Our games group replayed the Allied defense of Crete May 1941. The commands were dished out as follows: Generalmajor Meindl, the commander of the Sturm regiment landing at Maleme airfield. Oberst Heidrich, commanding 3 FJR in prison valley. Brigadier Inglis, commanding 4th brigade. Lt-Col Kippenberg in charge of 5th brigade Brigadier Hargest in charge of 5th brigade and the defence of the airfield. The table was 16' by 6'. We started with the British commanders setting up their forces - more or less using the historic starting positions. The Germans then worked out their parachute drops and Glider attacks. AAR; Went the day well? 3 FJr was unlucky and was widely scattered down the prison valley. ( the area was later measured to be 5km by 6km). despite this, the regiment was soon emplaced around the prison 1/2 way up the valley. At Maleme, the Sturm regiment was far luckier and landed mostly on their designated drop zones, and soon had the airfield and hill under their control. they then setled down to await the arrival of the mountain troops. Meanwhile, 3 FJR was moving to attack galatas from the ridge to the west. They quickly broke the Composite battalion to their front, but couldn't change orders to take advantage with the town wide open. As it was late in the day, they decided to dig in and wait for the morning to renew their attack. The mountain battalion promptly arrived and was dispatched into the mountains to attempt to outflank the NZ positions further to the east. In hindsight, this was to prove a major error. The arrival of night resulted in the passing of the initive to the defenders. A counter attack that ran the length of the board by 20 battalion resulted in the recapture of the airfield and the virtual destruction of the sturm regiment ( it was reduced to 6 stands in total by the end of the games). The NZ's were not so lucky at galatas as their counter attacks were replused by the Germans dug in on the hill. Dawn came and the german offensive continued, with the mountain battalion having to attack back down the ridge it had advanced up the previous evening in order to retake the airfield. the game ended with the airfield still in NZ hands, so a NZ victory was declared. However, it was a close run thing, as it could have gone either way. From my point of view as the organise and umpire/god etc the game exceeded my expectations by a large margin. The game ebbed and flowed nicely, with both sides having the upper hand at various times, so no one was getting beaten the whole time. Each player had the chance to experience the highs and lows of command. the length of the game also presented new problems to our local group. The NZ' commanders during a discussion were heard lamenting the loss of important ground that they suddenly discovered that they could have used for a counter attack. Everyone had a good time, and there have already been discussions on what we will do next year. Interestingly, we found that the game played about 3 times faster than historically accurate, but the flow of the battle was very close to the historical occurences. Spearhead with some adaptions worked quite well for 95% of the time, and there was only a few occasions that I had to change things a bit to give the side that was behind a chance. To those who haven't had a chance to organise a longer game, you should do it. It's a completely different game, and far more satisfying than the normal short games. Back to Frontline Vol. 3 Iss. 1 Table of Contents Back to Frontline List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Rolf Hedges This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com