Many years ago when Megablitz was still relatively new, I wrote up Operation Battleaxe as a training scenario with a detailed description of how to design an operational game, point up the units, sort out the terrain, logistics etc. I think it ended up on the old Megablitz yahoo group, and who knows if it survived the transition to groups.io.
Battleaxe is a great operational game as the forces and area involved are quite limited, and the real engagement only lasted a few days, but it contains scope for both broad manouvre and formal assault and obstacle clearance, reinforcements, supply, air power etc etc. It is the training scenario in Sam Mustafas 'Rommel' and regular readers will recall I also ran it using NQM when that was published last year.
I first ran this scenario with Megablitz decades ago at the Sheffield club with my 6mm stuff and we got through the entire thing in a couple of hours, I'd planned to resurrect it for COW in 2025, partly for historical interest and partly as an introduction for people who'd never had a chance to play it. Sadly I couldn't go to COW last year, so I put it on at CALF 2026 instead.
At 1" = 1km my planned layout was something like this (one foot squares). I didn't bother to include Tobruk and Bardia as the battle was mainly fought around and west of Halfaya and Sollum. The battle starts on 15th June 1941 with Axis frontier defences at Halfaya, Sollum, Capuzzo, Point 206 and Hafid Ridge and 8th Panzer Regiment and a mixed battlegroup from 15th Panzer Division in reserve around Sidi Aziz in the north west. One of 15th Panzers rifle regiments (the 104th) had been distributed around the defences, along with various Italian units, and the divisional recce battalion was in a screen from Halfaya down to Bir el Khireigat along the frontier with Egypt.
Western Desert force had committed 4th Indian Division and 7th Armoured Division to write down the frontier defences and armour in the immediate vicinity although both divisions were still understrength after Operation Brevity. 4th Indian could only commit one brigade (!) and was reinforced with both 22nd Guards Brigade and 4th Armoured Brigade, somewhat improbably equipped with Matildas. 7th Armoured Division only fielded a single Armoured Brigade (4th) with just two Regiments of cruisers, although one had brand new Crusaders. between them they outnumbered 8th Panzer Regiment though.
This is how it ended up on the table. 7th Armoured division is down in the desert on the left. Half of 4th Indian is up on and behind the escarpment (Escarpment Force) while the rest are wending their way along the coats road in a huge traffic jam (Coast Force).
On the day I had four players for the game, Chris and Ian took the British, while Alex and Rob took the Axis. Only Chris had any experience of the game before, so I treated it very much as a tutorial session showing how the various mechanisms interacted.
View from the northwest. 8th panzer Regiment is around Sidi Azis with bits of 15th Motorcycle battalion and 33rd AT battalion. I left most of the Axis units offtable so the Allies could try and find them using their recce units.
The players soon got the hang of manouvering and 7th Armoured Div set off across the desert, being bombed occasionally by the Italian airforce while the various armoured car units probed and clashed with each other.
At Halfaya, the Indians discovered the Axis defences and bombed them while the various portions of 4th Indian ponderously deployed for a formal assault. 4th Armoured Brigade resisted the temptation to press on to Fort Capuzzo.
While the Indians deployed, 7th Armoured motored across the desert, uncovering the defences at Point 206. 15th Panzer had been unable to resist intervening though, and had already set off across the desert so the British armour headed in their direction (which of course was exactly what Wavell had originally wanted - to tempt the German armour into battle on unequal terms).
Halfaya descended into bloody chaos as the Indians attacked. Ian got a chance to find out how minefields worked, and despite the best efforts of his engineers, losses were heavy. The Axis held off the first two assaults but as night fell they were looking very battered. I don't think I've ever played Battleaxe without Halfaya falling eventually, although the Allied losses are usually grievous they assault before isolating the garrison.
And in the desert a great armoured clash took place, which given the force ratios (7th Support Group was well up supporting 4th Armoured Brigade), wasn't really going the Axis way.
It was fairly obvious after some time that we weren't going to make it to the 16th June, so we just ran through the overnight sequence (resupply, redeployment etc) as night fell, but didn't bother deploying 5th Light Division, which arrived from Tobruk overnight. Instead we finished early and had a washup about things worked, areas which might be improved or applied elsewhere etc. It probably wasn't the greatest game session I've ever run, but I think it achieved the aim of introducing the game mechanisms, even if we didn't finish the scenario.
I suspect that is the last Megablitz game I'll ever run, as the world has moved on to a certain extent, but it has rekindled my interest in my own operational rules which borrow heavily from MB, and I've got plans for a couple of large scale games I'd like to run over the next year.
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