Played face-to-face against Matt W in one 3.5 hour session.

You can see pictures of the setup in post #7 of this thread.

I felt that our last battle, scenario #6 of Panzer Lehr, that I had set up my hidden too far forward. Almost all were revealed in the first few activations and it allowed the British commander to press the attack quickly and force my troops in secondary defensive positions too early.

So I decided to set several hidden units farther back this time, too many in my opinion. The British commander advanced a few scouts forward and quickly overran my forward positions in no time. Five or six turns into the game and the British were already contesting the town located in the middle of the board.

The Germans did well defending the town but time was on the British side and it was inevitable the town would fall. While fighting for that town, the British send detachments to capture the bridges and to pin down the Germans defending the other town.

The British were already in major victory territory when the Panthers showed up. The British commander made a mistake and failed to put his Shermans out of harm’s way and the Panthers blew them up. I now had a chance at a minor defeat if I captured back the two bridges (they were defended by one INF unit each) and the British failed to contest an hex of the last town. The Panthers were able to take back the bridges with help from the artillery; the British advanced a few units but they were all disrupted just before the town.. The British had one last shot at a major victory but rolled very badly on their bombardment rolls.

British minor victory!

I rated this one a “4” because there was lots of tension trying to get out of a major defeat. I was also impressed how Matt isolated my troops, not allowing me to shift troops between the towns.

If you play this one as the Germans, do take a look at the pictures I posted and set up your troops differently; you will need to slow down the British attack if you want to have a chance at a win.