It's all Crete to me

Chris K is running the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society team at the Other Partizan this year as I'm away. He's doing another WW2 game, which he assures me involves units from Northants. I'm not convinced, but it's his game and I'm not going.

The battle concerned is the invasion of Crete in 1941. We've done this game before, back in 2019. This was before NQM was published, and before squares/hexes. We did it at Corps level in SHQ and it took all day and the full SHQ table. For Partizan Chris is downsizing to Front scale, whilst simultaneously thinking about how to run it at Corps level for the Sheffield boys we know through WD.

Even at Front level, it's a big table. Tim and I got the Germans - we were Allies in 2019 - with Phil and Steve defending.

The Germans have a number of problems, the main one being how do you get your troops onto the island. The largest force is on landing craft, but the Germans have no surface fleet to protect them. That means they are trying to sneak across at night in the face of a large blockade by the Royal Navy. In addition, famously, we have paratroops, and aircraft to drop them. If we can work it right we can drop, capture an airfield then bring in troops by air in transports without worrying about dropping them all over the place.

I was at one end of the table with the sea transports, some Stukas and one air drop plane. I was facing off against Phil. To ease my passage across the sea I took to dive bombing the naval blockade. I wasn't very successful initially.

Steve had the large Kiwi contingent, and Tim a lot of planes. And proper bombers. They needed close supervision by Chris and his new beard.

HMS Warspite inflicted so much damage on my Stukas it had to retreat to port to resupply as it had run out of ammunition. I threw everything into bombing the docks, and did succeed in sinking it.

Still couldn't get my landing craft across, however.

But I had succeeded in taking the airstrip at Rethymnon with my paratroops, meaning I could fly in my Med unit and some anti-tank support. There's a Matilda on the prowl.

I got pushed off the airstrip, so I called up the Stukas again to help me retake it. That Matilda is tough.

Despite the repeated dive bombing I got pushed even further back. Curses.

BUT!!! In a brilliant covert night operation my Gebirgers evaded the blockade, and landed on the beaches. It's all looking up down this end of the table. I've sort of lost track of what the others are doing at the other end, I'm afraid, but I think Tim has got a lot of men on the island and has taken an airfield.

My brave heroes storm the beaches under bombardment from the Royal Navy. 

The full might of our bomber force counter attacks. The sea is a boiling mass of explosions.

Despite taking casualties I storm the airstrip.

We are driven off. Panzer IIs are rubbish. Don't know why I bothered landing it.

HOWEVER.....

Next turn I drove off everything except the Matilda, and CinC Crete, Phil Steele, ordered a retreat into the mountains. We had captured Crete, but at heavy cost. A similar result to the game in 2019.

This was definitely a scenario play test/run through, and Chris learned a lot from it. He has some modifications to make this work as a participation game that can roll on throughout the day but still be accessible to players passing by. However, it is a tense scenario, with both sides sitting on the cliff edge of success or failure. Should be a lot of fun. 

Best of luck to Chris and the team at Partizan on 12th October. Please drop by and say hello to them.