Salerno 1943: A Rommel AAR

My son and I hosted a couple of friends for a game of Rommel.  I wanted to try using the "Mid-War" operation sheets and the terrain placement rules as written.  I decided on a loosely historical setting of Salerno, pitting the 36th Infantry Division (the Lone Star Division) against elements of the 16th panzer division, and 26th and 29th panzer grenadier divisions.

This was the Rommel "Breakthrough" scenario, with the Americans on the defense.  The idea was the Germans were trying to breakthrough to the beach head to drive the Allies out of Italy.

Here are the forces:

Unit	#	Cost	Total
16th Pz Div
Inf. Battalion	2	8	16
Panthers	1	13	13
Wespe	1	4	4
			0
26th Pz Gren			0
Inf. Battalion	1	8	8
Panzer IV	1	13	13
Stug	1	12	12
Field Howitzer	1	3	3
			0
29th Pz Gren			0
Pz Gren.	1	11	11
Panzer IV	1	13	13
Motor Batt.	1	8	8
Field Howitzer	1	3	3
			0
155mm Artillery (Parent)	1	4	4
Nebel werfer (Parent)	1	2	2
			110
Americans (36th Infantry Division)
141st			0
Green Infantry (4/3)	3	7	21
105mm Howitzer	1	3	3
			0
142nd			0
Green Infantry (4/3)	3	7	21
105mm Howitzer	1	3	3
			0
143rd			0
Green Infantry (4/3)	3	7	21
105mm Howitzer	1	3	3
			0
M4 Shermans (Parent)	2	11	22
			94

The German plan became very apparent as they threw the bulk of two kampfgruppes at my lone regiment on the North flank.

Our extreme south flank was unopposed.


So our CnC decided a bold "Off Road" move to attack the German artillery was in order.

The Germans continued to press the north flank.

Which left our infantry battalion in a position to wipe out the 155 and Nebelwerfer.  Finally, moving to oppose our rampaging troops, the Germans send back a battalion of Panzer IVs.  Our troops retreat onto their supply source!

Back on the north flank the Gremans reach the second objective and our troops have more defensible terrain.

Plenty of fighting has taken place in the center too.

The lone battalion on the supply source was eliminated and the Panzer IVs returned to the attack in the center.


We got to turn 12, called it a draw, and went for pizza.  It was very probable that the Germans would take a second objective, but their own objective and supply source were still vulnerable to a determined attack, so we thought it could go either way.  The multiplayer modifications are based on number of players and not on size of forces, so this may have had an impact on this scenario with 110 vs 96 points.  The Germans had scads more armor, but the Americans had more units.  These "green" units with higher attack, than defense values were poor defenders, and encouraged us to attack.  I resisted this temptation with my regiment simply because the German forces were concentrated there, and I felt is was more important to delay.

Here are the Op sheets that I modified for our 4 player game. They were only reset once.  You can see the double boxes I put in for the extra tactics.  Rolling 8 or 4 dice for op "chips," and a maximum of 12 ops increased the attrition rate on both sides.



One last thing we noted about the terrain placement.  Due to the process, scenario, and forces, all of the "rough" terrain ended up on the American side of the table.  It seemed a little unreal.

Projects update

The Romans are now completely rebased.


I now have over 30 units, enough to fight Cannae if I wanted to.

The Carthaginians are coming along.


I still have 48 more gauls I need to paint from scratch, and 4 more Ligurians to "upgrade" a unit.  I may also add a unit of gaulic cavalry.  And, as I like play "To The Strongest," I need to paint some hero types.  I did this for the Romans already.  They can double for command stands too, if needed.


I finally painted some heavy artillery for my Germans.


Some of my Shermans are quite old, not painted by me, and generally not aesthetically pleasing to me anymore.  So I painted up some new ones.


A while back, I ordered a bunch of painted soviets from Reinforcements by Post.  Today I finally started basing them up.


I've been reading "When Titans Clashed" by David Glantz.  I'm determined to get my Soviet forces together for a spring 2019 offensive using Rommel.

Speaking of Rommel, I've struggled with how I want to portray mountains.  I was on the verge of gluing overhead pictures on 6 by 6 inch squares, but that was a little too board-gamey for my tastes.  Since I use a tree or two in a square to indicate a forest, leaving enough room for the obligatory three stands of units, I thought perhaps I could take the same approach with mountains.  Its the basic question of terrain that the minis stand on versus terrain that shares the space with the minis.  Typically I put stands on top of hills, soft ground and rough ground features. 

For mountains...

Goodbye coffee and so much more.

Before my Africa trip I wanted to get some antimalarial medication - Malarone.  I had used this before and my doctor had prescribed them to me before, but he still wanted me to come in before he wrote a prescription.  I suppose he wanted his insurance money.

So I went in, it had been more than a year, and he did the usual routine.  He took my blood pressure.  It was 160/100!  Holy crap, that was high enough to scare even me.  I didn't show it and I told him I had just finished running 9 miles, which was true.  He gave me my malaria prescription and off I went.

So I started looking online, reading articles about high blood pressure, how to read blood pressure, about artificial spikes in blood pressure readings, and so on.  I ordered a brachial cuff blood pressure reading machine.

I started to look up online factors that might cause my blood pressure to go up.  Stress - true, I had had a very stressful spring semester.  Diet - I've been on a lunch salad, sans meat for quite sometime. The salt content of my diet was pretty high.  Too much kimchi? Too much fish sauce?  Too much cured meat?  I decided to cut down dramatically.  No more kimchi.  No more cured meats, and for the moment no more fish sauce.  I also stayed away from the salt shaker/grinder.

Caffeine can also cause temporary spikes in blood pressure.  I started taking readings after my morning coffee. It was immediately obvious that coffee was causing my blood pressure to spike by at least 20 points, and it wasn't very temporary.  Goodbye coffee, and caffeine.



It took several weeks, but my blood pressure started to come down.

By the time I got back from Africa it was hitting below 120/80 fairly regularly in the morning.  In fact it was at its lowest about 30 minutes after my morning run.  I had started doing a lot of easy "Maffetone" running.  The spring had been a great running season with two massive PRs for me, perhaps I had over-trained to achieve them?

I decided to try to ease a single cup of coffee back into my morning routine.  Normally I put 16+ grams of coffee into a cup.  I cut this back to 12.  This seemed to work at first.  Blood pressure not going much over 129 too often.  But then the heebeejeebees came back.  Its hard to explain, but its basically a type of anxiety attack that hits me in the middle of the night.  It makes it hard to go back to sleep.  Over the past several years they just seemed to come and go with no real logic behind their manifestations.  I figured it was stress.  However, I hadn't had a single attack during the time I took coffee out of the equation.  I haven't had them since taking it back out.  So yeah, really, goodbye caffeine.

Oh, I will truly miss coffee, the flavor, the ritual, the culture, and that dream of having my morning cup while sitting out on an Italian piazza in retirement.

It's been a lot of herbal tea for me since giving up coffee.  Hibiscus in particular is supposed to help high-blood pressure.  I never saw an effect, and it is very acidic.  I think I'll stick with herbal rooibos chai.

I have been able to bring back some salt into my diet without ill effect, which is good, because fish sauce was an important ingredient in my homemade salad dressing.

Fortunately for me, beer and wine cause my blood pressure to go down.  I'm sure too much wouldn't be good, but so far, not a problem.


I started adding some raw nuts to my salad.  I've settled on walnuts and pecans.  Supposedly these oils are "heart healthy."  I also cut down on the butter, and I only buy the salt free kind.  But I haven't given up my pork fat.  Made up some lard today.  Some of which will be used in an apple pie for my son's birthday.