Saturday, June 4, 2011

Americans take a bloody nose during Friday FoW gaming night

THE SETTING

Near Sidi Bou Zid, Tunisia, 15 February 1943: Following the initial successes of the Allied Invasion of

French North Africa, the British and Americans sent units racing for Tunis. However, the Germans quickly dispatched troops by air and halted the Allies short of their goal.
The situation had reached a stalemate by the end of December 1942, after much bloody fighting. Throughout January both sides consolidated their forces as they cautiously jockeyed for better positions. In February, Col.-General Jurgen von Arnim launched his panzer divisions against the Americans, looking to crack open the front. 
On February 14th, the fast moving kampfgruppen, elements of the 21st Panzer Division, annihilated a US tank battalion and its supporting infantry. This resulted in the capturing of Sidi Bou Zid and the isolation of about 2,000 GIs on two dominating hills, djebels Lessouda and Ksaira.
We got beat up pretty bad during our Friday night FOW session at the local gaming store. I was on the American team and we got about 3/4 ways down the road before we lost several Shermans and our whole force had to back up and retreat off the board due to heavy armored ambushes from the Afrika Korp. Pics are shown below.








2 comments:

  1. As someone just starting out with FOW I'd love to see a bit more detail on your reports. Just a couple of sentences to go with your pics, allowing the reader to watch the flow of the battle. Great blog on the whole - keep it up!

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  2. These games are pretty big. When I do the smaller ones I will try to post more in depth reports. Right now though these 6 hours slugfests are just too long to talk about, my brain is fried!

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