AT fire in assault hexes

[plloyd1010]

Still some doubts...especially regarding item nr 3 in Peter's summary.

All that can say is. show where it says otherwise. The only place where the rules say that AT fire may be used in lieu of assault combat is at the end of rule 12.12. That rule deals with exiting the assault hex.

We were recently playtesting one scenario of Fire & Sword: see picture (sorry for bad quality).
The T34/85 has to exit through the north edge for victory conditions. The Soviet chooses to a Move action.

However, when re-reading the rules for overrun, it seems clear that the attacker and the defender may opt for Anti-tank fire instead of assault which seem to justify the otherwise strange exception in 12.52. In this case, the tanks would exchange simultaneous shots : T34/85 fires with 7 -1 (overrun) -1 (town) = 5 so that it needs 11 or 12 to hit, Panther fires with 8 -1 (overrun = movement ?) -1 (town) = 6 so that it needs 9 or more to hit.
What do you think ?

I would contend that whoever wrote the overrun rule, didn't think it through very well. This because the rule says, "Once the overrunning AFV(s) or cavalry enter the target assault hex, conduct the assault normally except that both sides suffer an additional -1 column shift..." I know that AT fire is referenced in the modifiers, but that is contrary to "conduct the assault normally".

I think the T-34 will move a hex and the Panther will take OpFire, the T-34 will move adjacent to the Panther and the Panther will OpFire again, the t-34 enters the Panther's hex and the assault (required combat, rule 12.2 occurs), the T-34 fires on the 1 column, the Panther on the 9. The T-34 exits the hex and the Panther gets a free shot. The panther on the right could take OpFire unless the T-34 moves into the north-west hex. (I would wait for a later activation to fire, assuming the T-34 somehow survived all that.)