Club Night 20th July

At the second attempt Luke and I managed to get the penultimate campaign game played. All that is left now is a grand finale as the Axis forces make their final grand assault on Tobruk. Out first attempt was aborted due to the need to look after children at the last minute, but meant Luke and I still got a board game in. In this case it was Axis and Allies D-Day, and everything went the Allies way and as the Axis I barely manage to make a fight of it until the last turn, but was still fun.
Still, a week later we managed to launch Ariete against a mixed Indian and armoured force in a hold the line scenario. The massed Italian armour advanced in a cloud of dust, with the AB-41 recon unit advancing out ahead towards the nearest objective, held by allied infantry.
I assaulted this light armour straight into the Indian defences and drove them back, pushing them off the objective.
A second assault by a supporting tank platoon took over from where the armoured cars had been destroyed by the Bofors guns and almost wiped out the defending platoon, dominating, but not taking the objective.
The Allies then sprung their ambushes, with the hidden 2 pounders firing into the flanks of the armour, with the MGs shooting up the supporting motorcilisti troops (we have a house rule for the desert that a foxhole can count as concealing terrain for the purposes of ambush, if what is in it receives concealment). In response I hurled all my armour into the area around the objective.
Unfortunately I chose to join a platoon that was just below half strength with my company commander, and despite both units being fearless, failed my motivation check, and the re-roll from the C-in-C. I now needed to push the enemy off the objective to claim victory before I had to take a company morale check. But Luke continued to deny me, by just getting his reserve Stuarts in a position to deny my victory time and time again (1 turn it was only by managing to re-crew an abandoned tank).
Despite how close I got, my troops were all bunched up and under continued artillery fire and anti-tank gun fire, and finally casualties mounted before I could drive the enemy back, and my company broke. To add insult to injury post game I had a battalion destroyed and another damaged in the campaign.