Celleno Campaign

[Rinaldi]

I flipped through the campaign notes, and unless I missed it, they didn't list the designers and testers' names. So, whoever you are, my hat's off to you. It was the first campaign in a while I found legitimately difficult. I loved it. 

I thought it was an excellent depiction of the type of hastily improvised Pak-fronts the Germans would concentrate and lay across an allied mechanized thrust. You could feel mission-to-mission that you were fighting an enemy desperately trying to prevent a breakthrough or blunt a flanking thrust. There was always a great deal of opportunity for mounted manoeuvre, with use of artillery and masking fires, and the time limits encouraged a surgical attitude. I did a lot of bypassing and leapfrogging (often under light fire) of my units through one another to try and meet the timetable. Nor do I think the timetable was artificial: you're doing an armoured thrust up an enemy's flank, speed is key and the campaign captures that. 

I also appreciated being in command of a relatively untested unit. I'm somewhat familiar with the actual fight for Cellano and I do remember reading the German unit was about as fresh as the South Africans facing them, and it showed. I never felt the difficulty was artificially heightened by suddenly encountering some random, fanatic, Heer unit. The casualties seemed realistically proportionate as well. The lack of resupply and reinforcement made it quite the administrative challenge too. I spent a lot of time deciding which unit was up front or would be the main effort, trying to spread out echelon consumption and casualties. Most of the platoons were combat effective to the end, even if some were glorified squads. 

Needless to say, the maps were all gorgeous. 

If anyone wants a good little combined arms battle in complex terrain, and practice busting concentrated pak fronts, I definitely recommend. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Rinaldi

[Monty's Mighty Moustache]

Oooh, I was just looking at the campaigns in CMFI as I fancy starting one and this did catch my eye, good to hear it's well put together.

MMM