Jay is doing himself a bit of a dis-service...my luck wasn't great admittedly but he did set up a really good solid defense and I pretty much found every one of his BS locations the hard way with fairly grim consequences each time - amazingly I walked away from the 9-2/MMG boresight spot with only a couple of pins, but pretty much everyone else got shredded. I smoked in as much as I could but even when shrouded in Smoke, Jay's squeezebore still managed to Shock two Churchills - double acq and the -1 size mod is a killer whether you're +4 trying to shoot out or not.
Never really got any momentum going at all in this one - once the left flank attack had been stopped cold, the re-alignment just cost time and more importantly MF/MP I didn't have and I was going to be forced to cross a cactus hedge the hard way to get anywhere. And I was actually lucky in that Jay X'ed out one of his AT Guns and his 20L AA Gun early in the game as well, but even with this, my infantry just kept failing simple NMCs and worse from his two MMGs, and then scuffed their rally attempts on my own turn (four elevens on rally attempts in a row!!) and it all went south fast. The timing of the Gusts couldn't have been worse as it was just when I needed those Churchills to be at their smokey best...sadly, only one of my Mk I Churchills was placed to place Prep Fire Smoke, the other was re-positioning and of course all SD and SM smoke from the other MkIV Churchills was NA for that crucial turn. As Jay relates the other problem I had was getting the 9MP behemoths through the trail-breaks...pretty much one tank a turn at most when the trailbreak is in Brush and with a smoking, burning Churchill sat there too.
Overall, I did very little damage to Jay: my sniper wounded his 9-2 and he X'ed two of his own guns out, but after 5 turns all I had to show were two dead German para half-squads in return and one broken squad. Amusingly, in my only lucky moment of the game, Jay had a Para h/s fail to place a DC optimally on a Churchill and then failed to kill it with a subsequent ATMM Cc with a squad and a half in CC - the only plus point for me! When we called it, Jay was just about to bring 100mm harassing OBA down onto my few remaining attackers after I had just been ambushed and lost two squads in CC with the wounded 9-2 SMC. I wasn't even at the cactus farm perimeter itself at this point, but this game was pretty much over by the end of turn 2.
This is a pretty good scenario and with slightly less hot German dice and a more competent British attack than I was able to offer it definitely should go more towards the distance...however I still don't fancy the British chances much of having to try and take the Koresh compound against 8 morale defenders in stone buildings with first and second line infantry across the Cactus hedge with 6IFT factor OBA dropping around your ears. And also, having to remove them from entrenchments on the hilltop at the same time.. Didn't even get close on this one!
Verily, spiked on the cactus farm indeed!
Well played Jay...at some point in the future, we'll try again!
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