The Coil steals Leto's playbook, puts a hirrting on him...(No peeking Leto's, please)

[The Coil]

Turns 2 and 3:

Not much action on turn 2. My panzers area fire Leto's scattering infantry parade on the left, then advance up to the church.

In the middle, I drop two Grille rounds on the road into the village right next to Leto's puff of smoke, hoping to catch a convoy headed into the village. No such luck...

Leto sends me an email talking about my Stugs on the left and asking if that means the Tiger is coming up the middle. Either Leto has misidentified my Panzers, or is just playing for me to drop him some info in response. Or he's just clueless. I've found your sharper players often try for little email intelligence prods - the unwary opponent easily can drop info: I say something like, "No, the Stugs are in the middle, stupid," and he knows something. People give away all sorts of info in emails, like revealing that a bailing tank has been KO'd or that an arty strike hit paydirt. Loose lips sink ships...or taco farms or whatever. I send Leto an innocuous reply suggesting there's more than one Tiger - tells him nothing about my forces on the right, and hopefully keeps him thinking about uber-tanks...

Turn 3 passes fairly uneventfully - my panzers start angling for flank shots on the village, my infantry boys continue their march forward to the village, a Grille gets to work taking down the 2-story building next to the smoke, on the theory that if Leto isn't covering an advance up the road, he's covering something going into the building that will have LOS to a good part of my advance.

Last 15 seconds of the turn, a HE round from a Priest behind the village goes off behind my Stugs, and I lose a Stug commander to MG fire.



My infantry riding the Stugs gets a bit jittery, but that Priest is in trouble if he doesn't slam it into reverse. My guess is Leto was hoping to pick up a quick HC Tiger kill, if indeed I was sending a big tank up the middle. Mr. Priest is going to get a bit more than he bargained for, I hope...

Interesting that Leto went with the Canadians. National pride over prudence I guess. That means just Sherms and Priests, methinks, unless he brings some gamey multinational force to the battle.