Eisenhower - Game 4 DAK vs 8th Army

[fred]

We decided to play Eisenhower agin this week - the 4th game since its release - we’re clearly enjoying these rules!

This time switched the action to the Western Desert 1941/42, for a fictional game, using broadly historical formations. What was surprising is that you can get all the DAK on the table for a Rommel game! I based the British forces on 8th Army troops for Operation Crusader.

The Germans were the strategic offence, and as such had 25pts more to play with, which was probably spent on their forces being largely veteran, rather than in more units.



Early in turn 1, the DAK are attacking from the far table edge. They have the fairly large Italian Ariete Division at the back left, then 5th Light, 21st Pz Div and 15th Pz Div from left to right, and on the far right the 90th light which is all infantry.

The Germans had placed two objectives on the left hand side of the battlefield (which is a little larger than normal at 10x14 squares, as the grid on my desert mat is 12cm). I had placed on in the mountains on the right. The map is from one of the generic ones provided with the rules. Red objectives are German held, those coloured green in post production are British held.

The 5th Light has already successfully attacked 1st Army Tank Brigade pushing them back, and capturing the undefended objective on the left. The deployment order, is defender, attacker, then finally objectives. So the Defender has to spread fairly thin to hope to cover the likely location of the two attacker placed objectives.

The British have 7th Armoured Division in tactical reserve, 22nd Armoured Brigade in the centre, and 1st South African Infantry in the mountains on the right. 2nd NZ div is off table in reserve.


DAK success!

This is the start of turn 2 - And the British have been heavily pushed back - objective markers have moved in the night phase the DAK did capture the 2 on the left in turn 1. The Germans were able to concentrate force (and roll some very good dice) in this turn leading to some big advances. I don’t recall why a German division (probably 21st Pz Div) is so far back - I suspect it only had 1 Op available so after attacking couldn’t exploit. On the left Ariete were able to make a transit move through the soft ground.

At the rear 2nd NZ Div have arrived (I rolled doubles for reinforcements so the whole formation was available to deploy).




The New Zealanders reinforce the defensive line, and 7th Armoured make some local counter attacks.

On the right 90th Light attacks into the mountains vs the South Africans - fairly ineffectively.

Both sides are starting to suffer a lot of attrition (the hex makers are hits, the brown side is 1, the yellow 2 - units only have 3 hits). In the night phase Exhausted (yellow) units can recover to worn by spending 1 of your stockpiles.


Starting to reach stalemate - some of the German units are now digging in, to avoid counter attacks. In the game prepared units fight first in combat, which can be quite significant. British Air strikes are slowly blunting attacks as well.


The British shuffle fresh NZ units on to the objectives - so even though I was suffering losses, the Germans couldn’t take the objectives. On the right the SA troops are getting battered by heavy artillery strikes. With the Germans taking this objective.

Whilst the first turn was 2:1 to the Germans, the next 3 where 2:1 to the British - so the Germans trail 5:7


Yellow exhausted markers everywhere as both sides have run out of stockpiles to recover their troops. The German attack in the centre has petered out, they just don’t have enough fresh units to have a decisive hit. I do wonder if they should have kept pressing even at the loss of units, just to whittle down the British forces.

On the right the 90th Light should have taken the objective again, and forced a 6th turn - but they had been too confident and not moved their second regiment up to be in position to attack! So my 1 exhausted unit managed to cling on, due to some solid defensive dice rolling that meant they won the combat against their attackers so weren’t forced to retreat.

The British score 3:0 this round so handily won 10:5, even though losses where massively in the German’s favour  - who only lost 2 units vs 12 British



Another great game.

I was really pushed in the first couple of turns, and all my reinforcements arriving at the start of turn 2 (and my troops having fallen back so far they could easily get to the front line) was very helpful.

Later in the game I was tempted to counter attack the Germans, especially where they had exhausted units, but the risk always seemed too high, so I largely sat in defensive positions absorbing the attacks by shuffling fresh units in.

I was pleased at how quickly I was able to research some historically plausible forces and get them turned into Eisenhower forces.