From my perspective as the Allied player this was a fun battle with the hard pressed 'stiff upper lip' Poms having to hold out against literally hordes of Pz IV's, some AA AFV's and halftrack riding Sturm squads, amply supported by loads of HMG's.  The crucial thing here was whether the Axis player could be patient enough to consolidate all their Pz IV re-inforcements into 1, or maybe 2 large groups and then simply bulldoze their way through the defence, relying on borg spotting to ensure any tank or AT gun spotted would be instantly obliterated by the return fire of around twenty 75mm rounds!

Thankfully my opponent wasn't patient enough to do this so by committing his Pz IV's in groups of no more than 8 or so per thrust I was able to destroy or at least halt each individual attack with ambushing 6 pdr AT guns and/or M10's but not so much the Sherman V's as these had a horrible tendency to die at the hands of the mostly veteran Panzers.  After potting 32 Pz IV's with the deadly 6 pdr's and M10's the attacking pressure started to dwindle to the point where only 1 force remained of 6 Pz IV's to contest just the one minor VL at the southern end of town.  I'm guessing the Axis players may have been aggrieved about the battle conditions with constant rain and the damp conditions making bogging in open ground a likely event although in my case, I suffered an immobile Sherman V early on in the piece with no LOS to anywhere useful while my opponent had full use of his 40 Pz IV's, until the flyboys were able to even things up a bit towards the end with at least 2 immobilisations from their rocket run.

All in all I found this scenario to be a good contest although I would hate to think how the Allies would fare if the Axis player used concentration of force as their primary method of attack because once only a portion of your defence is facing off against 20+ Pz IV's in it's sector then it's goodnight to that defence and hello hordes of Panzers swarming through your rear areas!  Thankfully I didn't have to face this sort of nightmare in my battle.

Regards

vR

Thanks Jim,

This action was based on a real event.
There the Germans attacked without the infantry.
They suffered 23 losses with their mkIVs whereas the allies had a few wounded men.

It was only to bad that I screwed up the reinforcements in the first battle.