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Leto sorts out his IIIJs from his other IIIJ(late)s on the high plains and gets the platoon into position to fire on RD's infantry as they approach the German holding town from the far cliffs. But RD spoils the party - he has one of his Grants area fire the ground in front of them and the dust blocks their view.



The battle is half over and here is a look at Leto's setup area. It looks like RD is planning to attack here. Leto has an armour advantage of 7-4 now that RD has lost his Crusaders. However, Leto is very thin on infantry - only one platoon is guarding the area and Leto has spit them into half squads and spread them out around town - some are out of command and one is panicked already due to RD's HE fire. If Randy moves smartly with his Company+ of infantry and has some luck with his armour, he may be able to take Leto's setup area and his British holding town back by games end.



If RD also takes Leto's holding town, this would give him equal points in flags. But Randy must get going or he will surely lose - no more time for standing around drinking tea.

At the Northwest side of the Oasis, Leto predictably lines up his green PzIIIJ(short)s and begins area firing the stuffings out of RD's British infantry. The iron beasts have panicked and pinned the men in the far clump of trees and now they are working on this clump. They have pinned or panicked two more of the squads already - it would be worse if not for their platoon leader's +1 heart rating. It appears Randy has given them up for dead. "we've written them off since turn 1 once i found the trucks were in the wrong spot, i knew they were hosed..", he says...




But even where he could do something, Randy appears to hesitate. Here South of Leto's holding town, RD's men have an opportunity to attack while Leto's tanks on the cliffs are being blocked by dust from an M3 Grant's area fire. Instead they continue to sit still.



Meanwhile back at Leto's setup area, RD manages to get a truck with some of his fire from the cliffs. The driver can be seen crawling away. Leto continues to hide his armour behind the houses in hopes that RD will become overconfident and try to push into town without proper recon. Leto says "Well I see you are starting to pluck away at the trucks and light armor cowering behind my little base town flag… perhaps you can even up the score on trucks put to the sword?" We can see a deliberate attempt at deception here on Leto's part, as he has no more trucks back there and the armour he has waiting is not light.



But it looks like Red Devil is not taking the bait - he is leading with infantry, not tanks as Leto had hoped, and his lead infantry are on the verge of discovering Leto's first layer of defense - his two 75mm guns in the rocks. These guns are out of command and could easily panic if hit by enough small arms fire. Realizing this, Leto starts showering the British area with 81mm mortar fire to try to keep RD's men from discovering the guns before they can hurt his tanks.



Lastly, a shot of one of Red Devil's 3" mortar teams. He is still almost 400 meters from being in position to hurt Leto's guns. Even walking on the road, he is only moving about 20 meters per minute. These means it will take him another 20 minutes - by that time the battle for Leto's setup area should be settled. Oh for a truck!



RADIO CHATTER:

RANDY: "i guess hoping for the Mummy to rise out of the sand and put the hurting on your boys is isn't going to happen..."

PETE: "Well, I’d rather that you didn’t bring your mummy into this, because if you did, then I would have to go get my mummy and say that my mummy could take your mummy, and you’d say, nuh, uh, my mummy can take your sorry arse mummy and one thing one lead to another and then we’d have mummies swinging purses and pulling hair and the decorum of the game would just be thrown right out of the window."



"BTW, I’ve shot a few cans of captured hash at your recon troops… I hope they appreciate it… I’m absolutely stultified that anyone can eat that canned meat, but your Brits sure seem to love it. One of the cans appeared to have opened on impact with your squad leaders helmet. I don’t know why you don’t just get pissed off and drive those Grants right up to my men and blast the crap out of ‘em."

I always rush here when I get an email saying you just posted the next exciting installment :)
Loved the comments with the screenies DK, they always make me smile
I think RD knows he stuffed in this battle but I hope he continues to fight on until the bitter end.
Leto's sense of humour is straight from Monty Pyhon. Must have been watching it when he was a young lad :)

Thanks BT - I'm equally amused putting these together - lol.

Here in minute 20, Red Devil's lonely 25 pdr over in the Southeast corner of the map gets some action. The crew gets two shots off at a PzIIIJ way off in the distance, but they miss - it would be a very lucky shot to hit anything at this range with the low velocity of this gun.

Randy says: "had a brief moment of hope there when my big gun almost hit your tigger 2 at 5000 meters"



At the West side of the Oasis, Sgt O'Toole is the first to break under the relentless German HE area fire...



Randy is curious about what is hiding in the cliffs by Leto's setup zone. He writes: "what's behind door # 1?"

Leto: "Well, if you really must know, Mr. Barker, it is a really big sumo wrestler named “kiki” that was hoping to sit on your head and grind to the tunes of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. : )"

Before long British Sgt Ramsey manages to shake off the German 81mm mortar fire on his position and advance forward - he discovers the guns by taking their defensive fire, losing four men in the squad doing so...good thing the squad was veteran quality. Surprisingly, Leto failed to put an armoured cover arc on the guns - they would have remained hidden had he done so.



Once the guns opened up, three other British squads began firing on them. We can also see circled in green a British sniper is moving into position on the cliffs.

This prompts a Comment and picture from Leto:

Leto: "Nuff said. Kiki most likely will not be unleashed upon the Brits."



RADIO CHATTER:

RANDY: "appears to be 2 guns there! nice.. and they're going to be out of HE real soon at those ROFs.. then we're gonna make soup cans out of them"

PETE: "Well since you’ve discovered my weak arsed attempt at a trap, I suppose it’s time to take my goat and run or you will be shootin’ the piss of my armoured cars..."

(Again - another attempted ruse - Leto has no armoured cars!)

MINUTE 21

Here Leto gives a good lesson for advanced players on cover arcs. He has some infantry targets in the brush already, but he knows he can inflict more casualties and conserve ammo by firing at them AFTER they move onto the arid rock towards the town. Only his MG34 HMG has a long arc, because the gun can hurt from longer distance and remain just a sound contact. Leto's towed guns remain intact and are firing on the infantry in the brush and cliffs.



In the pic below, RD has his Vickers MG area firing in the general direction of Leto's four Marders. This must be so that if the Marders pop up over the ridge again the MG fire will button them up and give his Stewarts time for an extra shot or two.



At the South of Leto's holding town, most of RD's men continue to wait it out. They could be delaying until the Engineer platoon on the opposite ridge gets into position. They do push what's left of what must be an unpopular Stuart crew out into no man's land, however. The crew has only two men with two pistols. What's worse, RD has them on "walk" instead of the safer "move to contact." It's likely these two poor schmucks will break and die before they even spot any enemy positions.



Reading through the fog of war:

Sometimes you can tell a vehicle is gun damaged by the way it's gun or turret points in an odd or unnatural way. This can be seen with the gun damaged Marder on the right. Notice the other Marders' guns are aligned normally.



At the West side of the Oasis, we can see the first prisoner of the battle. After Sgt O'Toole stops running out of the palm trees and screaming like a little girl, he realizes he's surrounded and promptly gives up. A German squad can be seen on the horizon advancing behind him.



Leto gets tired of RD's area firing Grant and decides to hunt it down. Notice he backs his PzIIIJ platoon under the cover of the dust they create - next he'll likely hunt them up to the ridge marked in the distance, where they will have LOS to the British beast while only exposing their thick curved turrets. The Grant has had his commander killed and is permanently buttoned.

With the file exchanges apparently stalled out at turn 21, today we get a little entertaininment sent in by [hirr]Leto...

"With Randy a-flush with the discovery of my AT guns waiting in the weeds, I feel that it is time to pursue aggressive means elsewhere while retaining my crisp and cool status back at the base flag. It is obvious to me now that Dev has blown a good wad on infantry and that he is going to take his time to assault the town… I am hoping that he will still think I have a flock of armoured cars hiding behind the flag and once the guns are silenced, I am hoping he will move his tin cans forward for a proper beating. I present the desert buttox’s insidious thinking in a series of fun but educational screenshots:" - Leto

LMAO!!!

In this minute Red Devil's area firing vickers pays off -we see Leto has ordered his three good Marders to shoot-n-scoot at a Stuart (circled in green) in the distance. But the Marder on the right gets his commander killed by the area fire spray of the vickers mg circled in yellow. (we saw a pic of it last minute) This shocks the crew, and as a result the Marder just sits there stupidly, not firing or retreating.



The other two Marders fire their one shot, miss, and back to safety. But the shocked Marder stays put and allows the Stuart to knock it out. The Stuart will be credited for the kill, but it was actually the little vickers team that caused it. It also caused a rant from commander Leto: "Death by varmint. (don’t you love it when MG fire from two planets away shocks a tank and then it just sits there to be blown to pieces?)"



The battle for the cliffs near Leto's setup area continues. Leto's two guns are still alive, although the far one has pinned. Two of RD's closest infantry squads are circled - they are both pinned too. Leto's Panzer IIIJ on the hill has joined the party, area firing RD's infantry. RD must get these guns destroyed soon so he can bring up his tanks.



Up on the high plains, Leto's plans for destroying RD's lone M3 Grant aren't going so well. For one thing the dust keeps interrupting LOS. Also, the PzIIIJ regular platoon at the bottom of the pic has only 50mm turret armor and all four cowered at the sight of the Grant and RDs 6 pdr gun in the cliffs. Leto's green Pz IIIJ(Late) has the better turret armor, but also popped smoke and cowered at the sight of the Grant. His middle IIIJ(Late) is buttoned and couldn't find the Grant. Only the top IIIJ(Late) is now in the fight, and we can see one of the Grant's shells just broke up on its turret.



The battle is now about 2/3 over. Leto can win by just sitting still at this point. If Red Devil is going to make a big push before dark, he needs to do it soon.

It is often falsely believed that infantry squads can only hurt tanks from 30 meters away. True, they can only throw satchel charges 30 meters, but grenades can be chucked 40 meters. Here at the Western Oasis flag, Leto's tank area firing party is rudely broken up by an unseen squad of Red Devil's. Their grenade can be seen flying through the air in this shot.



And it hits home. Leto's trouble here may not be over as the other tank in this shot moved forward to about 20 meters from the same squad as the minute ended, and could meet the same fate.



Back at Leto's setup zone, the combination of HE landing and "very dry" ground have caused two large fires to break out. Notice also that Leto's front gun crew is down to one man. Hand to hand fighting is heard there.



On the high plains, Red Devil boldly orders an infantry charge on Leto's hulldown PzIIIJ(Late) platoon. It's hard to believe these men will accomplish anything since they are all 1/2 squads, out of command, and running instead of advancing. But the Panzers are buttoned and still haven't seen them. Ya never know I guess. Their strange battle cry, "Wahoo Muhammed!", is something the British actually yelled in this region during WWII.

A little desert Radio chatter and report from Leto after the past minute's events:

RANDY: ...nothing like a little luck to keep things interesting... can't believe i bounced a round off your turret at 250 meters tho :(
curse those Audrey the armorer girls back home and their puny plastic coated shells....this turn was pretty good :)

PETE: My old grampy (who lost his butthole in the war, but taught me how to make fart noises with his colostomy bag) used to tell me that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then…: )

But you are right: not a bad turn for you. It appears that your British bulldogs are going to be a bit more tenacious at the small flag… you can’t ask for more than that, especially when they are going to Goering’s Haus of Forbidden Love instead of a POW camp once captured. If I had a choice between having my toe nails painted and forced into performing a Wild Bill* dance for herr Herman, and a Mauser bullet in the head, I would choose death too. Herr Goering always reminds me of a perverted Jabba the Hut:

Goering the Hut: “DOO DOO EEE A WOOM A BOOM BOOM RANDY? HEH… HEH… HEH… HOO… HOO… HOO…”

(you may picture yourself in a space bikini in the role of a chained up Carrie Fischer if you’d like)

Little Swastika’d up Fraggle Muppet: “YEEEH! HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!”

BTW, your strategy to lull me into a false sense of security, if that is indeed your strategy, appears to be working. I almost missed the “fir King and Country” charge of your Tommy madmen on the high plains. You are sick and twisted commander, I will give you that. Drinking tea through bullet ridden desert gear is going to be extremely challenging for these blokes.

Cheers!

*see movie “Silence of the Lambs” for obscure reference.