In the last ditch

The British demonstrated last night that they can win the tank battle at Sidi Rezegh. They had a fair wind in terms of initiative and cards, and had knocked out the 88 and another unit of a/t guns at a handy time, but I had previously had reservations about whether they could win at all. It all seemed fairly balanced to me and one could easily see how, given different combinations of dominoes, cards and dice the result would have been very different.

Vy do I alvays play Jermans

There will be yet another run through of this next week with a slightly different terrain layout as James polishes it ready for Fiasco. The purpose, as I understand them, of the changes will be to allow more space for the British tanks to deploy - actually even more space because that was also the purpose of the first terrain change - and to allow the German infantry to attack each of the hills being defended by the British without being fired at from the other. The latter change will perhaps make it more worth the Germans' while to attack though I remain to be persuaded.

As one would expect there have been various tweaks to the rules, none of which seem problematic to me. In fact my list of outstanding issues is a short one:

• The German use of anti-tank guns in support of their attack is very difficult. They have to be limbered to move forwards, but as such they just get picked off by the British artillery.
• I don't understand why the Panzer IVs roll better dice when firing armour piercing against tanks than when firing HE against a/t guns.
• The off-board battalion artillery attached to the infantry is too weak to have any impact against dug in infantry and doesn't seem to serve any purpose. The same is true for the small on-board infantry gun. Perhaps they'll come in to their own for laying down smoke if the Germans do attack properly. The divisional artillery is rather good however, as is the Bison.

A last thought for the domino system, with which I am so far quite impressed. I always thought it was worth a go, especially as the previous run through of the scenario had definitely been marred by two successive weeks of completely distorted initiative. And it has worked surprisingly well, particularly in conjunction with the lull cards. Most initiatives are below ten to the winner and below five to the loser with the occasional very large run. However, the more cards turned the higher the chance of turning a lull.