A small crowd tonight. Expected reinforcements did not show -- probably emulating Grouchy and wandering aimlessly.
We did a 1500 points flames of war free for all. Jim with Italian infantry vs Nick with US infantry. The terrain was open, but mud was in effect, diminishing the ability of tanks.
The game was won in deployment. Nick deployed 4 shermans in the open. Jim deployed 2 semovente 90mm AT monsters in the center of the table in sight of the shermans. Whoever got to go first would kill the other. Nick had a +1 on the dice, having finished deployment first. Hence Nick had a 2/3 chance of going first. Unfortuantely, the dice gods did not agree. Jim got first move, killed the shermans, and the US lost 1/3 of their army before they even got to move.
The Americans fought back, killing Italian infantry and AA platoons that advanced to attack. The Italians took one objective with a tank and a below strength reluctant platoon. Nick killed the tank, and caused a morale check for the platoon, which unfortunately survived its morale check!
The mud played little part -- but it did slow down the dreaded semovente 90mm monsters at a critical moment.
Another fun game!
Italian comment: The game illustrated the inherent problem in the FFA scenario giving a big advantage to the 1st mover - getting first shot at full rate against enemy who cannot be dug in or gone to ground - particularly so on a small table with sparse terrain. But even with the 1st turn big hit the battle was far from a pushover - it put the Yanks on the defensive & attacking with Reluctant peasants isn't that easy. The mud effect was interesting - vehicles doing a bogging roll every turn sure made you think carefully about assaulting inf with tanks, or indeed, about moving vehicles at all.
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