Road to Tebessa - Tunisia 1943 (AAR added 8/July)

[Fire-at-Will]

Nearly finished the work for this weekend's SOTCW game for our local Gauntlet show.

Progress is being logged over on the SOTCW events blog
http://sotcw.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Tebessa

The terrain
Here's an impression of the finished table laid out on the floor of my garage. On the day I will need to add more lines of stones, which define crest line and therefore limits line of sight.

German deployment zone and entry road on the left, the village of Bordj Oum Ali, occupied by the French in the centre

El Ma el Abiod also occupied by the French the Italians will arrive along the road at the bottom.


The forces

The British


The Italians


The French


More tomorrow

[Fire-at-Will]

Next batch

The Americans


The Germans


All packed up now, just the last minute panics to go.

[Fire-at-Will]

The SOTCW played the Road to Tebessa scenario on Saturday at Gauntlet.  As usual I got so caught up in the game that I didn't take pictures of all the action!

The game opened with Stukas circling the French defenders of the southern town Bordj Oum Ali (they failed to knock out the guns and only killed three of the defenders)


French deployed around El Ma el Abiod


Italian troops preparing to attack El Ma el Abiod from the east.


German troops massing to the south.


Italians commence their assault on the ridge to their north they succeeded in badly damaging one of the Stuarts rushing to support the defenders of El Ma el Abiod (They subsequently fell back fo two turns due to a poor morale check)


The Germans decide to deploy the heavy tank company first (The players could bring on one company of their choice each turn)


As the Stuarts flee their bigger brothers turn up to deal with the troublesome 20mm AT Rifle


The French grimly hold on against the Italian assault


The Germans proceed systematically, amassing their forces ready for an assault


Having dealt with the AT Rifle the Grants move on to support the French and in a magnificent bit of shooting take out all the Semovente company


The german assault on Bordj Oum Ali gets underway just before the British arrive to reinforce the position


Meanwhile the Italians are in serious trouble as the Americans concentrate on them "Where are the Germans, they should have arrived from the south by now?"


For the British and French around Bordj Oum Ali things are not looking good either, already they have lost two Crusaders and a pair of 6pounders to the Panzers


The US seem content with occupying a blocking position while finishing off the Italians (Their Motorcycle company was down to 5 figures by the game end, but had continually passed their morale checks)


Finishing of the French defenders of Bordj Oum Ali and the remaining 6 pounders the Panzers push on as the Valentines flee


The one success for the Royal Horse Artillery one heavy and one light damage inflicted on the Tiger


US driving the Italian remnants south


A final Stuka strike manages to disable the US commander's tank


Game end - the Germans were on a roll and looked strong enough to defeat the Americans as they had very minimal losses.


Rules were Rapid Fire with a variation on the anti-tank fire.