Fort Floreat 9/11/05

Somewhere in the desert ...

We tried a flames of war battalion game. Jim with 1500 pts Indians plus 1500 pts Australians vs Nick & Chris with Rommel and 5 honey light tanks (350 pts) and another 2600 points of Afrika Korps table decorations.

The game went as follows:

• The Honeys did a pre-game 'Rommel' move to move up, then charged around some scrub and machine gunned some happless Indians who thought they were out of range of the Honeys. The Indian platoon was damaged, but alive. This is the situation in the picture.
• The Honeys then moved to the top of a hill and machine gunned some Indian mortars on an adjacent hill, destroying the mortars. They used their stormtrooper bonus to dash down the other side of the hill and out of sight of some AT guns.
• The Honeys assaulted a large platoon of Indian infantry, dug in on an objective. The Honeys wiped them out. Return fire from AT guns was ineffective.
• The Honeys ran up onto a hill and attacked the 2lber AT guns from the rear, killing their trucks and some guns. The AT guns failed morale. Chris's troops finished off the damaged Indians that the Honeys had first hit.
• There was now a mass of crusader and valentine tanks approaching the honeys. They could have dashed over into the face of the tanks and killed some more Indians -- in retrospect it would have been a glorious victtory! Especially as the Indians were in trucks, and it would have been easy to break the Indian's morale. Instead, the Honeys retreated and moved to the other flank to continue their attack. They assaulted dug in Australian infantry, and killed some. The Crusaders had managed to get to the infantry's rescue, but the crusader return fire missed.
• The Honeys shot back at one of the two platoons of crusaders, killing two tanks including the platoon commander. One platoon failed morale and ran.
• The remaining Crusaders were joined by Valentines and Bren carriers with .50cal machine guns and 25lbers. The Honeys killed another tank and a bren carrier, taking their first losses in the exchange.
• Rommel and his half tracks machine gunned an indian machine gun platoon and some Australians that were hiding in a depression, causing the Indians to take a company morale test.
• Rommel was killed, along with his half tracks. The honeys retreated back to the German lines.

The Indians were below 1/2 strength. The Australians had only lost one platoon, but most of their other platoons were on the verge of breaking. It was 2 am and we called it a draw. The 25lbers were a potent allied weapon that could still have inflicted massive damage, so it was by no means clear who would have won.

The one thing I do know is that the Axis had the same bad dice luck as the week before. Since Jim was in both Axis sides, we now have convincing proof that Jim is a dice jinx!