At CSW Expo 2018, 4 of us played this big scenario. Rolf van Ishem and I played the Brits, with Dave Davieau and Greg Tanner playing the Germans. Primarily I faced off against Greg, and Rolf against Dave. This scenario features a lot of Scottish troops going against fanatical 9/8 defense SS troops, and having to slog through a lot of mud to get to them. In most cases, tanks going in the open could move 1 hex per turn. The British had copious amounts of OBA and some pre-planned fire, and a number of flamethrower tanks. The Germans got late game PZIV reinforcements.

My plan was to send one Battalion of Scots to the center of the German position, and one to the German left/Scottish right, both backed by tanks. The tanks on my right were going cross country, so it would take them several hours to do so. Our pre-plotted bombardments did some damage, however most of them fell on empty hexes, or hexes that were vacated after the 1st bombardment hit. Plus, against dug in 9/8 troops, we were mostly going for X results, not M.

I gathered up my forces and launched my assault, with the advance partially being hidden by smoke. I achieved some good initial results in the center, although at a high casualty cost. On the right, things were slower to develop as I waited for the tanks. I ran into 2 problems. While Greg could often not seem to hit the broad side of a barn with his artillery, his small arms troops were doing just fine, and I couldn't seem to get any results with my artillery. In retrospect, I launched my center assault too soon. I had a 3rd battalion to reinforce the center, and my initial thought was to have the 1st fight until exhausted and replace it with #3. Unfortunately, #3 wasn't in position by the time #1's attack petered out. I think had I been able to do a 2nd wave immediately behind the 1st, I could have punched through his positions. It was an overcast day, so the Scots had very little air support, and it went to Rolf, who was having severe problems on his flank, especially from an 88mm gun that refused to die and was wreaking havoc on his tanks. We all agreed that the 88mm, which was Luftwaffe, probably should have had 8/7 morale, however the scenario didn't say that, so we played it at 9/8.

I was making progress on my right flank once the tanks arrived, however the infantry again was taking heavy casualties attempting to push the fanatical SS out of their positions and I was nowhere close to my objectives.

We played for about 3 days, real-time and finished about 2/3 of the scenario. In the end, the Scots were roundly defeated. They killed a lot of Germans (and suffered a lot of casualties themselves), however they did not even approach most of their objectives. I think a better battle plan would have aided us (my attack went in too soon, Rolf attacked on too broad a front). This was an interesting scenario, the biggest I've played to date, and I would play it again, although with so many scenarios out there, it's unlikely that I'd get back to it anytime soon. We all had a good time and look forward to playing more games together next year.