[Greyfell]

Hello all, ben playing SP, both ww2 and MBT for several years. Recently I tried another ww2 long camp. and ran into some of the same issues I had before... here is the run down:

played my first long campaign this weekend. Got up to game eight against the british in north africa... oh man that was a LOT of tanks, infantry and armored cars.

I think I'm making some fundamental flaw in my force selection. That or I'm just not as good in a campaign against the AI as I thought I was. I was using a large chunk of points after every encounter to put my forces back together. When I did get to that last scenario in north africa, I faced so many tanks I couldn't believe it. Even my upgunned pZ III's with 50mm guns can't reliably crack all these damn matildas. My artillery gets absolutely flattened by overwhelming superiority in weight of numbers. We won't get started on the infantry, other then to say: The first time my socut got over a hill and got a good luck at what was coming down the road, I almost had a heart attack.

My setup for the first try was (more or less)

3 x 5 tank units of Pz III B/d (s)

1 x brandenburg company (I've since seen where using large numbers of these guys is considered a bit cheesy by the boards... )

2 x half-track mounted panzer grenadier companies

2 x 3 car units of Sdkfz 222 armored cars

13 x 10cm heavy mortars (4 x 3 batteries and one straggler with my last points)

The first two games in poland were rough but okay. Meeting engagements. I'd take some losses but then slip units behind them to camp on their escape route as my forces slowly routed them. Lots of easy dispersals and surrenders when you flee the fight into the teeth of a Pz III. Both marginal victories.

The third game was a Defend against a polish assault... that was a nightmare and an eye opener. I literally felt like screaming "Oh my gods! Theres too many of them!" several times. When I got a draw and saw the end map with all their units revealed... I cringed. Literally thousand of enemy infantry. I killed somewhere around 67 tanks and 1370 men or more to fight my way to that draw.

Then scenario four. Again with the polish, this time an assault. I buy some engineers from reserve, crack through the forward minefields on two narrow fronts. I take some losses but it seems to be going well as I grind forward.

The strength of the polish counterattack was unbelievable. I just couldn't imagine I'd burned through all that infantry, AA machine guns, and bunkers... only to face what seemed like three dozen tanks when my forces were depleted. Now I admit I was dumb and held back a couple units, not wanting to get them chopped up. Big mistake. That one ends in a marginal defeat for me.

On to the brit's in france. A meeting engagement, not to bad, another marginal victory. Then an advance against their delay. That was pretty bad, ending in a draw because I lost so many vehicles and men to 40mm 'AA' guns, 2lb AT guns and british artillery.

It's on to north africa or the balkans. I go to africa and get to do an assault against the brit's. I punch down one side of the map, open a hole and then dismount my infatry to back up the tanks. We move south perpendicular to the brit's main defense line and everything is going awesome. Then I hit the halfway point of the map and every tank, AT gun, 'AA' gun and rifle grenade in britain opens up all at once. Even with artillery smoke screening a lot of my forces, I lose almost the first ten tanks in the next three turns. I try to advance my infantry to get some idea of where these damn guns are shooting from and british artillery plus infantry cuts down whole platoons. In the end I managed a marginal victory after dropping off map heavy artillery on a on-map british howitzer company (which revealed themselves to 'sabot' shot one of my tanks from over 40 hexes). I also grabbed every single objective on the map with a sweep by my half-tracks.

Then this latest british encounter, a delay against more british infantry, armored cars, matilda and valentine tanks then I ever want to see. Again, my artillery get pounded out of the game pretty fast and I just turn the game off after turn six. I can see the writing on the wall.


The issues I see:

1) I have to have lots of tanks, my infantry can't kill armor to save their lives. It is a serious effort to kill even polish tankettes and once I see matilda II's it's just hopeless.

2) My artillery is short ranged (on several larger maps I went outside the range of my 10cm mortars even with them forward deployed) and dies to enemy counter fire constantly. I try to counter fire their batteries, but I always seem outnumbered and even if I run the crews of the enemy guns off, they re-crew in 2-3 turns. (I actually watched this happen against the brits on a very open desert map). I don't have enough tubes to keep all these enemy artillery units suppressed.

3) Also, enemy artillery means it is death to stop for more then a handful of turns. In the various defend/delay missions, it seemed like I would lose entire platoons to enemy guns in 2-3 turns.

In short gentlemen... HELP!