed building for just such an eventuality.

As the dust settled, I fell back anyway to take control of the rubble.

The shelling of the rubble was relentless. Under heavy hints from Chris, Phil brought up his engineers to clear a path for his armour.

Soon the monastery was overrun.

Phil now turned to his secondary objective, which was to push up the valley at the foot of the mountain. There was heavy resistance and his attack stalled. BTW that may be a Tiger model, but mostly the unit was Pz IIIs. The Hanomag should also have been men on bicycles.

We then swapped sides.

I went off at high speed, with a double thrust. I had decent luck, but not as good as Phil's. I was unable to break the defenders with my first assault, which looks like it might be critical to win the game in 10 minutes.

I had a similar run on the left. Although I did make a decent amount of penetration I couldn't win the close combat dice off. Phil then unleashed the "Tiger" as a counter attack.

I chose not to bomb the monastery, and brought my armour up promptly to support the attack.

The Panzers were halted by the marsh, as much as any enemy action. This is a tough ask for the infantry divisions which are Light in both attack and defence, the latter because they are moving. The Germans are a mix of Light and Medium in attack, but always Medium in defence because they're either dug in or armour.

In the end I captured the monastery quite quickly, but the assault on the left just ground to a halt as both sides ran out of fresh units. Honours even, I should say.

Chris got enough to sort out loose ends for the weekend, so it was an evening well spent. His home made high density foam hill pieces held up okay, and saved a lot of cash compared with using proprietary Hexon hill sections.

Hopefully see some of you in MK this weekend coming (10/11 May). I'll be there with the 28mm Edgcote game, but this time with our heraldry booklet.

It's a bargain at £7.50 a copy (£5 for NBS members). We take both cash and cards. Even cheques at a push.