*While patiently waiting for Go For Broke to be delivered to me, I decided to play a scenario from my new Carpathian Brigade download. I picked this one because it had five nationalities: Italian, German, Polish, British & New Zealand involve in this battles and it had a nice variety of unit types, with a little armor on both sides and victory conditions that looked interesting, not to mention a lot of movement room on that big Desert map. I did have to pull the German units from both Desert Rats & Africa Korps.

*There are seven battle groups, one Italian & German mix, two all German, two British, one Polish, & one New Zealand. The Axis side is more mobile but the Allies start on the board dug in. Two victory objectives for both sides: eliminate units for points and control the entire length of the East-West Road for 15 more points. I think the last one will be hard for either side.

• Time to unload the trucks and engage before I get too close to the Direct Fire and the Bombardment starts hit my Axis trucks.

• Real fighting has started now the Axis Infantry has already lost two steps trying to force their way into the combat zone, trying to expel the Allies units from the east-west road but they are dug-in with on it with off & on board artillery support. The Axis do have an on-board Italian 105mm artillery unit but this won’t do it alone, so they bring up their support units, and two PzIIIG tank units and the British counter with 6 Matilda units with their strong armor defensive factor, the PzIIIG’s shots are just bouncing off their think skin until they get a bad taste of a couple of rounds of those deadly German 88mm AT guns, which destroys 3 steps of Matilda’s so far. So maybe now the Allies will have to switch their Artillery fire from the Axis Infantry to those German 88mm AT guns located in two positions. The Axis Infantry are still getting shot up and too many are now disrupted or demoralized, but there are more where they came from, to make a few more attempts.

• The Axis regrouped and managed to push some of the Allies off the east-west road and the armor continued to take shots at each other with an 88mm AT gun assisting the Axis and the high number of Matildas aiding the Allies and helping them get some adjacent shots on the PzIIIGs. As the Battle continued, it seemed like I was actually fighting three separate battles, as this map and the setup and entry of units really stretched the battle out. Many Units on both sides were now in a demoralized or disrupted state. It became clear to me, that my strategies on both sides were not going to clear the road running east to west and it was time for both sides to pull out of action and consolidate thier gains and recover their wounded.

• At this point I called the battle and pulled back forces from one another as neither side was strong enough to regroup in the time frame of the battle situation. After this, I had to count step losses, as I did not keep track during the actual game, as I wanted this one to be more realistic, not knowing the eliminated step count, and just see the battle from afar and judging when it would most likely be called in real life and well as game play, if such a thing can happen.

*The Allies lost: 6 Armor steps, 6 Infantry steps, 1 2pdr AT step & 2 Leaders.

*The Axis lost: 2 Armor steps, 8 Infantry/Engineer/HMG steps, 1 50mm AT step & 1 Leader.

*The Armor steps count double, the Axis won this 19 to 13 or a Minor Victory.

*This one is worth trying again, as I could see different results on different game plays. I think controlling the road would be very difficult for either side to do, as there is a lot of territory but step losses could go either way in this one.