Blitzkrieg Commander - British v Italians 1941

I bought the Blitzkrieg Commander rules way back in the post pandemic period, along with a starter set of British (and a few extras). I also persuaded Stephen to buy a force. We painted them up and then never played a game. Then I persuaded Martin to paint up a force, which he did. And still no game was forthcoming. Until now!

A simple set up for an encounter game with 1000 point forces. I struggled a bit with the army list picking - we both felt a little more guidance about what a "typical" force might look like would have been useful. There are loads of lists, some of them seemingly quite obscure so a little more guidance for actually putting a first force on the table would have been preferred (by me at least). I suspect the answer is to find an OOB for a specific time or battle and use that as a basis - but I hadn't done that and I'm not all that familiar with WW2 desert forces.

Anyway we fettled something together. Martin initially had a Recce vehicle in his Italian force, but a look at the rules and the basic nature of our battle had him swapping that for more regular tanks. With that we were off.

About 24 hours before we were due to play I realised that although I'd painted well over 1000 points of troops and tanks I'd not actually made any command. So a quick root in the spares and grabbing some 50mm circular Warbases bases I threw three together. They're a bit ummm, unfinished in the pictures...

One command with Matildas supporting infantry.

The other command - A13s and Mk VIs

Everyone arrived on time for the start.

Italians hove into view on the far horizon.

The air grew thick with the razzy noises of underpowered Italian engines.

Low command values and moves of only 10-15cm meant it was slow going.

Eventually a firefight broke out on the British right, and with a flash one of the A13s went up in smoke!

The Italians made good use of opportunity fire.

The light tanks went in to hiding.

Frustrated  by the incompetence of his fellows the CO took Command and ordered some of the infantry and one of the Matildas forward.

The light tanks took advantage of a double move to hurtle to the other flank to threaten the advancing Italians.

One Matilda covered the flank

The remaining A13 was doing a grand job of holding up the Italian tanks. Mainly because I kept failing orders to get it out of there and had to rely on opportunity fire.

Italian tanks didn't like it up 'em and some were supressed.

But inevitably more Italian firepower was bought to bear and the second A13 brewed up.

Thick smoke was now all that protected the British flank.

The Mk VIs sprayed the Italians with fire, but they'd dug in and the shots had little effect.

Meanwhile the Matilda failed to provide much support and the mortar had little effect.

Soon after this we'd reached the turn limit. The butcher's bill was relatively light, but with three British tanks in flames to only one Italian it was a victory to the forces of Mussolini!

It was very jolly to finally get these forces on the table. The rules were mostly straightforward, though we need to look at how exactly opportunity fire works. It was interesting to discover part way through that Martin had a PDF that included several bits of errata and updates that my book didn't...(I thought I was going mad looking for the rules for Dug-In - turns out I just didn't have them).

I liked the look of the game but everything felt quite slow - I'm used to my infantry moving twice as far in Warmaster. The command of 7s and 8s made it feel a bit like using an Orc and Goblin army - maybe only getting off a single order each turn. I don't think the "stand up fight" scenario worked particularly well as a game - I think we'd be much better recreating some real battles, or at least trying some more varied scenarios with more authentic OOBs.

All that said it was good fun and I certainly want to play some more.