This scenario is set in Italy, the date is not particularly relevant but is sometime from late 1943 to mid 1944. The setting is a little village next to a bridge. This bridge is significant as it crosses a fast flowing narrow river whose banks are steep and rocky and hence would require engineering effort to cross.

This is an advanced scenario, best played with an experienced referee and players.

Mid to late Germans versus British.

Table used was our usual 6' by 8'. Call the longer sides North and South.

There is a road right down the middle from West to East. The Western side is relatively open but with olive trees and the odd small cottage dotted about. Towards the East there are a number of houses providing a lot of cover. A foot or so in from the Eastern side is a river/gorge running North to South with a stone bridge across it.

Your reinforced platoon is the fall back position of the latest line of defence. Somewhere over that ridge to the West there has been heavy fighting and you have been rushed up to stop Tommy here.

There is already a force of engineers working to set demolition charges on the bridge, you must cover these as they work, hold the bridge open for our coming counter-attack.

The engineers are paras and not under the command of your CO ( ie you may not re-activate them ).

The engineers must be deployed next to the bridge.

One of your squads, the pak40 and armoured cars are on table, the other infantry and yourself arrive on turn one. From the East, naturally.

Engineers:

Wehrmacht

2 * Sd 231 armoured car - 20mil AP d6 + mg34

1 * PAK40 d10 AP + tow

2 lorries and one car ( oncoming squads and yourself start in these).

British Forces

You are in command of part of a reconnaissance regiment. Your orders are to take the bridge. From bitter experience Jerry is all too damn good at delaying actions and very difficult to get to grips with. You will need to press ahead as quickly as possible in order to be successful.

Since your men are a bit thin on the ground for this sort of work a whole platoon of commandoes has been allocated to you to help out. These are tough customers who you'd not like to meet up some dark alley and you're glad they're on your side…. Although they're an unruly bunch and only respect their own officers.

Confident, unless stated otherwise.

Recce:

Dingo with CO + 2 including bren. D4 armour. Netted in to 75mil arty and daimlers.

3 Daimler A/C 2pdr ( no HE ) d4 armour, d8 AP + mg. Average Steady.

Commandoes:

Commandoes are in light order and move at 8"/d8doubled.

Once the germans have map deployed, the British place their forces up to 6" on table or write down when and where they will arrive ( big mistake). Once everyone's ready, the referee should place an extra lorry on the road, just about to disappear from view of the attacking British. In this are a broken squad who will automatically shift up a confidence level as the German CO comes into sight.

Depending on how well you feel the British have deployed, you can make this a short or full squad.

For the British player, speed is of the essence. Those elite commandoes can take a lot of punishment and still come back for more. The two commanders are best used to keep on re-activating as much as possible. If used right, the commandoes can leg across the table at an unbelievable rate. Those 75s are just a bit of a distraction really and it's a mistake to waste actions to use them.

On the other side of the table, the German player has a fair bit of stuff but nowhere near enough to hold the commandoes. He might take out one squad but the rest'll be all over him unless he's very lucky indeed.

If the British player concentrates all this on one side of the table the referee may need to consider whether he needs to give the germans something extra to make the game interesting. A cautious British player is the other extreme and could potentially make for a rather dull game.

With this in mind, the referee should be extremely vague on exactly when the charges will be ready to blow. The German player then has a difficult decision to make. How long does he try to hang on for? How many squads can he risk?

If you work out the number of 16" moves to the bridge, then add two turns… this is about the right time to aim for. So long as you don't tell anyone how long, you can easy change this as the game progresses.

Recce usually gets the option of an extra 2" move, this is because they’re more confident in the face of the enemy as they're not intending fighting. In this scenario they HAVE to fight, so I ruled it inapplicable. You could give recce vehicles the option of an extra 4" move but at the penalty of a 0 threat morale check every time it's used and an extra suppression if hit whilst moving at speed. Remember, an interrupt or the next activation can be simultaneous at the shooting players option.

You could give the germans more men so the decision to run like blazes is not quite so obvious. Their transport is almost irrelevant but you could make it so by increasing the move of fleeing transport and having it take a full action to get a squad on board.

You could also give Jerry less men, an artillery observer and allow several defensive fire points. To make this worthwhile the west side of the table would have to be rather more open and or the observer would need some high point to observe from. Maybe he's on a higher slope off table. Maybe this bloke isn't even part of the player's command structure and will call down fire on any movement to the East he can make out.

Less men and some mines or false minefields might be something to consider.

You could make the charges actually planted and give them so many turns after someone sees the enemy and tells the engineers they're coming and must blow the bridge. Maybe they won't blow it without orders so the communication has to go up the chain of command to the german CO and back down to them. Maybe they insist on only taking orders from some guy isn't even on table and the german CO is going to have to borrow their radio in order to talk to him!

Making the scenerio later war and giving the British more HE weapons could actually make it more challenging for them. The tendency for most players is to suppress houses prior to assaulting them if you allow them to and some tanks instead of A/C would probably be all you need.

If you have enough models, instead of the commandoes you could give the British most of a recce regiment. Make sure the Germans have plenty of pz faust and the lack of British infantry could be quite interesting.

Maybe the german defences are less men but better planned and they have a pill box or one of those dug in panther turrets. So long as there's barbed wire to stop them just running right on over the things, fixed defences could give those commandoes something really worth fighting.

I got a little mixed up on the introduction dates and gave the Germans d6/d4 for sdkfz 234/1 A/C which may have had more of an effect than one might imagine, but what the hell…

The German player deployed his pak covering straight down the road his two A/C hidden in a side street.

The British player deployed all his recce to the north of the road and all the commandoes to the south. Advancing rather cautiously, one commando squad was still caught by the pak 40 and several casualties inflicted. Despite these, the squad recovered it's composure and continue it's advance later. To the north side, the german A/C broke cover only to realise that this was possibly rather a mistake. Taking repeated 2pdr hits the 231 were light damaged, but the crews refused to bail out and so the daimlers were stopped shooting at them when they could otherwise have been advancing.

Eventually, weight of AP told and the crews both bailed and ran, as did the rest of the germans.

The commandoes got within a move of the bridge and direct sight before it was blown up, the germans losing two A/C and having to abandon a squad ( who then surrendered ).

Our game was somewhat marred by the amazing bad luck of the British player, Danny, who rolled 1 after 1. On the plus side, this had a comedy value all of it's own and amused both me and Mal, the German player.