The French save Monsieur Bon Bon's chocolate factory

Turn 2 with only 1 shot fired. Bad French positioning.

Peter and I ran a playtest of our 1940 factory board. You can see our forces in our previous post. It was always going to be a challenge for the Germans considering the number of troops the French were fielding. So I was given the advantage of playing French.
Tuen 1 the French placed one of the medium howitzers in a great spot. Well, "great" until the German PzIII rolled on board, fired and killed half the crew.
The Germans placed all their infantry to attack the factory while the French split their troops to capture both the factory and the warehouse.
Another French error was placing the mighty FT17 in reserve. Clever tactic allowing the FT17 to go 12 inches a turn in Reserve, but flawed as I picked the flank where the German infantry weren't.

Swarms of men surround the factory

Ah well.
Luckily, the Germans placed their light howitzer on that flank.
The end of turn 2 ended with four squads of French facing all the German infantry.
Turn three saw the FT17 pop on and attack the light howitzer in the flank, killing on crew. The French advanced into the building shooting another of the crew and the remaining fellow chucked it all in and left to fight another day.
The factory saw a frontal assault by a French inexperienced squad wipe out a German squad, to be destroyed in turn by the nearby Germans.
More assaults destroyed each other until all that was left was a half German squad in the central building, a full French squad at the edge of the factory and various 2 man squads.

Sneaky flanking FT17 - Much faster!

You can't see the piles of casualties the HQ climbed over.

So at the start of turn 3 the Germans decided they could not make a difference and called it. Chickens!
All up a good but short game and we learned a few more important tips.
1. Don't place the Howitzer in danger when you have spotters.
2. Place reserves on reserve at the end of the turn.
3. The Germans need to get into the buildings quickly and place their full force on one flank, supporting each other.

It is always a good game leaving you to try it again.