Sicily 1943 : Mountain village Assault

This week as the game on Saturday was postponed I had too much time on my hands to set up a planned game for Monday. we had agreed on a battle in Sicily to give Martins Americans a rare run out. Whilst this is not based on a  specific historical battle, one of the features of fighting on Sicily as the Americans advanced into the centre of the island was the Germans retreating to the next small village or town atop a significant hill digging in then the Americans having to assault said hill before the Germans pulled out to dig in again at the next hill. So I set to building a village on as big a hill as I could manage in the dungeon.

The result, the photos perhaps don’t quite give the full effect. The Americans will attack across the two bridges and tracked and wheeled vehicles are restricted to roads or occasional backyards, we agreed that tanks could push other vehicles out the way if needed but not the other way round. The Germans are dug in with a number of hidden deployments in ambush. There were technically five objectives working up to the top of the village marked by fuel dumps.

View from the top of the village, the final objective, beyond that one of the hidden deployment markers, although the Germans do have one surprise tank they mainly have antitank weapons, mortars and support weapons, there infantry squads are small to reflect resource issues in this theatre.

Looking down the side of the village you can see beyond the mortar some more hidden deployments, you also get a sense of the hill from here. So onto the battle…….

The Americans are fully mechanised, one of the challenges they had in Sicily was the difficult nature of the roads not suited to this approach.

The burning Tiger was just for show and not playing, I thought it would reflect the impact of the American artillery bombardment prior to the assault. It is fun when a plan comes together and I knew I had things about right when at this point Martin put his head in his hands and groaned unsure how to get his superior force into action up the difficult winding roads. The Americans have a lot of firepower as each halftrack is armed with a .50cal.

But as the Americans advance the German hidden deployments start to open up ! I found the only problem with the 88 being line of sight which was pretty limited.

American infantry start to jump out when mortars start to fall around them and the Sherman’s try to pick of key targets from the bottom of the hill, knocking out my sniper in the tower and machine gunners in the two derelict buildings.

Another view from behind the right bridge. The Sherman on the right makes a break for it up the road…..

Although not destroyed it is set on fire and with all those pins it will take a while to get it moving ?

With the Sherman blocking the other road the focus turns to the left, the Americans have now taken the building in the centre whoch was an objective but there seems to be a hold up ?

The Americans have knocked out another antitank gun on the road but the infantry now out of the building and stuck behind the wall they get pinned and won’t move out of the way !

The German infantry are still keeping their heads down waiting to counter attack

Germans in the village assault the halftrack but are thrown back by the crew, the Germans push forward with their only Pz but it can’t get a clear shot as the infantry are in the way !

Some really fierce fighting took place in the vineyards on the slopes just below the village, eventually though despite German loses the American infantry are driven back

American infantry are now looking to capture another objective but they foolishly underestimate the German defenders (dice gods were on my side) and they are thrown back by a handful of defenders in the building

In the tight confines of the village two panzers blast at each other, neither able to get a decisive knock out hit.

By this point the German infantry has driven back nearly all of the American infantry, in fact the Germans mortars were the stars of the defence , I rolled a ridiculous number of sixes to hit with indirect fire, the dice gods love me again ❤️

With the assault and the battle effectively over the only thing we needed to resolve was the tank duel in the village. We allowed each tank to fire alternating shots until a conclusion. As it happened the PzIII finally got a penetrating hit and the Sherman brewed up. The battle was definitely over, the Americans would withdraw, lick their wounds. Of course the Germans may now move north to the next village where it can all start again.

A fine and very fun days gaming, a really tough nut for the Americans but it never felt one sided and they heroically drove their men and machines forward  in the assault. The  Germans got the better of the dice and were lucky with their mortar hits. One US infantry unit also got caught in the vineyards and were almost wiped out in one turn !

Sadly I’ll need to dismantle the hill later as we have a different game and period for tomorrow.

Thanks as always 

Matt❤️

Sicily 1943 Bolt Action and the Greeks

Gaming on Friday in the dungeon saw the Sicily Collection on the table to introduce Erik to Bolt Action as an alternative to Chain of Command. Not based on anything particular we played the standard breakthrough scenario. Giving me a chance to play the Italians for a change. Here  are just a few shots of the action.

The Americans are a mixed force with support in the form of a Sherman and a armoured car.

The objective line for the GI’ s is to get beyond the winding road running across the table

I encouraged the Americans not to hold back with potentially only 6 turns to break through so they came on pretty quickly 

The Italians did have some armour support but really frustratingly this was immobilised and knocked out really quickly by the Sherman, this left the Italians struggling to hold back the US armour, but they were having more luck holding back the American infantry which started to take some serious casualties

Realising the Italians had nothing to hold them back the US armour pushed forward

Ignoring the risk of being overrun the Italians focussed their fire on the American infantry keeping them pretty much pinned down

As the game got closer to the end the Americans rushed the Sherman off the table for maximum points, the Italian defenders are gradually being whittled down but they have blunted the advance of the American infantry.

In the end the American were able to claim a fairly clear win as several Italian units had been knocked out holding the line, but they did pretty well holding back the US infantry, a fun game and it felt fairly close right up tot the end, losing the Italian armour early on didn’t help the dense. Certainly a good introduction to bolt action first edition.

In the words of the famous Bard it’s all ‘Greek’ to me ? Well not quite, finally I have some painting to share it seems like these chaps have take a long time, but now I look back I guess my mistake was attempting to paint the whole lot in one go. The positive of course is they are now all completed and ready for action. I give you the Greeks 1940/41

Support weapon teams including a sniper

Artillery support, the guns are actually french 37mm which I understand the Greeks did purchase. The benefit of the Great Escape games is the guns crews can be purchased separately. So the AT guns can also serve with the french if needed.

Command squad

One of the 4 squads. 

Here are all four, I just didn’t see the point in putting them each in the Photo Booth. The figures are all METAL (David) and great sculpts from Great Escape Games. This force is all Evzone elite mountain troops and I plan to purchase a couple of regular infantry squads to fight alongside them. From my reading so far the Greeks really didn’t have any armour and the fighting I’m looking to play is very much the mountain conflict with the Italians, so for now the force will be entirely infantry and support. 

For those interested a size comparison, the Greeks are chunky chaps (very well fed) warlord Americans, Italians to the left, crusader Paratrooper and British older metal warlord, then a crusader British in think. I can live with the variations.

Finally another walk out in the South Western Lake District.

The beauty of Wasedale

Sca Fell to the left, my target for the day, and Sca Fell Pike in the centre (for non UK followers this is the highest point in England at 3209 feet)

Two more games planned this week before we are away again on a family holiday in the South West.

Thanks as always for popping by 🙂

Matt ❤️

Sicily 1943 : Chain of Command

Having packed away the SYW I moved (metaphorically) to Sicily. Jon was interested to see if CoC would work as a remote game and to refresh his knowledges of the rules now updated into version 2 since he last played. Whilst most of my collections have been built broadly around Bolt Action I have gradually been adding bits and pieces to allow them to work across Chain of Command as well.

With the main point of the game being a semi tutorial on Chain of Command 2, I kept things reasonably simple (is that possible with CoC) we would play the flank scenario with a strengthened American infantry platoon seeking to capture an objective from a small Fallschirmjager platoon.

I had thought about some of the challenges of playing CoC remotely, visibility is the greatest problem so amongst other things I built some small flags to help manage the patrol phase and identify jump off points when the battle started. I would also keep the force morale sheets at my end. Anyway a couple of shots of the action……

The Americans had a split deployment but the majority of the force deployed on this high ground using the small orchard and shed as cover. We agreed that the Sicilian stone walls should be hard cover and if you were tactical and staying still/not shooting you would be hidden. This rule needed a bit of thought as the Americans get their move a shoot rule as well, it made everybody quite hard to kill. But I can’t see the stones walls as anything other than hard cover really. The objective which I placed inthe centre of the table can be seen at the bottom of the hill. Blue flags represent the US jump off points. The German paratroopers are in the village. I purposely placed the buildings to have very limited fire potential to discourage the Germans from going in the buildings. I also avoid vehicles for this battle.

The US have a .30 cal machine to support which with its entrenchments has set up on the road.

The Americans also had a flank JOP but the first unit to arrive from their got hammered really quickly

German paratroopers in the orchard supported by a 50cm mortar, pushing out a lot of lead, but also taking a lot of casualties.

As to be expected a fire fight ensued, both sides taking hits with Junior leaders going down. The Americans at one point were forced to get one of their senior leaders to join the MMG team who were the. Promoted forced to flee the table, basing their morale by minus 3!

Eventually the Germans were being whittled down, but with the American morale down to 4 we instigated the ticking clock, the Americans rushed forward their Bazooka team to capture the objective and despite the germans pouring fire on them they managed to hold on till eventually the game ended.

Firstly it was nice to get the Fallschirmjager out in the sun, they were last out fighting in the snow in Norway ! I wouldnt plan to play with them in CoC that often as they are beastly with their 2 xLMG teams per section. But it worked to make things simple for this game. The Americans worked fine although I noticed the CoC rules give the junior leaders carbines and mine have SMG’s oh well, I do have some more Americans to make some time ? The rules worked pretty well remotely, visibility is the key and you are never (without massive expenditure ?) going to get the perfect camera angle. You need to try and avoid too many hidden areas if you can. I’m sure we will be playing again when we get a chance.

A bit of painting this week and with the First battle of Newbury 1643 on the table I thought I would paint up another ECW unit, nothing complicated and following the same approach as usual. But doing one unit every now and then seems to gradually build up the collection with much fuss. I might try and blitz the Scottish army at some point.

That’s it for now I’m off for a cuppa before we play Newbury so another post sometime over the weekend I guess.

Thanks as always Matt ❤️

 

Italy takes to the sky……and more Christmas loot

The over indulgence of Christmas is finally settling down and I can share some more bits from over the festive period….

Firstly and the last item completed before Christmas some Italian airforce a C.R. 42 Falco for the Regia Aeronautica. A 1/48 kit as I prefer the larger models for 28mm gaming. A great model although I’m not really a very skilled model maker. The struts being quite a challenge, I went for an early colour scheme more colourful and ok upto sicily. The camo scheme is a very rough interpretation of an 1940’s scheme if you squint it is ok. Annoyingly the kit from Italiari didn’t come with a pilot , but I found one in another kit I had waiting in the pile. I do have quite a lot of plane kits in the pile ? 

Next up we did manage to play a couple of zombie games over the holiday, the games are fairly simple with the survivors/protagonists hunting for supplies whilst the zombies / walking dead gradually increase in number as the game progresses.

We at least has some fun and laughs, for those interested in computer games I made this model specially to represent a character in our current favourite game, and yes there are wolves in the forest !

Another shot of the same game with the undead horde arriving stage left as the survivors flee for their lives !

A few of the gifts I generously received as presents 

A game I ordered for myself with a view to some ECW campaigning during 2026, I have scanned through and it is more complex than I had anticipated but the map and game kit could be used in a simpler system if required. It does have a specific solo mode so I should persevere and try and get a solo campaign running

My son gave me these for Christmas picked up in a charity shop. The full set of 100 ! A great find and packed full of information and beautiful osprey illustrations.

Now looking forward to 2026 time for a new (extension) project pondering on this as we do, and having enjoyed collecting and painting my Italians I thought I would look for alternative opponents for them. This obviously leads to Greece which I had previously rejected for the Germans as the later Greek campaign was slightly one sided. However, now I have Italians I have plumbed for Greeks in 2026.

I’m sure we all often start with an osprey book …..this is a pretty good introduction

Some great illustrations as above, the Greeks having captured Italian tankettes…👍

Then scanning on the web I found Great Escape games were offering some excellent sale prices on some of their Greek range…job done so I ordered up a mixed starter force. The benefit of the Greco/italian campaigns are they had very limited armour so I don’t really need anymore, I already have the Italian stuff. Mainly infantry for the Greeks but with some older artillery and support. The GEG figures look excellent sculpts very like crusader figures (not at all like their horrible Norwegians!) so that is the first new project for 2026. One of the benefits is I don’t really need any terrain as between Sicily and Norway I can cover most of what I need.

Finally for this last ? Post of 2025 another shortish video really for my benefit to record all the painted stuff I have managed to finish in 2025. Do of course feel free to skip this alternatively enjoy 5 mins of Mozart 🙂

Thanks as always and I will likely see you on the other side of New year 

Matt❤️