Legions of Zog: Albania 1939: scenario #4: Road to Tirana

I like the unique subject of the conquest of Albania and the maps from Conquest of Ethiopia are some of the best in the series and this scenario looked interesting, so I had a go at it.

First let me state, there is some errata: The Italians get 2 x Tank Leaders, the Albanians Reinforcements enter on the East edge of the map not the West and there is no river in this scenario. Also you will need to find 2 more 81mm counters to fill the requirements.

In my battle the Albanians setup defensively about the middle of the two maps, dug-in around the east-west road with some reserves dug-in further east along the tree-line in case the Italians broke through their first line. It Italian have a much bigger force and went right in to clear the east-west road of Albanian units.

After about ten turns the Albania reinforcements were triggered and enter the map but are not that strong and settled in reinforcing the second line of defense, as the first was taking a beating and wouldn’t last much longer.

After the Italians conquered most of the east-west road, they refocused their attack on the second Albania defensive line and clearing the last section of the far eastern road. It took most of the 30 turns but the Italians cleared all of the East-west road, easily exited 10 or more units off the eastern edge of the map and had no problem eliminating a 2 to 1 advantage in step lose. The Italian achieve a Major Victory!

I think the best chance to maybe have a better result for the Albanians, is to set all the units back to the forest/road area of map 89, the far eastern area, which would trigger their reinforcements right away and not defend anything west of the forest on map 89. If I ever played this scenario again, I would try this.