Preview: Duel in the Sun – The African and Italian Campaigns

12 Days of Christmas – Day 4

It’s time for the fourth entry in this year’s ’12 Days of Christmas’ series of previews!

Duel in the Sun sees Bolt Action players take the helm of the Desert Rats of Monty’s 8th Army, the fast-moving and hard-hitting raiders of the LRDG, or Rommel’s mighty Afrika Korps, to recreate some of the most iconic battles of World War II – Operations Compass, Crusader and Torch, Tobruk, and El Alamein, amongst others.

Packed with the usual Theatre Book offerings of new scenarios, special rules, troop types and theatre selectors, Duel in the Sun takes players across the Mediterranean from North Africa, where they can follow the Italian Campaign from the invasion of Sicily, through the battles for Anzio and Cassino, to the final assaults on the Gothic Line.

…and as if that wasn’t enough, here’s a quick excerpt from the book – featuring the infamous Hermann Göring Division!

The Hermann Göring Division

The embryo of this division was created in 1933, when Hermann Göring, German Minister of the Interior, formed a police unit utterly dedicated to the Nazi regime. Its members soon gained a reputation for brutally enforcing Nazi ideology. These policemen were militarised in 1934, and transferred to the Luftwaffe when Göring was promoted to command that organisation in 1935.

Renamed Regiment General Göring, some of its troops were trained as paratroopers to become the first Fallschirmjäger units. During the opening stages of the war, the regiment saw action everywhere: Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In 1941 it was restructured as a motorised force, and saw action during Operation Barbarossa, where its anti-tank guns became the terror of Soviet armour. The following year, it was transferred to the North African theatre. Now known as the Hermann Göring Division, it saw action only at the rump end of the Tunisian campaign, which saw all its combat units surrender to the Allies following the collapse of the Afrika Korps.

Göring immediately reformed the division and sent it to Sicily, where it fought tenaciously against the invading Allies until forced to retreat to Messina. One of the last units to leave the island, it fought a fierce rearguard, slowing the Allies long enough for the rest of the German army to evacuate unharmed to the Italian mainland. There, it fought at Salerno, and participated in the gradual fighting retreat to the Gustav Line.

Its reputation for brutality followed it, and it was responsible for several reprisals against Italian villages in response to civilian resistance to the occupying German forces. At Anzio, it resisted the invasion force until the sheer weight of American reinforcements secured the Allied beachhead there. The division forced the Americans to pay a deadly toll in their efforts to cross the Rapido River, and opposed the Allies throughout the early months of 1944 as they pushed towards Rome, again fighting successful delaying actions to ensure the evacuation of German forces from the Eternal City.

In July 1944, the division was transported to the Eastern Front – ultimately, its remnants surrendered to the Soviets in early May 1945. Thus ended a fighting force that had battled in almost every theatre the German army had been involved in.

HERMANN GÖRING DIVISION REINFORCED PLATOON (TUNISIA)

We find that the best way to field a German force to represent the Hermann Göringn division for the fighting in Tunisia is to nselect reinforced platoons from the Rommel’s Defeat Reinforced Platoon (Armies of Germany, page 79), with the following exceptions:

– The entire force has to be motorised (i.e. the platoon must include enough transport vehicles to transport all infantry and artillery units).
– No units in the force can be purchased as Inexperienced.
– Any Veteran infantry or artillery unit in the force can be upgraded to Fanatics at +3pts per man.
– The 2 mandatory Heer Veteran infantry squads in each platoon can be replaced by Fallschirmjäger squads (Early War)
– Each platoon can include one additional anti-aircraft gun, which is purchased as normal, amongst the ones listed, but does not count towards the maximum number of artillery units in the platoon (and an additional tow for it, if necessary).
– Each platoon can include an additional anti-aircraft vehicle, which is purchased as normal, amongst the ones listed, but does not count towards the maximum number of vehicles in the platoon.
– All weapons with the flak rule in the force can re-roll their dice when rolling to hit against incoming aircraft during an air strike, as well as when attempting to hold their flak fire against attacking aircraft.

HERMANN GÖRING DIVISION REINFORCED PLATOON (ITALY)

This is the same as for Tunisia, except that the platoons are selected from the Defence of Italy Reinforced Platoon (Armies of Germany, page 85). Note that the Fallschirmjäger squads need now to be Late War, and that no Waffen SS units can be added to the platoons.

HERMANN GÖRING DIVISION ARMOURED PLATOON

You can of course represent the Hermann Göring Division using armoured platoons from Tank War rather than normal reinforced platoons. If you decide to do so, select armoured platoons from the Armoured Platoon selector (page 11), with the following exceptions:

– Units in the force must be selected amongst those available either for the Rommel’s Defeat selector (for the Hermann Göring Division in Tunisia), or for the Defence of Italy selector (for the Hermann Göring Division in Italy).
– No units in the force can be purchased as Inexperienced.
– Any Veteran infantry or artillery unit in the force can be upgraded to Fanatics at +3pts per man.
– Each platoon can include one additional anti-aircraft gun, which is purchased as normal, amongst the ones listed, but does not count towards the maximum number of artillery units in the platoon (and an additional tow for it, if necessary).
– Each platoon can include an additional anti-aircraft vehicle, which is purchased as normal, amongst the ones listed, but does not count towards the maximum number of vehicles in the platoon.
– All weapons with the flak rule in the force can re-roll their dice when rolling to hit against incoming airplanes during an air strike, as well as when attempting to hold their flak fire against attacking aircraft.

Keep checking the Warlord website every day on the run-up to Christmas, as there’ll be something new EVERY SINGLE DAY – and we have some very special presents in store…