Saturday, November 26, 2011

Where Have the Italians Gone? : Disposable Heroes After Action Report


Not far from Beja Tunisia, thing have gone quite.  The small town of El Kabab is a critical outpost manned by elements of the Italian Superga Division.  But no-one has heard from them.  What has gone wrong?  Have the Americans captured the town?  Where have the Italians gone?  Maybe their omission from Point Blank was the last straw?  A small recon platoon is dispatched from 21st Panzer Division.  Their commander (me) is a cunning man and very popular with the ladies.  The platoon dismounts from their trucks and advances on the town.  Meanwhile, the American US II Corps advance.  Their commander chews his bubble gum and surveys the town ahead (this did happen and took about five minutes of my life away that I will never get back).  Something is not right.  It's too quite.  He sends in a platoon of the men he hates the most- the Disposable Heroes.
 
German advance.

 The Americans advance.

The American use their elevated positions and start spotting.  An Afrika Korps squad is revealed on the right flank.

 The American reach the town.

Americans take cover in the warehouse. 

 Hand to hand fighting in a house,

 The Germans are driven back, the last three fighting men.

Heroes of the game.  This squad did all the hard fighting and won.

We played this game as a meeting engagement.  Both platoons advancing on an unoccupied town.  We used blinds to hide our troops.  Two blinds per squad.  One blind hiding the unit, the other a dummy.  A simple rule burrowed from I Aint Been Shot Mum from the Too Fat Lardies.  A very quick summary of the game :
Youngy advanced his units on a broad even front.  I tried to be sneaky faking an attack up the centre of the board whilst most of my platoon was on the right flank.  I kept my dummy blinds advancing behind cover whilst the real units advance in the open.  The Ruse worked.  Youngy started concentrating his weapon teams in the middle of the board and spent activations attempting to spot them.  We both reached the town together and auto spotting within 12 inches revealed our forces.   Then it was a mad dash for the cover of the houses.  Youngy pinned and routed my HMG team early in the game.  The riflemen of both sides shot it out. The dice gods deserted me and favoured Youngy.  He began to pin me down.  Soon four German teams could not return fire and the Americans charged in with bayonets.  Vicious house to house fighting resulted in complete victory to the Americans.  My brave men were wiped out or surrendered.  Final result Germans : 25 Dead,  2 Surrendered, 1 Ran Away.  Americans : 4 Dead.  Germans driven from the village and complete victory to Youngy.  Great game.  Good fun.  Best rules in the world.  And where did the Italians go?  Better send emails to Iron Ivan Keith and Chal.  They might know.  Thanks for reading and goodnight.         

11 comments:

Sub Radar (Mike) said...

Looks like an impressive setup, thanks for the pics.

Dunc said...

Great looking game.

I'm a real advocate of Disposable Heroes too - mainly because the Armour rules manage to be both in-depth and simple, satisfying the treadhead and gamer parts of my brain.

Haven't played it for a couple of years now though, unfortunately.

We also borrowed the blinds systems from IABSM/TW&T. Plus a few other house rules that I can't find now.

Guidowg said...

Great looking game Beccas.

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Very nice game and nice report. I also DH quite a bit, but I've also come into a game for skirmish WWII called Operation Squad from Warlord who got it from some Italians. Squad level and really super with a low figure count.

Christopher

Anonymous said...

Great looking game Paul,thank you.

Are you going to look at Point Blank?

Michael and I are going to give it a burl!

Cheers,

Helen

Chip said...

Wow nice work and setup. That's impressive!

Monty said...

Brilliant stuff! Damn, I wish I had more room, then I would throw my lot in with 28mm...

Simon black said...

Looks great, nice work and game. Thanks for the photo's.

Simon

Al said...

Awesome figures and terrain, great stuff mate

MiniMike said...

Good report, nice to see some DH..Played it so many times I could dream the rules at one point. Haven't touched it for years now

Captain Richard's miniature Civil War said...

Great looking layout