Sicily 1943 : 15mm

For our weekend game we wanted a full day battle and I was keen to get the recently completed Mediterranean terrain on the table. Although not historically based the battle sees the Americans seek to force their way inland, Capturing small Sicilian villages located on difficult to access mountain tops the terrain is difficult and the Germans dug in.

Then Americans will enter from the left (south) the air support is controlled by a special die being pulled from the bag. The Germans are already occupying the three main villages and the church on the craggy hill. All the rest of the German force will arrive controlled by a random die pulled from the bag. I took far too many photos but I will keep the captions short 👍

The troops do fit inside the buildings but with this size of battle it would be a bit of a pain so we placed them on the roofs. 

The Americans head towards the iron girder bridge. 

Preparing to assault the first village supported by an aerial bombardment

More Sherman’s head to the left of the village

American artillery sets up while Paratroopers head towards the bridge

Americans capture the farm buildings

Tanks lead the way but the first one is knocked out

The Sherman’s use their firepower to attack the far village in an attempt to knock out a covering 88 in the village

More Sherman’s move to cross the bridge

At the start of the day the American commander mistakenly gave the Germans a new toy so this arrived immediately as a reserve. Rather than hold back the Hummel advances to take on the American Sherman’s directly

The Germans then bring on another ‘big gun’ a solitary Tiger

The Americans can really only take the villages with infantry, so they assault head on, after loosing at least two units of infantry they finally take the village

Now they need to push on to the second village which will be tougher 

The American tanks now push over the bridge but again come under fire and the lead tank is knocked out

Another attempt to cross the girder bridge stalls.

The Germans in the Eastern village have little or nothing to do the whole battle

To the west a fierce battle for control, the Germans bring up a machine gun platoon

And then antitank guns

The tanks start to fan out 

The Hummel is attacked from the side and bursts into flames

The Tiger is immobilised and struggles to knock out any of the Sherman’s

The lead Sherman breaks through but can’t be supported by infantry who are held back.

The lead tank on the bridge is immobilised blocking the road

The Germans are under huge pressure in the village and bring their final reserves to boost their defence

Another Sherman is knocked out and although the American infantry is advancing they haven’t managed to capture the second village, at this point the battle ended and we declared it a draw. With the Americans really needing to capture another village for the win.

A very fun game played in fine spirits. Great to get the collection on the table 👍 next up will be some painting and more games to come

Thanks for checking in

Matt