The table below has Tito headquarters in a corner with Tito defended by his escort squad. In the village we have a couple of squads of partisans with two more arriving and over the river an assembling German force with tanks, armoured cars and two squads of infantry. Adding to the mix we have two squads of Fallschirmjager landing with a mortar and HQ unit. Highly compressed, but all the essential elements of the raid.
The Fallschirmjager started well driving the partisans from the graveyard. As veterans they are difficult to hit, especially with inexperienced partisan squads. However, numbers started to tell and firepower rained down on the graveyard as the attack ground to a halt. Aided it has to be said by some poor dice throwing by Iain. The relief force started to cross the river, but the infantry suffered casualties so there was insufficient force to capture the village, let alone move on to Tito's HQ.
The mechanisms worked well but the defences available to the partisans meant that the attackers needed a bigger force. Probably another couple of squads. None the less it has the making of a good display game on a larger scale with a bigger unit of Fallschirmjager. We are thinking of possibly two tables, one for Drvar and another for the relief force battle.
After many long delays and tedious haggling, my article on this battle finally got printed in Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy issue 89!
ReplyDeletePlease note that the following article was crudely edited without the option for me to edit it down myself. This has resulted in the omission of significant details about troop organisation and equipment: Waffen SS paratroopers on a special mission in 1944 were not as well-equipped as you might reasonably assume!
https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/wss-issue-89-pdf.html
I remember the article and at the time thinking we could have done with this a few years earlier! We did a display game of this at the Claymore show in August 2013. http://www.gdws.co.uk/raid-on-tito.html
ReplyDeleteit is very irritating when editors do that. I have no problem being asked to cut x amount of words. I suspect in some cases it is about last minute layout adjustments.
Yes, Balkan Dave, the article was originally written well before your 2013 Claymore game, but it took _years_ to get into print!
DeleteIt would have been better as a series of articles or better still as a min-campaign guide booklet with individual maps for each company-sized engagement.
I'll have to put together a book proposal for Partizan Press!