Learning ASL Starter Kit Part 4

As we move into Turn #4 things are balanced quite well, but the British forces are due to arrive from the South to support their American allies. Will it be too little too late?

American/British Turn #4
I needed to get my arriving British squads into action pretty quickly and double-timed them to take up positions to the South, South-South-West and South-West of Avola. I wanted to attack GaryB's Italian positions from a number of directions and try to water-down his fire-power as much as possible.

GaryB's positions still looked quite strong, but I felt that I could take advantage of some of his squad positioning in the South and exploit hexes not covered by his fire-lanes.

British Advance in Turn #4

The British would need to be quite reckless in their movement in order to take these Southern buildings, so I needed my American squads to breakthrough in the North and get into supporting positions as quickly as the could.

As it turned out the Americans did much better than I'd expected. They supported the melee at (A), broke units in the buildings around (B) readying a close combat opportunity for Turn #5 and eliminated the Italian squads and leader to the West of town (C).

The Italians take heavy losses in the North of Avola

These were major losses for the Italians and I was beginning to feel confident about the final result for the first time in the game. Further progress around (B) and (C) would cut-off Italian fall-back options for their Southern squads.

Italian Turn #4
Licking their wounds the Italians dropped PREP PHASE FIRE into a number of British and American positions and were unlucky with their rolls. They did however manage to recover a 3-4-6 Squad at (D), coupling it with an 8-1 Leader, but their MMG in this area was still broken. Elsewhere they recovered and retreated a 1-2-6 squad creating a 6+1 Leader in the process (E). 

British defensive fire at (F) broke the Italian squad there and it fell back a hex awaiting the onslaught.

American/British Turn #5
The squeeze was on! Again forgoing PREP FIRE I assaulted from the South, squad by squad to take up positions around (H), (I) and (J). The British took some heavy fire here, but came away with only two broken units, a 4-5-7 and a 9-1 Leader. By the end of the turn I had engaged the Italians in close combat in both (I) and (J) and forced them to break and flee from (H). (J) resulted in the Italian squad's elimination.

"The Squeeze!"

Meanwhile my Americans took up positions to fully cover the town's square and eliminated an Italian Leader at (G). Things were looking great for me, but I still had to break of destroy ALL Italian units to achieve a victory.

Finale!
As we closed out Italian Turn #5 the American's were picking off fleeing squads and readying themselves to take the final few buildings holding Axis troops. The final turn of the game was American/British Turn #6 where the Allies focused their assaults into two areas shown on the map below. The resulting close combats, although not conclusive were enough to break/eliminate the remaining Italian units and the game was called. Victory to the Allies!

Last Stand of The Italian 146th Infantry in Avola, Sicily

S9 Ambitious Assault 
Result: Victory for the British/Americans (GaryG) vs. the Italians (GaryB) in Turn #6.

Conclusions
GaryG - The scenario is a good one and I especially enjoyed the mixture of terrain available and the two-flank attack from the Allies. You really do have to push hard from the very start when playing the Allies. I was lucky with some of my rolls around Turn #4 and still only managed to beat the Italians in my final game turn. 

I'm fairly happy with my coverage of the rules. We did get a few small things wrong, but on the whole the sessions played smoothly without too much downtime to check the rules book. We'll probably play one further infantry scenario before moving up to first artillery and then vehicles.

GaryB - Pending

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