With Kuba we have non-written agreement – he is fan of Fantasy Flight Games, and I am GMT fan. Both of us are buying tons of those games, then inviting the other side and testing the purchased, long-awaited positions in practice.

One of such games was Tide of Iron, owned of course by Jakub. And as he was collecting some stuff from me, coincidentally he had also that game in the car. It was early evening so we decided – well, let us play some short scenario! We decided on “Blood on the Mountain” episode, depicting the real action of US rangers in Italy in September 1943 near Naples.

Jakub took charge of Americans while I was commanding the Germans. The goal for allied forces was to stop German supplies for units on the beaches while the axis formations had – at all cost – make sure the needed ammunition / food / medicine reaches their comrades. Sounds like a small, special operations action – and it really was!

Game set-up

Our game started very dynamically – Kuba boldly rushed forward, to take over the victory points objectives. Of course, he was faced with my immediate counter-attack. And despite the fact that German units were poorly equipped, they were more numerous (48 Wehrmacht fighters vs 32 Rangers).

After second round, a slight advantage towards Axis started to be more and more vividly visible – 16 Rangers have fallen vs 7 Germans plus one half-truck:

Initial advance – end of turn two

The third turn was both Americans digging in at one place, and desperate attack on the other side of the map, which if successful, would give very important point to Americans. Unfortunately, this is does not go well for Jakub and only 12 Americans are left on my – but they are well entrenched and not easily dispatched, having good line of sight on supply trucks:

The end (that or the other way) is close – end of turn three

Turn 4th was hard for Germans. Well situated Americans were able to inflict high causalities on attacking Germans, especially in face of some suicidal attacks, which were targeted at drawing rangers attention from trucks. In the end, two out of 4 trucks made it to the beach:

After fourth turn

The score was 6-2 for Germans, with survival ration 4 out of 32 Rangers and 35 out of 48 Wehrmacht. That was very exciting, fast and interesting scenario!