75th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Gaming The Battles)

In the last post, I covered the history of the battle. Since then, time has evaporated and it took longer than planned to actually play out the battle, and then even longer to actually write it up. But here is my battle report.

Playing out the battle.

My 10 year old son wanted to get involved in this battle. While we’ve played various types of games together before, he’s never played a WW2 tabletop game and particularly not one that’s trying to recreate some historical activity. So this scenario had to be representative of the historical action while also being engaging enough for a 10 year old.

To start, let’s look at the order of battle for each side. For the Allies, we have:
Canadian Seaforths:
2 Infantry Platoons (Orange and Green) comprised of:
1 HQ team
6 MG/Rifle teams
1 2” mortar team
1 PIAT team
1 Platoon of Engineers comprised of:
1 HQ team
3 Rifle Engineer teams
1 PIAT team
1 HMG Platoon of 2 teams (1 team attached to each Infantry Platoon)

North Irish Horse
2 Tank Squadrons (Platoons 1 and 2) comprised of:
3 Churchill mk IV tanks armed with the 6pdr gun (I believe both the 6pdr and 75mm variants were at the battle however the 75mm was not widespread within Italy at this time)

In addition to the above, the Allies can call in 2 barrages from an off table 3” Mortar team. Barrages can be either smoke or standard mortar rounds.

For the defending Germans, we have:
1 Infantry Platoon comprised of:
1 HQ SMG team with Panzerfaust
6 Rifle/MG teams
2 Panzerschreck teams
1 HMG Platoon of 2 teams
1 HMG nest
1 Panther Turret bunker
2 Snipers
1 Panther tank
1 PaK 40 Anti Tank gun

In addition to the above, there are 3 minefields and 3 8” strips of barbed wire.

At the start of the game, only the German Infantry will be deployed in and around the farmhouse and the HMG teams will be deployed along the road.

The Panther tank arrives on a random round and will arrive from a random point along the rear table edge.
Everything else is assigned a ‘token’ that is randomly placed to keep my son guessing as to what he is facing.

Within the trees, and representing the German delaying tactics, there are 6 tokens of which,
3 are minefields
2 are snipers
1 is blank

I will look at the tokens when an Allied unit moves within 8” and if it is a sniper, will be able to fire in the next German phase. If a minefield, this will not be exposed until the Allies move within 2”.

Between the trees and the road are three tokens that represent where the bunkers could be but with no prior intelligence, the Allies won’t know what they are until they draw line of sight.
1 token is the Panther turret
1 token is the HMG Nest
1 token is blank

Finally, along the road there are two tokens that represent two possible locations for the PaK 40 anti tank gun. Again, these will only be exposed when line of sight can be drawn to them.

Victory Conditions:
The Allies will win if they can get to the road and hold the farm house. The defending Germans win if they stop the Allies doing this. There’s no time limit in achieving this.

Deployment:
My son split his forces along the two woodland tracks with 1 Infantry platoon and 1 tank squadron on each side. He deployed the engineering platoon in the middle.

The below tactical map shows the deployment. For reference, the key to the colours are
Allied:
Green infantry platoon on the allied left along with T1 (Tank Platoon 1)
Orange infantry platoon on the allied right along with T2 (Tank Platoon 2)
E represents the Engineers and M the MG teams

The Germans are depicted in black with I being the Infantry and M being the MG teams.

The Orange block on the bottom left where the Infantry is deployed is the farmhouse with a walled garden at the back.

We’ll start the battle at turn 2. I deliberately set things up to allow my son to advance his troops in turn 1 without having to worry about having to shoot at, or receive fire from, the defenders. This way he can get used to the movement part of the game but suffice to say that turn 1 was just the allies advancing.

Turn 2 (Allies):

The Allies use their first turn to advance up both tracks with the engineer platoon advancing straight up the middle of the table through the trees. The advances along both tracks bring the allies to within 8” of the first tokens deployed on the tracks. Both tokens turn out to be the snipers so these are deployed. The allies cannot fire on the snipers this turn as neither sniper has fired yet. No other German units are visible or in range so this concluded the Allied turn.

Turn 2 (German):

With nothing to move, the Germans went straight to shooting. The sniper closest to the Allied Green platoon was able to kill one stand and pin the platoon. The other sniper just pinned Orange platoon.