Author	treadasaurusrex (Britain, India)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	Britain, India
Participants	Sonora
Play Date	2022-12-04
Language	English
Scenario	DeRa004

This was a fun-filled, 4-session play-through with: Sonora, a rapidly-improving rookie player taking the outnumbered defending Italian side. I played the attacking, combined arms, Indians & British attack force. We used the FOW, smoke, consolidation and excess initiative optional rules. This was a very unbalanced scenario in favor of the Commonwealth force, and it played out pretty much as the real battle did - a bloody disaster for the ill-fated defenders of this Italian encampment. Both sides had poor leader draws.

Once we sorted out the poorly-written surrender rule to make better sense of it by requiring adjacent Commonwealth (CW) units to activate to request surrenders of defending hex stacks when one or more defenders were demoralized. Step losses for both sides commenced almost immediately on turn 1 and many Italian units surrendered -- especialy to the Matilda tanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment -- in spite of the best efforts of the stalwart Italian artillerymen, and as the game went on, the close assaults mounted by the FAN Colonial Infantry platoons. The latter managed to destroy 2 steps of Matildas (counted as 6 steps) before time expired.

In our play-through, the CW infantry slowly, but steadily, took all 4 Italian entrenchment strongpoints and destroyed the doomed, Italian AFVs one-by-one. This was a costly process in that the final CW steps lost total was a cliff-hanging-almost-draw-causing: 9 steps, and 6 leaders! Italian steps lost totaled 31, including both the M11/39 tank platoons & 4 platoons of hapless L3/35 tankettes. All 5 Italian Tenentes and 2 Capitanos were either captured, of KIA.

The FOW rule shortened 6 of the 22 game turns in this scenario, which hurt both sides. This terminally-unbalanced scenario was almost a draw, and as such I rate it a 2, mostly because it was entertaining to play with a determined & gracious opponent on a rainy day in the Sonoran Desert. This one is probably best played in SOLO mode.