Italy Battles: How To Wargame The Southern Front with Wayne Turner While working on the Italy Campaign compilations, Road To Rome and Fortress Italy, we had lots of material from it that didn’t fit into the format of the compilation style books, so we thought we’d put all these great gaming resource into a book of their own. Italy Battles, Wargaming the Southern Front, is an ideal campaign and scenario resource packed full of great ideas for games, campaigns and themes for building your forces from Road to Rome and Fortress Italy. Learn more about Italy Battles: Wargaming The Southern Front here...

So What Is Inside?

Scenarios Italy Battles contains seven historical scenarios for refighting battles throughout the Italy campaign. Two scenarios cover the battles by the Canadians in late 1943 and early 1944 to take the town of Ortona in an epic struggle with the German 1. Fallschirmjägerdivision, often coined ‘Little Stalingrad’. The Battle for Ortona contains background, orders of battle, two scenarios, Casa Beradi and Operation Orange Blossom and Canadian Warrior Captain Paul Triquet, VC. The battles for the Anzio Beachhead also feature with background and scenarios for Operations Fischfang, Operation Buffalo - Cisterna, Raid of Cerreto Alto and Point of the Sword - Valmontone. These scenarios feature forces as diverse as regular US and German infantry as well as well as more unusual formations like a the Hermann Göring Panzerdivision and US/Canadian First Special Service Force.

The Italy Compilations Road To Rome and Fortress Italy are our two new compilations covering the Italy campaign for 1944 and 1945. However, as well as compiling the forces from Dogs & Devils and Cassino, we’ve added a whole heap of new forces. With those two books covering just Anzio and the battles of Cassino, we took the opportunity to add so much more to these two books, expanding the range of forces out to 1945 and the end of the campaign. Learn more about Fortress Italy here... Learn more about Road To Rome here...

The Bridge Over the Savio River once more features the Canadians and Smokey Smith, the Canadian tank-hunting Warrior from Road To Rome (page 36-37). It features Canadian riflemen against counterattacking German Panzergrenadiers from 26. Panzerdivision. The great thing about scenarios is that you can always adapt them to your needs or desires. Simply take the mission part of the scenario and use some different forces. There are so many different forces available in Road To Rome and Fortress Italy that the options for a variety of game experiences from each of the scenarios is almost endless. Feel free to experiment, after all it is all for your enjoyment!

Campaigns Italy Battles is also full of campaign resources, whether you are after a simple series of linked games or the story telling experience of an Infantry Aces campaign. The campaigns section offers a range of ideas running a variety of campaigns. These can be adapted to a series of games among friends or club played at their leisure, an in store event, or an intense concentrated one day event at a show or convention. Axis of Attack campaign offer a simple framework to run a series of linked games between to players. They are great at giving the players sense of purpose and urgency to their games, providing story and just generally making the focus of the game a little different than a pick-up game you might normally play. Axis of Attack campaigns can also played with more than two players, with different players fighting up different axes through different missions or scenarios. Italy Battles contains two Italy Campaign themed Axis of Attack campaigns, Anzio and Cassino. They are simple to run with no need for a dedicated umpire as there is little in the way of administration work require to run them. Detail such as special rules, weather, and special terrain can be added or removed  as you wish depending on what you feel like doing and what resources you have at hand to set up the gaming tables.

Infantry Aces The final part of Italy Battles contains Infantry Aces. We wanted this to still be available now that Cassino is out of print and all of Cassino’s forces now feature in Road To Rome or Fortress Italy. Italy Battles contains also you need to run and Infantry Aces campaign and has been updated to be up to date with Version Three Flames Of War.

All the resources you need are included. You get the campaign map, campaign rules, Infantry Aces rules, Infantry Aces abilities, Aces of Aces rules, force building rules, Last Day in Combat Mission, and Organising the Campaign Guide. Plus it includes Quick Reference, Result Sheets and Infantry Aces Company Chart. Included is an example campaign as run by the Battlefront Studio, showing the fun that can be had when playing an Infantry Aces campaign. The report focuses on Mike and Sean’s Infantry Aces campaigns with their forces and Aces featured in detail.

As you can see there is plenty of content in Italy Battles. Whether you are looking for some interesting casual gaming options or at options for running a campaign, Italy Battles has something to interest most Flames Of War gamers. ~ Wayne.