Fort Floreat 13/09/05

1500 pts US Infantry (Nick) vs Italian Fucilleri (Jim) somewhere in Sicily (part of Race for Messina)

Terrain was:

Scrub	Hill & wadi	Monastery
Hill	Plain	Mountain

We did a hold the line. The Italians chose that the defender would defend the mountain. The US chose to attack, as they had a lot of artillery (a bad decision).

The US started off bombarding the front line Italian infantry. They couldn't range in on the Italian artillery, as the artillery were concealed gone to ground veterans at long range. The recon and Stuarts raced foward to get over the 1/2 way mark, while the infantry sedately marched up.

The Italians immediately shot back with their artillery and ranged in on the US artillery. Over the course of the next few turns the veteran italian artillery demolished twice their number (and points) of US guns.

On one flank of the table a duel erupted between Semovente 90mm guns that came out of ambush and the Stuarts. The Stuarts eventually won, using a wadi to hide in until they got close, then springing out and destroying the Semo's. Some Semovente 47s came over and duelled with the Stuarts. it could have gone either way -- at one point 3 of the 4 Semo's were bailed out. But the Semo's eventually prevailed.

With no artillery and no tanks, the US infantry was not up to the task of taking on hordes of Italian infantry -- eventually the US recon were assaulted and destroyed, and the US broke off. But not before destroying the Italian Semovente 90mm and 47mm AT guns, and severely damaging the Italian mortars, artillery, and two infantry platoons.

A LONG fun game. Nick had terrible luck for the first few turns -- he could only roll 1's. But then he had a few turns where he could only roll 6's. So it evened out.

In the end Jim won because:

• The italians had a better list -- the US should have had Shermans.


• The US chose to attack, when they had a better defensive army.