Chain of Command - The Scottish Corridor - Turn 10

 This fight was turn 10 of the twelve available in the campaign. It had taken the Germans so long to win the first Western table that the Eastern Kampfgruppe was now at the centre of the map ladder. Think 'one sided pincer' and you'll understand why this and the final two games needed to be successive wins for the Axis to secure a campaign victory.

Attacking the British strongold of Mouen, the Germans did-unexpectedly- start with a fresh platoon. A broad width of jump off points was achieved, though the Brits did out-manouvre us and keep us well back away from the prime objective - the furthest most house on the Northern edge.

I blame the dice gods-through the medium of a close-support barrage by the British- for setting the tone of our demise early on in the game. With a good spread of dice Stephen and I decided to deploy units to hold up the Norther flank. The british were advancing out of the orchard to the field wall, with clear intent of an early capture of our jump-off point. Unfortunately, when we actually rolled to see if they would come on to the table they nearly all cowered to the ear-splitting noise of the barrage and stayed away. Only one team made it on. Without support they were broken in short order and the German force morale began with the first of its tumbles down the chart.

Then came a familiar-if unwelcome- sight: a Churchill tank staring down the table, using the road to bisect the battlefield. This image of (literally) staring down the barrel of a gun has been present in many games of this campaign. And as before, we Germans felt that 9" range on our 3 Panzerfaust 30's wasn't going to solve that problem. So we brought on the Tiger....

True to it's namesake though, it did a lot of lying around in the sun and not much activity. When Nathan and Neil brought on a SECOND Churchill, the Tiger ended up caught in a side-game of brinksmanship to see who would be able to manouvre to get iff the first shot. This was not helped by having a 'sight blocking' hedge over which two tanks could't see each other. Gotta love Rules As Written!

In their enthusiasm to get using the machine gun teams the Germans blundered within meleé range of the enemy and forewent any advantage they might have had from a ranged attack. Our zug was killed with only the officer remaining, who then became a liability in terms of morale points and spent the rest of the game keeping his head down.

As a last hope we deployed all the remaining infantry (not an insubstantial amount as we had two supprt zugs in addition to the default three) on the Southern side, with a view to using buildings as cover to advance whilst the majority of the British were still on the Northern side of the table in the orchard. Things were looking up as we managed not only to capture one of the British jump off points, but to move one of the German ones forward too. This allowed the deployment of two zugs in the building on the South side of the street, some of whom were able to fire upon a British platoon still out in the open.

The British response was twofold: troops were deployed into the main objective house on the opposite side of the street, and the second Churchill swung around the side of the buildings to catch the axis as they exited from side windows. 

Return fire was given, and a Panzerfaust shot hit the tank but failed to penetrate.

Shortly after this the writing on the proverbial wall became apparent, and the German troops opted to spend the remainder of the wsr as prisoners of the Allies, rather than face the desparate conditions of returning to their own lines.

Indeed, with only a minor victory even possible having lost this engagement the British were proclaimed the overall winners of this play through of the Too Fat Lardies 'Scottish Corridor' campaign, a reflection of the original during Operation Epsom all those years ago.