Another rather large armoured meeting engagement where the British have about twice as many tanks as the Germans; half of them the capable Grants but the other half of them being only Stuart light tanks. To swing the firepower further to the axis side the Germans also have 2 batteries of 88mms and 3 50mms along with incredible OBA of 1 x 24, 4 x 16 compared to Britain having 2 x 6-pdr AT guns and zero indirect fire support, on board or off.

The scenario requires both 'Desert Rats' maps but since I was playing solitaire I only needed a portion of map 4 as I knew in advance that wherever one side entered first (Germany/south/map 5), the other would enter accordingly from the other direction(Britain/north/map 5). Only a few hexes of map 4 were used in this play to accompany some fleeing units temporarily.

Without getting into lengthy detail of how the 40 turns panned out I will just state that after the first 10 turns it was clear that Germany was going to claim a decisive victory. It didn't start out that way of course; it never does with my many British blunders in the desert.

The first mistake I made with the British was that I allowed the foot units to advance too far and too close to the Germans before digging in, after 4 turns of movement. This made it easy for a German leader to get within the 12 hex spotting range for the deadly OBA. For this error both of the 6-pdrs were eliminated soon after unloading and they were quickly eliminated before ever getting a chance to dig-in or fire. The next mistake made was with sending all the Grants out first while keeping the Stuarts in reserve. On the first round of the tank battle at 09:45/turn 6, the British actually got the initiative with two activations before the Germans could respond and had good range with the Grants. The first volley claimed 3 steps of PzIIIGs and the second volley eliminated 2 more steps of PzIIIGs. The German return fire only managed to eliminate 1 step of Grants. That would be the British high point of the battle as everything would go downhill for them from there. The thicker skinned and slower moving PzIIIJs and PzIVEs had not arrived on the scene yet and once in place, along with the one platoon of the deadly PzIVF2s unscathed, the battle quickly turned in Germany's favor. The PzIIIGs were just a lure.

In retrospect, I probably should of sent the faster Stuarts out first and saved the bigger guns, the Grants for later. Maybe that would of made some difference with the tank v.s. tank battle. But the 88's and 50mms also helped the panzers quickly turn 4th Armoured Brigade into a heaping, burning, metal scrapyard. The British did manage to eventually destroy the whole platoon of the PzIVF2s but that was their last punch. Soon there were still 20 turns left to finish off, though if this were a shared play, no doubt the British player would of conceded by the conclusion of the first 20 turns. Instead I played it out till turn 40, just out of curiosity to see if the entire British force could be eradicated. It turns out that the foot units were quite defiant and unwilling to surrender until literally the last man. In this case, one good order British INF platoon, dug-in, held out along with a disrupted Sergeant until the bitter end in an assault. All other British units and leaders were eliminated. Interesting enough, though the Germans did suffer losses, not any of those losses were from foot or support units -all vehicles.

German losses were: Captain(10-2-1), 1 x SPW250, 2 steps of PzII, 11 steps of PzIIIG, 1 step of PzIVE and 2 steps of PzIVF2.

I think,or rather hope, I have learned something from this meeting engagement. The next 'Desert Rats'scenario up, #44-"Road of Slaves", is almost identical with the units involved and victory conditions. Those victory conditions are very simple -whoever eliminates the most enemy steps wins or basically -kill them all. In this battle the Germans almost did just that. I also believe that this would be a much better scenario in a shared play rather than solo so because of that I only give it a '3' instead of a '4' rating.