Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Battles of North Africa 1941 has just been released by JTS.

If interested, please go to: https://john-tiller-software.myshopify.com/

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Ernie Sands
1ère Brigade of 2ème Division de Grosse Cavalerie, Réserve de Cavalerie
de la Grande Armée
President, Colonial Campaigns Club

The documentation alone is worth the price of the game. If you guys think I go way overboard on a game check this one out

Rich Hamilton once told me that we write enough for these Napoleonic titles to fill a book. What David Freer and his team have done is basically write something akin to one volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!



This is the best scale to play the Desert Campaign at. Tank to tank is too time consuming. Battalion level - too high of a scale. Platoons are the best. You get the gritty feel of the campaign while at the same time not losing the overall objective of the formations and some scope of the area of operations.

The largest map in the game covers 1400+ x 800+ hexes. Its larger than the Quadrilateral map in Campaign Marengo!

I installed my copy yesterday (sort of a preview copy) and plan on trying out a few scenarios soon.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Hi Guys,

if the Italians are shown as valiant soldiers, I take it right away. It's historical truth. I do not know English to describe the bravery of the army, the air force and the navy. For example, the Italian Mountain Corps was the only unit that broke through the Russian siege at Stalingrad. The foot Italian infantry in Africa saved the ass of the German's tank forces of DAK many times. The Italian submarines were the only ones passing the Strait of Gibraltar back and forth into the Atlantic. Their submarines broke from the Red Sea, around Africa to France after the collapse of the Italian colonies in Eritrea. The Italian destroyers have sunk a lot of British submarines. Italian aviation bravely fought with British and Russian aviation in unfavorable conditions. From frozen steppes to hot deserts without fuel and water. Almost 10 million Italian men in service age, almost every fifth of them died, got wounded or was taken prisoner.

Best,

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Général de Brigade Cezary Pluskwa,
17ème Régiment de Dragons,
1ère Brigade,
4ème Division de Dragons,
3ème Corps d'Armée,
La Grande Armée.

So this is a fantasy title?

Fun aside, the common Italian soldier might have been good but what was the use of it if the leadership was as smart as a hamster that had a stroke. It didn't help much as men power was ineptly led, poorly supplied and inadequately armed.

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I think that the general consensus of the Italian army was correct. They were embarrassed first in Albania, then Ethiopia and finally their debacle in 1940-41 was just too much for most of us to believe that the average unit should be a B rated morale.

Yes, there were exceptions like in any army. And the German army on the Western front in '44 was not their best either. With men willing to surrender en masse at times too.

But you would have to go a long way to say that O'Connor's splendid campaign was the result of a brilliant ruse on the part of the British which tricked the Italians en masse into surrendering in droves. Cut off and out of supply there wasn't much else they could do.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

I always assumed that this was due to the average Italian not seeing any point in fighting to make Mussolini a modern day Caesar, and the Mediterranean as 'an Italian lake', not least also to fight for the greater glory of the nationalist politicians in Germany at the time... which effectively it was a phallic size competition between dictators of the day.

I guess it didn't hurt to have fought on the Allied side during the First World War; which makes it a tough moral sell to all of sudden switch gears and fight against them. I suppose you could say, what about the Japanese, they were in the same position? Were they? They were not nearly as involved as Italy in the First World War.

When it comes to Compass; the 4th Indian was used at the start and as the campaign progressed, it was swapped with the 6th Australian (2nd AIF) -of which is of particular, personal, interest as family was in that unit (actually family were in most of the major Australian divisions ... so in the context of this title, the 9th Australian ... naturally these are just called the 6th, the 9th here, etc... ).

Anyways, that campaign was the Australian Army's (and by Army I mean the 2nd Australian Imperial Force -- as there were different sections of the Army --- the AIF was an all volunteer force, all throughout the war). The first major action after WWI was at Bardia, in January 1941. The books (in the case of this specific campaign -Compass), in the Australian War Memorial (downloadable) - the Official History - in this case 'To Benghazi' by Gavin Long - where you will find more maps like what I had seen used in the documentation - will give you a pretty good and detailed look at the campaign. The book is more than just about the title though (it is also about what was going on in Australia between the wars, mobilisation, defence policies, recruitment - so there is a fair deal about Australian politics of the day as well. There was a govt change shortly after the start of the war - it changed to a Labor govt under Curtin.

Now more to the point...the 6th was involved in every major action in this campaign after the initial battles for the camps. The Indian unit was sent to Ethiopia and was heavily in campaigning there. I believe the forces in Bardia still outnumbered the Commonwealth forces outside of its defences -so it was a bit more than just being cut off and helpless -they had other units -they elected to rely on static defences... it didn't work.

In fact I heard stories of Italian POWs not really being guarded -- sitting around with their 'captors' drinking up all of the plonk. I imagine that they had no idea why it was that they were fighting on the side that they were -- what was in it for them? Another feather in Il Duce's cap? Is that something that you want to die for? It isn't really fighting for you country at that point but more for that individual.