75th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Gaming The Battles)

NZ Turn 8:
The smoke bombardments aren’t really an issue this round, being quite spread out around the battlefield. The Engineer platoon passes its last man standing test as does what is left of Green Platoon, who also heroically unpin, ready for more action!

Red Platoon continue their advance and get in among the tank traps just in front of the PaK 40 team. They’re also close enough to launch an assault!

The Engineer team clear the minefield and Tank Platoon 2 continues to advance down the road and confronts the 7.5cm gun platoon dug in around the ruined house at the end of the road. T1 advanced up behind the houses, using the garden walls as some form of cover and stops just in front of the remains of the Fallschirmjager 2sqd and Company Command. Green platoon dashes across the road into the ruined building next to T1 to provide some infantry support.

The Universal Carriers and T3 continue to advance up the road, trying to get into the fight.
Green platoon fires upon the PaK 40 team and is able to kill the crew, rendering the gun useless. Tank Platoon2 destroys one of the 7.5cm Gun Teams and Tank Platoon 1 then launches an assault on the Fallschirmjager Company Command team, killing the commander.

German Turn 8:
With the company command now dead, and several platoons needing to take last man standing checks, it’s not looking good. The remaining 7.5cm gun team fails its morale test and, with the last gun capable of dealing with the tanks gone, the German defense dissolves and the Kiwis take the victory!

Game Wrap Up

This was a close fought game and the random German Deployment made for some interesting decisions. With the increasing density of cover and the unknown locations of the German forces, it certainly caused the Kiwis to adopt a more cautious approach. Interestingly, many of the German forces got deployed into locations that were entirely suited to the unit.

I was hoping the smoke might have played a bigger and more interesting role in the battle. I wanted the location to be random each turn but perhaps there wasn’t enough of it to really cause an impact. 

Overall, I think this is a format that I might repeat in the future with perhaps some tweeks on how and where the random deployment takes place from. Perhaps breaking the table up into zones and then allocating units to each zone might provide a little bit more control for the German player.

Otherwise, the battle went as per the history books. The 2nd NZ Division were able to fight their way into the town of Cassino and, like our game, troops often fought building to building to move forward. The Fallschirmjager put up a dogged defence and certainly gave a good account of themselves.