Panzer Lehr has its randomly-placed assault column ready to follow KG Gerhardt north along the western edge of the map. Four British battalions are already defending the eastern edge and two British brigades are ready to enter at the NW corner. Bayeux isn't on the map. Panzer Lehr will be fortunate to take more of the red-squared towns than the British do by nightfall, apparently.
The gunfire of 8 cruisers can be rained down almost anywhere on the board and three dds can hit clear to the little red telephones and the RAF is ready with some airstrikes.
Panzer Lehr has Jagdpanzer IVs, twice the command points and 3 batteries of 88s (used as indirect fire -- this game claims that is how they were used mostly in Normandy), but I guess we will see.
Quote from: MengJiao on October 11, 2016, 06:16:48 PM
Panzer Lehr has its randomly-placed assault column ready to follow KG Gerhardt north along the western edge of the map.
KG Gerhardt and 151 Bde (24 Lancers and 8 Durham Light Infantry) have both moved and fired. Some of KG Gerhardt is not feeling as cohesive as they were, but with 5 of 6 red towns, Panzer Lehr is winning!
Quote from: MengJiao on October 11, 2016, 06:55:54 PM
KG Gerhardt and 151 Bde (24 Lancers and 8 Durham Light Infantry) have both moved and fired. Some of KG Gerhardt is not feeling as cohesive as they were, but with 5 of 6 red towns, Panzer Lehr is winning!
End of turn one. I pulled KG Gerhardt back a little since I thought the naval fire on top of the disruptions caused by being shot at by 17 pdrs and the impending arrival of the over 100 tanks of the 22nd Brigade was a problematic set of circumstances. So the naval gunfire arrived, doing some damage and effectively suppressing some panzers and then the 22nd Bde turned up (one Stuart troop had to disrupt itself getting out of column since even in a town being in column at about 1000 yds from some enemy tanks could get you wiped out) and an equilibrium is restored (3 red towns for each side) by the early afternoon:
Quote from: MengJiao on October 12, 2016, 06:20:20 PM
and an equilibrium is restored (3 red towns for each side) by the early afternoon:
But half-way through turn 2, Panzer Lehr is hit by a massive barrage of fantastically lucky British rolls. The Brits have so few command points that they were not quite able to take full advantage of all their luck (troops rallying, German artillery suppressed, all chits pulled before the more numerous German chits allowed much reaction). Naval Gunfire was pulled first and KG Gerhardt (next) fortunately got things reorganized. But Brigadier Pepper's troops are on the move behind most of the 22nd Bde (down the far western edge more or less):
Quote from: MengJiao on October 12, 2016, 07:16:01 PM
Quote from: MengJiao on October 12, 2016, 06:20:20 PM
and an equilibrium is restored (3 red towns for each side) by the early afternoon:
But half-way through turn 2, Panzer Lehr is hit by a massive barrage of fantastically lucky British rolls. The Brits have so few command points that they were not quite able to take full advantage of all their luck (troops rallying, German artillery suppressed, all chits pulled before the more numerous German chits allowed much reaction). Naval Gunfire was pulled first and KG Gerhardt (next) fortunately got things reorganized. But Brigadier Pepper's troops are on the move behind most of the 22nd Bde (down the far western edge more or less):
And an hour or so later, the middle of the afternoon, things keep going wrong for Panzer Lehr. I feel like things began to go wrong when I used command points to pull disrupted units back and more points to rally them. In this game, you have to use your command points to move formations against their objectives and let the chits get pulled as they may. Its possible to intervene directly and bypass the chain of command to rescue threatened units, but this eats up the points you need to launch coordinated attacks.
Anyway, with the guns still suppressed and airstrikes and naval fire coming in, things look pretty bad at about 4pm:
Quote from: MengJiao on October 13, 2016, 06:04:23 PM
Anyway, with the guns still suppressed and airstrikes and naval fire coming in, things look pretty bad at about 4pm:
Turn 1700 opens. KG Gerhardt was the last chit drawn in the 1500 turn, and in the face of a lot of assaults, I tried to withdraw them, which turned out far worse than sitting the the bocage waiting for more assaults would have been probably. It looks like a did a lot of things wrong with Pz Lehr: over-extending would be the first, not using mortars properly would be the second. A lot of things that work in other games (eg line of tanks and gun positions...which would be invincible with their op fire if artillery barrages didn't reduce their range to 1 hex whether they hit the unit or not) don't work and the assault factors tend to make the British armor and infantry roughly equal to most of the German formations, which isn't just bad, it can be catastrophic given the extreme bloodiness of the assault rules.
Anyway, last photo of this run of this scenario: