Recently I ran a game of I Aint Been Shot Mum where I could use the armored cars show in my earlier post on this blog. We are doing the Operation Compass campaign. This week we ran a very strange scenario, the Battle of Girba fought in what is now Libya in 1940.
In this battle the Italians were caught as a column of the Italians Libyan allies were caught in the open desert by British armored cars. The Italians inexplicably formed square and waited for the British forces to attack.
We changed the scenario a bit and had a wounded armored car set between the Italians and Brits, with six of the tiny Italian L3 tanketts closing in. This gave the opening phases of the scenario a bit more drama as the Brits raced to save the crew.
The British task force arrived on the table in Blinds but were quickly spotted as soon as they crested the hills since they were moving fast and there was little cover.
The two British A9 Cruiser tanks and the two MkVI infantry support tanks moved in quickly on the Italian Square. The L3s desperately charged and were gunned down or rammed into the British tanks, (an optional rule I cooked up on the spot to give the Italians some small chance to stop the Brits).
The Italians had one other trick up their sleeves. The had hidden two artillery pieces in the corners of the square. These revealed themselves and the two Italians commanders attached themselves to the guns and added thier dice to the rolls to hit. There were plenty of hits but all this seemed to do was slow down the advancing Brits. Inevitably the guns were wiped out by the ferocious gunfire of the A9s and light tanks. Meanwhile, the infantry had been digging in which helped them survive the fire of the British machine guns. But with their artillery and tanks all gone, we decided it was time to call the game. Since the Italian plaer had done far better than the historical Italian commander did (the entire column was wiped out) we called the game a draw.
