HomeNewsCombat Mission: Fortress Italy
Colonel Croesus: Turn 12
Today’s header image has been redacted in the interests of Suspense Sustenance. If you’ve been following this year’s experiment in co-op comment-driven wargaming, or are familiar with the star-studded, possibly fictitious 70s war movie that inspired it, you can probably guess what’s behind the spoiler Schürzen.
The time for pussyfooting is over. Pussyfindingand pillbox and U-boat neutering are the priorities for the impressively well-coordinated Comment Commanders this turn. When the clock restarts Crabmeat 1 in the north and Crabmeat 2 in the south scuttle westward, keen to eliminate static infantry threats and discover the whereabouts of Steiner’s heavy-duty staff car.
The incoming unnerves what’s left of 1st Squad and denies Moffat, the reluctant anti-tankist, any chance of redemption. An unwieldy spring-loaded rocket projector falls to the ground with a clatter early in the turn.
1st Squad might have decided that discretion is the better part of valour, but grounded aviators Lynch & Bishop are happy to brave the bullet storm. The pair hare across the hot-as-hell r column road and bundle into the building at p4.
Demonstrating commendable fitness/fighting spirit they then proceed to identify and engage targets to the south.
This flanked rocketeer won’t be troubling the Crabs or the Achilles in future turns…
Singh’s flamer finishes up in a position where it can’t influence the battle for GOLD, but the Breach Team jogging along behind it spend a significant portion of Minute 12 plinking the annoyedSd.Kfz. 231on the slipway and taking potshots at crewmen near the lifeless U-boat gun.
Meanwhile, further south, 3rd Squad are busy doing this…
Their ears ringing and their eyes red from dust and smoke, the occupants of the battered redoubt could be forgiven for missing 2nd Squad’s cagey push down the row 17 road. If Steiner’s Tiger tank hadn’t emerged from themonster closetworkshop area at e/f16 early in the turn, distracting a GI as it did so, King’s squad might not have lost another man.
The aggregate-sprinkled Sherman responds with an AP round that appears to do little except chip a chunk of Zimmerit from the big cat’s flat front armour.
It’s at this point, a couple of seconds before the turn ends, that Crabmeat 2 finally weighs in. Spotting the unmissable German giant through a gap in the billowing dust clouds, Jackson, Nemchik’s gunner, does what he’s done hundreds of times before. A cylinder of concentrated chaos leaps from the barrel of the flail tank, flashes across the oily waters of the southern dock, and, after colliding with 80mm of side armour at an unfavourable angle, careens away defeated.
The situation at T+60:
