This time around playing 'Operation Compass' in Vince and I's early desert war campaign I had a tougher time at it playing with the British. This scenario does favor a win for The Empire just as the opening scenario, 'Italy Invades Egypt' strongly favors Italy. Of course Vince chose to deploy his Italians a lot differently than I did in my first solo play. One of the hills, in the southeast was a virtually giveaway as he deployed the bare minimum of the required forces there so as to concentrate the bulk of his units on the northernmost hill (worth the most VPs) while the third and smallest hill was tenaciously defended with a sizeable force of 8 dug-in infantry platoons. I divided my attacking force accordingly in proportion to his defenses.

I did not for one moment believe that I would be able to take all three hills, most especially the northernmost one but I had to make a go at it. This time around the British casualties were much higher, mostly in part to Vince's combined, on-board artillery units (1 x 105mm; 3 x 75mm and a 65mm) and some very efficient 20mm AA guns. The British attack was frustrating at first, especially against the smaller and more lightly defended hill. That one would not fall until there were just two turns left to play out and after that there was not enough time to move those units north to reinforce the main attack. Eventually I started to get some good shots in and towards the end of the battle I even managed to take a few chunks out of the larger hill's defenses with the most unlikely of combination of single and reduced INF units; getting consecutive M results on the 1 and 2 columns of the DF table while concentrating more of the heavier fires onto artillery units behind the front lines. With DF alone I was able to eliminate 2 of the 75mms that had helped eliminate quite a few of my infantry.

I was also able to eliminate all of the L6/40s in two different attacks, the second platoon of them almost escaped my slower moving A10s and I believe almost every hit was from the maximum range with reduced firepower. There were also many cases of plain cold-blooded attrition from both sides literally murdering weakened and demoralized troops trying desperately to either recover or escape certain doom. Whatever it took to generate step losses which were also VPs. My Rolls Royce armored cars were particularily efficient at mowing down fleeing infantry. I think Vince and I both had a few streaks, back to back, where we piled up quite few losses on each other. Some turns ended quite abruptly from fog of war rolls while others seemed to drag on without any results other than a few morale checks. Vince also managed to eliminate my highest ranking leader, Colonel "Blimpty", along with a Major, both in charge of the main attack. Funnily enough, despite the decapitation and catastrophic loss effects this seemed to only infuriate my lower-ranking leaders and foot units as it was only then that they really started to get decent shots in. My main attack line had been broken and reformed and was amazed that it held together as good as it did. There were some quirky moments there as one British INF unit recovered and returned to the front lines at least twice, each time getting demoralized from opportunity fire, fleeing and then having a Captain push it back to only suffer the same fate and eventualy did suffer a step loss. If there had been more time then I'm sure it would of returned for a fourth round of punishment.

At the end of the battle losses sat at:

Italian- CAP(8-0-0), 19 INF, 2 x 75mm, 4 L6/40 and 2 trucks.

British- COL(9-0-1), MAJ(8-1-0), 12 INF, 2 HMG and 1 x 25-pdr.

Final VPS were: Britain-45, Italy-25

As far as the campaign goes after two battles it is close. Italy still leads overall with 63 CPs with Britain trailing behind at 60 CPs. I will leave the rest of the details from this battle for Vince to sort out as I have less than 7 hours to get some rest before I battle it out against the Soviets against Wayne in the morning. I rated this one a "4" not so much because it was my first win in a shared play but because I felt it was quite a challenge to keep my nerve and be patient against my opponent while also having quite a few laughs as well. I didn't really expect to do as well as I did in the end and thought a British victory, though certain due to the odds, would be more marginal.