Rumble in the Desert

On Friday Mike and I got together for some gaming and decided to play some Flames of War. Mike wanted to do some Early War Desert which sounded it good. It turns out that since he only has Germans and I only have Germans and Italians we would have to do an axis on axis game. I am not usually a big fan of that sort of game but the Germans and Italians are quite different and I was keen to get my Bersaglieri into action again.

We rolled for the mission and got a defensive mission but I asked for a reroll (what is the point of all those motorcycles if you are just going to dismount and dig in) so we ended up with Free for All.

In a fit of common sense I dismounted my MGs and AT guns and put them in the town on the left hand side to protect that objective and then spread out the rest of my force with the smaller motorcyle platoon and the howitzers protecting the other objective.

Mike had 2 platoons of Pz IIIs some armoured cars and some motorized infantry.

On the first turn we both moved some stuff forward and (starting a trend which would last the whole game) my air support came on but was completely useless.

The motorcycles came up the hill in the centre (where both my artillery and my Stuka managed to not damage anything in the cluster of trucks that was there before the infantry dismounted) and the two groups of tanks advanced on each flank. I should have dismounted the other infantry so they could dig in but I like having them on their motorcycles for the coolness factor! (My Italians win glory much more often than they win games!!)

Machine gun fire from the motorcycles and the armoured cars managed to wear down the German infantry but my tanks were losing the battle with the Panzers.

The motrocycles line up for the assualt on the hill as the tanks on either side of them get wiped out.

They win that small unimportant battle but then the Germans sweep forward to victory.

It was a fun game but I should have had a better plan (and better luck) I think if I had driven all the bikes towards the objective in the town and dismounted I could have forced a close in fight that would have worked better for me.

I have a bunch of desert infantry for the British but no tanks. I should get some at some point so we can do a proper early war desert game.