Pete Bennett and I wanted to play a bigish scenario having recently played a number of tournament types. We chose A Day By The Shore because it looked good for a couple of evenings of our slow play style. I took the British.
I hate splitting my force, but this scenario seems to require it. I sent the 9-1 + 3 squads for the U1 trench and pillbox area. The trench crew deliberately break their MMG and are subsequently broken by the German Turn 1 defensive fire. The pillbox occupants also deliberately bust all their support weapons prior to the turn 2 CC. the CC is not as successful as it should have been, and it is not until British Turn 3 that the German occupants are all dead but at the cost of 1.5 British squads.
I had a real problem believing the given German set up in the pillbox area. Surely the MMG group should be in a position to provide covering fire to the pillbox ?
All the rest of my British units (9 squads and three leaders) head off for the Eastern edge to get into position to seriously interdict the German reinforcements due to arrive on Turn 3. I did let the 9-2 rush off towards 8I4 to start the rolling up of the trenches leaving six squads to face the new arrivals.
With hindsight I should have kept about 9 squads to defend the board. The German reinforcements will be eliminated if they break trying to get on board, so this is the British best chance of dramatically reducing the German force, which if it remains at 17 squads can cause some major problems. The British can easily move into the board edge buildings and place a nightmare of Residual Fire. Note that building 20B9 is a crucial location for the Brit (that I forgot to take advantage of).
On came the Germans and after letting the odd HS through I manage to snake eyes his first big stack (with his best leader) for a 1FP firelane (lowest resid FP location available to move through) attack at -2 = 1KIA. Pete opted to move this group as a stack to enable the squads to benefit from the leadership, shame about the KIA that killed him. This understandably caused Pete to fail his personal ELR. All the resid fire meant that there were no safe way on. However Pete still managed to get a surprising number of units on through the 1FP firelane position (one more broken or pinned MMC in this location would have caused him to overstack to move through). All this went horribly wrong for him when another snake eyes got the other -1 leader. I even managed to roll a double one a third time but only got a single HS this time.
In the end 10 squads got on safely but with only the 8-0 offering any leadership. there are also couple of squads pinned in dangerous spots.
That was too much for Pete so he surrendered at the end of his turn 3.
So much for two evenings. Two hours more like. I summary I would not recommend this scenario to anyone. there is a simple formula that the British can adopt, which if executed properly (which I didn't quite do) could kill off as many as 80% of the reinforcements. Don't bother chasing after the Pillbox or trenches with the initial group (well maybe send a couple of squads with the -1 leader). That is the British reinforcements job. To rectify this the scenario should skip the first three turns and limit the British set up options so that they cannot interdict the German entry too heavily. I suspect though that it would be all to easy so cause as big an imbalance in the Germans favour if the vast majority of their reinforcements are able to get going.
Pete and I discussed the tactics of this at length, particularly the alternative of advancing the German reinforcements on instead of bringing them on in the MPh. The problem here was that they would all be very exposed to British Prep Fire with a good chance of losing just as many units and at the expense of another turn.
Basically better to find another scenario to play.
Nick Edelsten, Chesham, Bucks, UK