Friday morning dawned bright and early so Dave and I planned to get a couple more games of Crete campaign completed. After the first battle my Aussies were now ‘as keen as mustard’ to give Jerry ‘what for’. Luckily for the Allies some heavy support was now available in the shape of a Matilda. Historically these were stationed near the airfields, but remember, our campaign is a 'what-if' based on the theme of better coordinated and more aggressive Allied counter-attacks. Before we set to, Dave rolled to see if any more of his men reported for duty after the scattered drop but alas for him they did not. Including the men lost or missing after the first battle, he was now fielding just over 50% of his total forces. However, having seen how much firepower even his depleted squads could manage to throw out, I knew I'd have to be extra careful to avoid unnecessary casualties.
Early in the battle the Australians bring on the Matilda! There's also a 2" mortar team but they quickly ceased shooting smoke as Dave's FJs began exploiting the smoke for cover. The cheek of it eh?
Before I go any further I should point out that a technical malfunction resulted in all the rest of my photos of games 2 and 3 getting munged, but thankfully Dave's FJ camera team were able to take a few shots.
Below we can see the tank beginning it's menacing advance (rumble .. rumble .. clank .. squeak) from the German point of view. The light mortar team has switched from smoke to use one of its few HE rounds to great effect. The FJ squad advancing to the edge of the vines got one right on the nose! The JL was wounded and knocked down.
On the other flank a small FJ LMG team have deployed in an entrenched position waiting for the Allied infantry to advance in support of the tank.
FJs take advantage of a double turn to begin a rapid advance to capture the foremost Allied JOP before the Aussies can muster.
And they make it! However, Dave had to use his Chain of Command dice in order to get there before I deployed any troops. Thankfully his second CoC dice was a few points away from being usable so he wouldn't be able to end the turn and claim the JOP … for a while.
In that pic you can see I have troops deploying from my nearby supporting JOP and I manage to bring on more, plus advance the tank so that it could use its own machine gun too. The result was a decisive blow against the FJ squad around the JOP and it was forced to retreat in some disarray!
By now German morale was dropping and the Australians still had a complete section in reserve. So Dave sounded the retreat and his men faded back in to the olive groves and vineyards. Again the butcher's bill was fairly light on both sides, a handful of fallen each plus one German Junior Leader wounded.
A couple of points to note about the Campaign Rules:
1. We decided to improve the chances of the remaining FJs turning up by one 'pip' per game after the first as it just seemed a bit more fair and fun.
2. The PzII will not be available until game 7 (not 6 as we published before) so the Germans will have to delay the Allies at least twice.
We played game three straight after but that's for another blog post. Happy gaming!
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