Yeah, the 20mm basically stopped my entire attack dead in its tracks. The infantry was cut down so quickly that those who were left ended up being so shaken that pushing them forward for the rest of the game was impossible. I should have pulled back and just tried to hold what I could while inflicting casualties, because each attempt to get a toe-hold of the town, my troops were just too incoherent to sustain a single burst from a machinegun without retreating. Once I had realised that you were sneaking a platoon up to the monastery, it was too late.The 20mm quad was my game changer against @Spoogles. It stayed in the game till almost the last turn despite having only one crew member left. At one stage it had practically exhausted all its ammo, but I manage to replenish it in a timely manner with the surviving crew from the other flak gun which had had been abandoned in the opening turns. Overall it caused 36 Canadian casualties and KO’d both the Bren Carrier and Stuart Recce. It was in direct C2 of the company HQ the whole game which must have helped speed up spotting and saved them from panicking despite the crew being gradually picked off by mortar and small arms fire. It even had a nibble at the exposed flank of a Sherman which caused the crew to panic briefly and reverse over a wall. The surviving crew member will be awarded both the Iron Cross and the Medaglia d'oro al valor militare for his heroics.
The German two man tank hunter teams were great for the fact they were armed with SMG’s: one such team practically stopped the Canadians left flank attack on their own. The best thing about the Italians is the Brixia mortars. They are really fast firing and carry quite a few rounds, probably about four times as many as the Brit 2” job.
As for my Semoventes, between them they hit the front of one of @Spoogles Shermans about eight times without a penetration, but I notice at the end that they’d completely ruined the smoke mortar, radio and optics for their efforts. One of them actually scored a penetration on the Fox AC without getting a kill.
Anyway, I thought that was a cracking opening battle on a great map with a very interesting and challenging force selection to play with. Managing to capture the monastery was a complete bonus as, after blunting the three prongs of the Canadian attack, I managed to sneak a couple of squads up the middle to find that it was practically undefended.
Thanks again, @Spoogles. Good luck in round two.
Lethaface, looking at your end results, 50 points is not much from your loss to a possible win. not sure if the Tankettes would have been worth 50 points, but they sure would have helped.
Well, round two will let you try your hand at entering a town and getting your chance of having to clear defenders from house to house.
Thanks for that. In the early going I made damn sure my tanette crews had all the protection I could offer. I lost a few guys doing that protection work but none of the crews.No screenshots for this one but it was an Italian Minor Victory. Made a bit of a pig's ear of this one, all the things Sly said you shouldn't do I pretty much did. I made a massive mistake in not checking the LOS in the dark, I thought it would give me a lot more cover than it did so I pushed a platoon down each of the left, middle and right to see what I could find. The middle platoon found lots of stuff and got chewed up pretty badly, I lost about 2 squads and I found not much on the right but the way in to town was pretty nasty.
Yes, those AA guns were super useful. The one I had in the centre ran out of ammo. Luckily the one on my left had lots of ammo so I moved the ammo team over and was able to keep both guns in the game.I also got a bit happy with my mortars and had run low before I even saw the quad AA gun and I never did knock the thing out. I pulled everyone back from the middle and didn't advance too far on the left and decided to wait for my tanks whilst probing on the right. If anything they could hold the forces Cat had on that side over there.
Once I got the right hand objective those guys were pretty much spent. The team in the centre made the push to the monastery at the last minute. I was slow to realize that my mortars and AA guns had pretty much cleared the opposition there.When the armour did finally show up Cat decided to counter attack and push up my left so I sat with my tanks covering the approach and waited, only to watch his Semoventes get the spot time and again and get shots off without my guys even seeing anything. Cat didn't push any further than the edge of the objective so after farting around trying to put a smokescreen on my left and failing miserably I rolled my armour around that side out of LOS of the AA gun and hit his Semoventes in the rear. I pulled the right hand platoon back and put one squad in the monastery and the rest went to support the left, but it was all a bit too late.
I did, gamey bastard I still had more troops but there was no way I was going to get anyone through that gate without HE. Honestly my rush at the end was the gamiest thing ever.Cat did try and get troops onto the monastery objective but my waiting squad ambushed them as time expired. Ended up getting no-one into the village (did anyone's interlopers actually survive?), held the monastery and we both occupied the crossroads objective (if that was what it was called, can't remember).
Indeed.Well played @A Canadian Cat, that counterattack threw me for a bit of a loop. Best of luck with the rest of the tournie.
Yep, brutal. My recon got shredded approaching from the West so I decided to go hard to the South. I lead with HT because the 88s would shred my armour. My idea was that any MGs or AT guns that opened up I could quickly silence.Canadian Cat was the player that comes to mind as to learning both things the Hard way. He attacked from the South with infantry and Halftracks first.
Found out how the German Mg's could shread his units as they approached and then when he did finally manage to rush his infantry forward into the edge of town. watched in horror as his troops bodies stacked up quickly in the buildings he tried to take.
I was wrong. Dead wrong.
I used all of their HE and some AP because why notBy the way, did anybody get much use out of the 57mm AT guns? Mine didnt fire a single shot. Though they did fully convince me the Germans would get a tank or two as late reinforcements. Happily I was wrong. But positioned two aiming at the bridge from both sides. Third was directed down main road into town.
When I realised that the Germans weren’t getting any armour reinforcements, I used up all of their HE then abandoned the guns and threw them into the assault as an ersatz platoon. I don’t think they appreciated the opportunity for glory and most ended up as casualtiesI used all of their HE and some AP because why not