Hasty Pudding - A Response

Walter Eardley

Nice over view of the scenario. While my dice were not great, I made mistakes early which really cost me in the end. The initial force was setup too close to the entering British. It should have been further back where it could have hopefully survived. My second mistake was attacking one way and then deciding I really needed to attack the other way. While I was able to shift, it left most of my remaining infantry at least one turn behind where they needed to be at the mid/late game. Combine this with my mighty 9-2 doing literally nothing the entire game, my 838s being less then supermen and some timely high dice rolls and the Pudding was not very tasty to me in the end.

Those Matildas are really tough early war. My only real shot at dealing with them was to use the DCs. My one opportunity was thwarted by a TCA spinning 8 up three shot from the CMG which caused my mighty 838 to pinned. I had another opportunity but could not pass the PAATC. On the very last turn, I finally got a 467 and 9-1 in one of the hexes but rolled a 9 and missed the attack. Bummer ... I REALLY wanted to kill at least one of those buggers. The other option for the Matildas was to just out run them. A squad with a leader going CX will be able to leave then in the dust especially if they are moving through a village.

In the end, I was reduced to using Slimy Truck Tactics to try to provide cover. One valiant driver ever tried to over run a squad in the street with an HMG. I really needed that HMG to fire so the driver took one for the team. I still felt like I needed to shower after making the move.

This was also a good example of how HTs can be really dangerous by either providing mobile rolling fire power or death traps for your infantry. I lost 3 of the 4 HTs with a squad inside. This really hurt my chances. On the other hand, I was able to build some very impressive FGs in places where Jay was not really expecting me to be (I think). The final HT I lost, the squad actually was able to roll its CS number and then rolled a 3 on a subsequent 2MC while bailing out. Unfortunately this activated Jays SAN. He rolled a 1 and the sniper selected the abandoning squad to be broken. It died for FTR. I just laughed. Pretty typical "Luck of Jay".

I would definitely recommend this scenario. If you want a challenge, take the Germans and try to kill a couple of those Matildas! It is large so make sure you have plenty of time for the Pudding to setup properly.

Walter