Santa and I entered a 2v2 map last night to face off against a pair of guys with pretty nice Allies records. We were taking the Axis side, where I am 6-6 (some wins missing), so it was going to be a challenge. The map was Vire River, with the everpresent bridge-blocking threat.

Santa and I decided to both push across the bridges right from the start. I pushed up the right and went right past my VP to cut off any enemy attempt to hold the bridge. Santa crossed on the left side and secured the enemy VP over there.

Unfortunately, the guy on my side did a good job of pushing and got past my guys and into the VP area. He then proceeded to heap defenses on the VP. I chose to ignore him for the moment and let him spend a bunch of cash on defenses that I would tear down later. I wasn't really concerned about losing tickets as long as Santa could hang on.

So we maintained strength on over 50% of the map for the early game, but went down some tickets and all was fine until the opponent squeezed out a half track with nasty guns and an armored car. That was when the forward area collapsed, and we had nothing to counter... yet. He pushed us back and put us into nasty 3 of 4 bleed, plus he dumped a bunch of mines in my base.

We were hemorraging tickets fast, but I was patiently building up to push him back. Santa was taking the fight to them at the left VP, but not successfully securing the VP, until the opponents pushed out a pair of Calliope's. At this point, the opponents said "GG", assuming they had us beat.

We were far from ready to lay down, but time was getting short. I pushed out a Flakpanzer and a Panther, and I was officially back in the game. Santa took down one Calliope, and I took the other one, while I recaptured the right VP. We had several back-and-forth battles, and we once again controlled 2 of 4 VP's. The problem was that we only had 17 tickets left.

I pushed out a second Panther, a second Flakpanzer, and a Tiger Ace. Suddenly, I felt much stronger. Santa was thrashing the guy on the left side, and I had a pretty secure hold on the two VPs. I decided to push up with my Tiger Ace to try to back them up a little, and they had nothing between me and their base. Santa and I proceeded to tear up bases, and I moved my right Panther up to join the party. That turned out to be a fatal mistake.

I left the right VP weakly defended, and the Allies moved up the middle with an M10 as I moved my defenses up. They then hit my right VP with an armored car and a bunch of paratroopers, and I was in trouble. A pile of my stuff converged at the VP and wiped out the attackers, but the point was flipped, and the tickets vanished before I could take it back.

What a nightmare. We were on our way to a comeback from about 450-17, and I made a horrible mental error. We won a few other games, but that one loss hurt.