Flames of War Meeting Engagement

A week ago on May 3oth I got a chance to play another game of Flames of War with Charlie Clay. More importantly I was able to win 6-1 with my US Trained Armored Company (from Festung Europa) against his Germans. A hard enough thing to pull off in a Meeting Engagement scenario but against Clay a truly occurence. Normally even in defeat he is able to drag one or two platoons down with him.

Here is the deployment.

Here is a view from my (the US) side of the table. Originally I had planned to make a probing attack on my left with the 76mm Shermans and the Artillery spotter tank, but in general I hoped I could get him to commit his Stugs(in reserve) before I committed to one flank or the other.

Here is a view from Clay's side. I think his plan was to hold on until reserves showed and hope by then he had worn my tank platoons down with gunnery from his Elefants.
He won the roll to go first and advanced his spotter team up in the center and adjusted the deployment of his infantry.

And then it happened, I had one of the most incredible first turns ever. After adjusting some of my tanks and failing to dig in my engineers I made an air attack(with 3 Thunderbolts) on his infantry platoon. First he fired with his two 37mm AA guns and NOTHING! I ranged in, then rolled 8 dice to hit on 3+ with Machine Guns and hit 7 out of 8 times. Then he proceeded to fail 6 out of 7 of his 3+ infantry saves. Then he rolled for platoon morale and ROLLED A ONE!!! Woohoo...my first turn and he was already down a platoon. Unfortunately I wasn't in position to take advantage of his loss....Yet.

Smelling blood I launched an attack with my 75mm Sherman platoon with my CO and ARV in tow. I was able to bail one flak gun and destroy the other as well as machine gunning his CO and 2iC to death (my thinking at this point was to just break his company). Unfortunately the lucky git passed morale with his AA platoon and the game rolled into his turn 3.
During this attack (my turn 3) my first reinforcements showed up, another platoon of 4 75mm Shermans. Yeah!!! More US tanks.
Unfortunately his Stugs showed up on his turn 4. They rushed into battle and eliminating my fresh platoon of Shermans. Their victory was short lived though as my CO and ARV moved in and dispatched his remaing Flak gun (oh and did I mention his other Elefant bogged down...hehehe) and my 75mm Shermans made short work of his Stugs.
Not much happened on my left flank, but here is a shot of my simultaneous cautious left flank advance.
At the start of his 5th turn he failed to get any more reinforcements and his Stugs broke. Without a CO his army now had 3 out of 4 platoons destroyed and his army broke.

As the game ended my 76mm Shermans were racing down the road and my Engineers were moving through the woods.

Helluva game Clay. Thanks.