I came across several articles describing events in North Africa, circa December, 1940. The British Western Desert Force, headed by O’Connor, was composed of some 30,000 troops. They faced an Italian Army of around 250,000 men. And by February of 1941, the Brits, starting near Suez, and working their way to the west, literally drove the Italians off the field. I thought this would be an interesting project for a solo game. Can you place two forces on the field, one outnumbering the other by around 10-to-1, and shape the rules in some logical fashion so that the smaller force would zap the larger? A little further reading on the subject, however, revealed that the 10-to-1-odds business really wasn’t a table-top concern. In terms of numbers, the battles could be said to have been fairly even. As the British advanced west, they took advantage of the fact that the Italians were reluctant to leave their bases and go out into the desert to fight. Hence the battles seemed to consist of, first, the Brits pinning the Italian defenders in place; second, a British flanking force zipping in from the desert to flank the position; third, a brief fire-fight; and fourth, an Italian retreat as the defenders didn’t want to be encircled and cut off. I noted that the weaponry played a role…in the early forties, the Brits and the Italians had similar inventories, but the Western Desert Force had a true advantage in tanks. Most of the Italian armor was light, while the Brits had a number of Matildas. Small Battle I set up a small battle… 8 units for the British, 8 for the Italians. The Italians were dug in at a small town, and the Brits advanced to the attack. The sequence was simple… Brits move and fire, Italians move and fire. A target that was hit took a reaction test, and it was this test that did the Italians in. The British were given a basic Reaction Level (RL) of 80 percent… a toss under 80 and the British unit passed. In contrast, the Italian ML was defined to be 60 percent. The possible results of the reaction test were as shown in the table. Each unit was tracked, and for every hit recorded, the RL was reduced by 5 percent. DICE THROW RESULT Over RL Fall back 10 squares Over 1/2 RL Hold position Under 1/2 RL Hold, may fire back The reference to “Fall back 10 squares’ was used since the battle was fought on a gridded table-top using 2-inch-squares. Tank movement was 5 squares, and range was 5 squares. When the Italians, with their poor morale/reaction factor, fell back 10 squares, they could only move up another 5 on their half of the bound. Which means that gradually, the entire Italian force was being forced back. What was interesting was that early in the battle, the Italians gave tit for tat, and, even though they weren’t supposed to, they kept passing their reaction tests. In contrast, when hit, several British units fell back, slowing up the entire British advance. But the Brits eventually got their act together, and the rules proved to be historically accurate. What more can I say? Back to PW Review October 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon 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