CMBN - Flowers of the Forest AAR

[A Canadian Cat]

OK I finally got back here. Nice write up and your battle plan was significantly different than mine but you certainly got good results.

I have a couple of questions: was this against the AI? Did you read and know the British formation and briefing before you started?

In my case the battle was against a human opponent and I setup my initial forces along the whole front as far forward as I could go. Then the mechanized force was to get in behind my lines and be ready to shore up the defences were the main attack was coming from. I did detach a platoon of Panzers and sent them forward across the fields to hit the British attack from the flank. That proved to be a huge mistake and I lost the entire platoon in short order.

The plan was to make sure I knew where the attack was coming from and to have the mechanized force ready to take up positions behind the initial forces so they could with draw and help offer a stiffer defence for the next bocage line. Things went way better than I expected - at least after my first losses. My picket defensive lines actually repulsed the initial assault on my left flank. The attack then moved to the centre with a carrier flanking move to my right. Again my picket repulsed the attack (at this point I had added several PzIVs to the defensive line). A quick reaction by my mechanized force managed to blunt the carrier based flanking move and then it became a war of attrition in the centre where my defenders, no bolstered, managed repulse several attempts to break through in the centre.

The tank fight was pretty nasty and I only started winning it towards the end. Having the PzIVs in the bocage made them much more difficult for the enemies to knock out. But spotting the Churchill tanks was really difficult - with the fog and the mud and the difficult to deal with elevations around the bocage there were plenty of times when I could not get LOF. But that worked both ways and the Churchill tanks did manage to KO some tanks they could not finish off all my armour.

Once the Tigers showed up I organized a four tank with mechanized infantry counter attack from my right flank and it did not take long for the Tigers to mop up a few remaining Churchill tanks and I forced a surrender.