The Wargamer

Theatre of War 2: Africa 1943

After Action Report

Battle of Sidi Bouzid

Mission intr 15 February, 1943, by the order of General Eisenhower, American troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Waters have been ordered to counter-attack to the village called Sidi Bouzid, which was captured by attacking German troops the day before. Lt. Col. Waters’ troops include those that with him and a recent reinforcement – a battalion of new American Sherman tanks that have just been sent to the front line. Unfortunately the tank crews consist of recruits, so they are not experienced.

Well, let's begin. At first I will select the troops for the mission, it is possible to create several infantry units and Shermans with inexperienced soldiers:

Since I can’t choose the soldiers by myself, I will cheat a little: instead of two Shermans I take two old medium M3 tanks which survived the previous mission in rather good condition.  The benefit here is that these crews are experienced. Furthermore, the M3 has one more advantage – there are two gunners in the crew, so I can move one of them into a Sherman for the mission. Thus there will be two experienced gunners in the two Shermans, and that is good enough. Moreover, I also am interested in a Wolverine tank, so I take one of them instead of a Sherman (and it turns out to be a clever decision). Here is the final set of troops:

I press the button to continue and am now placed on the map and am ready for deployment. Before deploying my troops I will need to decide how to best recon the terrain : from the very beginning it is clear that there are two roads leading to the valley of Sidi Bouzid village - from the left and right flank, divided by a ravine. Behind the ravine there is a friendly battery of howitzers.

I formulate a plan: using my infantry to cover the left flank, I will move the majority of my forces down the right-hand road to the village.  The lead element will be a sniper (who has a high reconnaissance skill level). Self-propelled guns will remain in the rear and fire from the far edge of the map.

So the battle begins. I recieve my first order: to send an infantry unit to the artillery battery to restore communications between them and the rest of my forces. I order my strongest units to also head there to establish a starting position for the attack on the village.

At the same time I order the howitzer battery to fire on the village. The above image shows them using indirect fire – this is one of the new key features of the game.

Infantry units are moving closer to the oasis, tanks follow, riding to the hill top.

It appears that the first order has been executed: the link with the battery has been established and it is now under my command. I order the infantry to take positions inside the building. But here we see that an armored troop-carrier trying to sneak up on the battery!

Success: my tanks are getting closer to their objective and a Sdfkz appears in the field of vision of an M3.

The third solid shot destroys armored troop-carrier, but it turns out that my tankers made a mistake: there were many German infantry in that armored carrier and they are now trying to destroy the battery! As the howitzers were preparing to attack, my infantry units managed to run inside the building and are now shooting through the windows at the approaching Germans.

A hail of fire destroys the German units, but the Germans still managed to call in an artillery strike on my battery:

Whether due to luck or inexperience, the fire is widely dispersed and does not cause much damage to my battery. By the way, on the screenshot below you can see that one of my soldiers went into panic and dropped his gun, so I had to intervene and order him back to pick it up.

The game doesn't give me a moment to rest. Just after I examine my troops to see how they weathered the attack of enemy motorized infantry, a new problem occurs: more German motorized infantry arrives. Two PzIII tanks slash into my flank! Though they didn't last long - behind the cover of buildings I had hidden the two Shermans and two M3 tanks, which destroyed the Panzers in less than a minute from a 700 meter distance. By the way - this is another new feature of Theatre of War 2: Africa 1943. In the original game 1 kilometer was too far for tanks to engage in combat; now that distance is quite normal for tanks to engage each other.

At the same time my scout runs out to the ridge in front of the village and it turns out that the village's defense consists of deadly Flak 36 with their lethal 8.8 cm caliber shells. Those shells are able to destroy any of my units from pretty much any distance on the map! This is where I need howitzers – they can engage those 88s indirectly without putting any of my troops at risk. There is no time to lose, so the artillerymen receive an order. That's really great that you can shoot from protected positions here!