To begin with, I chose to generate entirely new leader characters for this Later Desert War campaign to try to enable a fairer balance of play. The British leader characters that survived the Early Desert War campaign were very powerful and it seemed generic and unrealistic to convert the surviving Italian leaders into German ones. In this case both sides had about the same starting strength in leader characters, none of them overwhelmingly powerful though the German LCs came out with better, randomly determined starting skills.

The Germans have to hold on to and control as many upper hill hexes as possible, and the road with a small amount of personnel stretched out. There are two hills to hold on to so I divided the German deployment as evenly as possible and hoped for the best. I really didn't expect that the German forces would hold out in both hills but hoped that at least one hill would be retained by scenario's end. I placed the 88mm on one hill and the 76.2mm on the other with the two 50mm AT guns in the road as a diversion to stall British armored units.

With the British advance I in turn split the forces evenly into two attack groups and held the armored units back until AT guns could be eliminated. Unfortunately, British OBA had failed to do more than disrupt these guns early on so the armored units did not see much action until later in the scenario.

The British advance was slow, especially towards the Northern hill as foot units were unloaded from the trucks far from the range of the German AT and AA guns. Once both attack forces reached the hills they were met with stiff resistance. British direct and indirect fire did not do too much damage in weakening German stacks and assaults were delayed.

The British forces in the Southern hill area lost their Major from compound demoralization and had a tough time rallying and regrouping. In that area, only two upper hill hexes were taken through assaults and the 88mm kept the Stuart tanks, Humber Is and bren carriers from assisting in the attack. The British attack on the Northern hill went a little better as the Crusader tanks eventually braved 76.2mm AT fire to root out the German armored cars which were wreaking havoc on the infantry there. This however resulted in the loss of 3 steps (worth double) of Crusader tanks for all 6 steps of armored cars, which balanced out overall for step loss VPS.

Eventually German forces started to lose holdings in the Northern hill and the 76.2mm was eliminated before more British tanks were lost. One of the German leader character Lieutenants was eliminated from compound demoralization but it was a very weak one with a 7-0-0 rating. It did not receive a reprimand and was either executed or imprisoned. This was not really a so much of a loss as most likely it's replacement could only receive better starting attributes and skills.

This battle raged back and forth with both sides suffering about equal casualties but the German defense held out ultimately with 18 upper hill hexes still in German control by scenario's end along with the easy control of one road hex by motorcycle units. The fact that the one 88mm AA gun was never eliminated was really decisive and it was never used against armor but very effective combined with the 81mm mortar units for indirect fire purposes.

In the end Germany claimed a victory with 57 VPs to the British 44 VPs. British leader characters did well enough to survive with positive LPs; one Lieutenant was promoted to Captain for his efforts while another received a mention in dispatches. One of the German leader characters did exceptionally well racking up LPs (28 total!) and was able to increase his morale to 9 and purchase the rifle combat skill for the next engagement.

German casualties: Capt 9-1-1; LT 7-0-0; SGT 8-0-1; 6 steps of INF; 2 steps of HMG; 2 50mm AT guns; 1 76.2mm artillery; 2 steps of Sdkfz 231(8); 4 steps of Sdkfz 222.

British casualties: Maj 9-0-1; 4 steps of INF; 1 step of ENG; 3 steps of Crusader I.

I was really surprised at the outcome of this battle as I thought superior British numbers would eventually roll over the defense. 24 turns/6 hours, was not enough time to finish off this attack and by 17:45, as the sun began to set, "Afrika" Infantry Regiment were kings of the hills, at least for a day.