1st Gaza 1917

All,
Please see attached scenario for Gaza 1917 using the Memoir 44 breakthrough board. The scenario was constructed using the Memoir 44 Editor available from Days of Wonder, full credit to Days of Wonder and Richard Borg, hope thats enough to keep me out of trouble. I have yet to fully run through the scenario yet but every thing appears to fit, the British Commonwealth have limited time to take Gaza as they felt they had, it was not discovered till later that the Turkish reinforcements stopped as they thought the town had already been captured. Any questions/suggestions please feel free to contact me. Please note the cavalry expansion is not due till next year so I have lifted the WW2 Memoir 44 rule of move 3, I am not sure if it would be too powerful to move 3 and battle, move 1 or 2 and battle move 3 and not battlemay be more appropriate, take your pick the former may make them too powerful.

Bill

aam I seeing this right, that the Turks are essentially in a single flank

a key for the units would be helpful, since the M'44 symbols aren't the same as TGW

See attachment I have tried to label the units. Labeling the terrain is not so easy so the Erg terrain which is north of the British and close to the sea is essentially soft sand, the hills are self explanatory the oasis terrain represents the fields and orchards surrounding the town. The sandbag implacements represent shallow trenches the barbed wire coils on the hexes surrounding the position are the cactus hedges which the Brisith found very difficult to cross through hence only artillery can clear, treat as barbed wire as rules except infantry cannot clear. Essentially each unit is roughly a battalion, the Turks had very little in the way of reserves and needed to hold on for Kres Von Kressenstiens counter attack. The terrain left off map is the sea so that flank is secure the flank off map to the right was protected by the Yeomanry division but it could not hope to hold the Turkish reinforcements for long if the Turks had decided to carry on with the counter offensive. The British essentially thought the Turkish reinforcements were on their way, in the event the Turks to the north (top) of the map only intervened by shelling the Australian cavalry. All this taken from the official history. The 2nd and 3rd battles of Gaza were a different matter with the Turkish defences heavily reinforced and suitably dug in. The British had essentially won the battle by taking the Ali Muntar ridge but command confusion saw them withdraw then try to take the position again only to fail. Units marked FG are field guns the rest should be self explanatory. There is no preparatory bombardment and the Welsh division left behind all its field guns and were only supported by 4 of 60pdr guns. I will be using 15mm metal miniatures although you could mark infantry with a token to show them as cavalry and of course if you have the Whippet tanks you could use them instead of armoured cars. I will be recreating the battle next year using my Hexon terrain and with essentially 3 times the figues but fixed to multiple bases having 4 bases of 3 figures represent an infantry unit casualties being taken in bases not individual figures, an MG unit will also be 4 bases each of an MG and 2 crew. A cavalry unit will be 3 bases, field artillery as the game with a gun and 4 crew.

Bill

I see the units are badged, but I don't know what the badges mean.

Which are cavalry? Are any cavalry?
How are cavalry handled? Are they hit on soldier symbols? Can they use Terrain?

I still can't understand the rationale of putting all the Turks (presumably the blue) into just a single section?

Is there Reserve Artillery?

This isn't Memoir'44, and aside from the base game, I've never played M44

I have re-labeled the units which you will see if you look at the amended map attached to my last message. Although I did not label the attachment as amended (apologies if that has caused the confusion) I did say please see the attached. As noted there is no off table artillery except if the Turkish XX corps guns are rolled for, myself and my colleages are debating whether or not they should simply be made available at the outset, all the British Commonwealth artillery available is on the board. The topography and my wish to re-create the whole battle made it neccessary to have the map as is. Essentially the map top is east to Palestine, the bottom west to Egypt, the left hand edge is the Mediteranean sea the right hand edge is the Sinia. If I had placed the Mediteranean at the top of the board with Gaza at the centre section and the ridge running left to right there would be no room for the move of the Australian light horse to cut off the road to Palestine and no room to bring in the expected Turkish counterattack if rolled for and the other Turkish division if it arrives would effectively come in on the bottom of the map which conventionaly would be the British baseline, the British communications are actually toward Egypt which if the map was oriented to give the defenders troops in all three sections would be the left hand board edge. Looking at this as a scenario to share I felt it better to create on an M44 breakthrough board, which is available from Days of Wonder at a reasonable cost rather than publish a map based on Hexon tiles. As the GW game has provision in the rules (unlike the other itterations of command and colours) for cards you cannot play being able to be used for one unit any section we thought this would neatly handicap the Turkish command, and we are still working on other work arounds to mitigate what might be thought to be unfairness (which must be within the spirit of the rules) one of which is that the Turkish player gets to choose 3 of his initial 5 cards. Cavalry I have detailed not only in the scenario but also on my last message so here goes for more clarity Cavalry move 3 and not battle, move 1 or 2 and battle, dice (3), 2 , 1, figures in unit 3, treat as infantry when fired at no different to infantry for terrain, I also considered move 3 and battle but discussions with my colleagues rejected that. Essentially cavalry are mounted infantry, rather than have complex rules for mounting/dismounting this is abstracted into their capabilities, only having 3 figures means they are more vurnerable than infantry (Horses are a bigger target). The soft sand (Bottom left below the sea shore) can only be crossed by infantry not artillery and any moving into a hex with soft sand must stop. I have never said this scenario is for M44, only that I have used the editor and the board. As the owner of all the itterations of Command and Colours games (except the Samurai one) assumptions may have crept in regarding what is known by the reader, if so it is regreted. This whole project is a work in progress that I was keen to share with the forum and as I have discovered the pdf of the M44 map is difficient in that the badges cannot be read whereas they are clear in their original form, I have discovered though that I can label units with a typed in label instead as can be seen on my last attachment. Hope this clears things up somewhat, I will let the forum know the results of the further playtests.

Bill