Tuesday night, the Schild en Vriend Gentlemen Wargamers (we’re too few to be called a club, and this sounds much better :) ) gathered round my wargames table to fight a fictional WWII desert battle. We used my 1:300th figures and Blitzkrieg Commander as the rules. This is the scenario we played:

The battle of Bir Bagahr - 400Kb PDF

(As an aside, and as always with my PDF files: if you want a higher resolution version for printing, just mail me - the address is behind the ‘Posted by Robartes’ link up top).

The battle lasted for six turns and was declared a draw. The British, after a horrendous first two turns wherein they lost most of the Coldstream Guards to a well executed Italian artillery strike, broke into the Italian postions with both tank battalions and were poised to sweep behind the ridge. The Italians, having only suffered very light losses so far, were retreating towards the oasis with one battalion, with the other two in Bir Bagahr and cowering on top of the ridge respectively. As umpire, I judged that the battalion on the ridge would probably not survive the attack of British tanks and infantry, and that the other two battalions would hold out till nightfall before retreating. So, a draw as the British did not destroy the Axis, nor did the Axis manage to keep the British away from the gap in the escarpment.

Photos of the game are in this Flickr set. A sneak preview: