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Day 1 Concluded: Pack it in, Pak!
Now that we've finished the bloodiest 15 Minutes of my Armoured Commander career, its time to see what awaits us further down the road.
More "Medium" resistance, well if its anything like the last fight, this time we'll lose a whole company instead of just a platoon of tanks... actually we did lose close to an infantry company, didn't we? Good grief. Well, with only 8 AP rounds and two precious smoke grenades left, I decide to sit tight and call for a resupply. Thankfully the call succeeds and trucks roll up to drop off precious ammo (and presumably one can imagine they would also bring more infantry and cart away our dead and wounded). During the resupply the grim overcast that has been hanging around since the morning clears away to blue skies, hey maybe things are looking up! Since I no longer have to worry about the morning advancing fire sucking up an uncertain amount of HE ammo, I refill with 45 HE rounds, 40 AP Shells, and 8 smoke rounds, this should hopefully last me the rest of the day, as long as we don't encounter any more Demon-Panthers.
I decide to take no chances with the next village and order in another artillery barrage. You know, I've never really stopped to wonder if these villages are still inhabited... I hope they aren't! 
Anyways, the call goes in and we advance forward. No enemies show their heads though, guess I had that village shelled for nothing, oh well! We continue to advance, passing through some fields without incident. Friendly artillery is unable or unwilling to shell the next patch of medium expected resistance, coincidentally another village. Rolling in expecting the worse, nothing happens once again, what did I run into the only enemies in the area immediately in the morning?
Branching off the paved lane onto a dirt road, we continue to move forward through some farm steads. Another predicted pocket of medium resistance is encounter, ordered shelled, and, again, produces no enemies, nor have any of the "light resistance" map sectors we've passed through (there is no "no resistance" sector, every map sector has a chance of being a fight). As we reach the end of the dirt road the skies once again go overcast. Only a single map sector of medium resistance lays between us and the exit, but do these clouds mean we have simply been driving through the eye of the storm, and another bloody battle awaits? I order the artillery to rain down and advance forward.
No enemies appear, and as quickly as it came, the Wehrmacht Grey Overcast retreats back to American Blue Skies. 
The exit sector is another expected pocket of medium resistance. Once again I order artillery to blast the hell out of the area before we move in and we advance into our objective.
The enemy were waiting for us, radio reports immediately call out two enemy AT guns, long range at 10 o'clock! An Infantry Squad also appears at medium range, two o'clock. This could be bad.
Or not! This is why I call in artillery so frequently, as both AT guns are destroyed by my barrage request before anyone even gets the chance to do anything. Good thing too, as it is another ambush, if those AT guns had survived to fire, it could've been very bad for us. The enemy infantry fires on friendly infantry, but doesnt' do enough damage to kill a squad's worth of friendlies. What does kill friendly infantry though is a barrage of enemy artillery, which obliterates two squads worth of PBI, Poor Bloody Infantry.
Time to do some PBI exploding of my own. I order turret crew to load HE and move the turret to face the German infantry squad. Meanwhile I tell the driver to try reverse to a hull down position, just incase more dangerous enemies appear as reinforcements. Perhaps sensing my intention, the German infantry open fire on my tank with their rifles and submachine guns.
Enemy Light Weapons, aka Infantry Squads, in ArmCom are not a major threat. They lack anti-tank capability and their only hope of hurting you comes from trying to injure or kill unbuttoned crew with small arms fire. Normally they just move around the map or try to destroy friendly infantry squads. For the most part I'm happy to ignore these infantry squads if there is anything more threatening around (or worth more VP) that needs shooting more. Perhaps in the future the dev will give them anti-tank capability in the form of Panzerfausts or Panzerschreks (though perhaps those would work better as "Tank Hunter" infantry squads).
More enemy artillery rains down and another friendly infantry squad is destroyed, enemy artillery really has our number today... Anyways, my gun is aimed and readied and I open fire on the infantry with 3 shells from the ready rack. Normally I wouldn't bother using the ready rack to shoot at targets that aren't a threat to me, but the quicker I kill this infantry squad the quicker the fight ends before more enemies have the chance to spawn in.
Anyways, one of the shots succeeds in destroying the enemy infantry squad and the battle is over, a battle that nets us no VPs! The two AT guns and infantry squad add up to a meager 9 VPs, which is the same amount of VPs we lose for having three friendly infantry squads destroyed. That said, we secure the objective zone, which awards us 20 Victory points, ten times the normal amount for a "field" map sector. Too bad the exit wasn't a village!
Immediately we're dumped into a new map, but with only two hours left until sunset we'll never make it to the next exit zone. Still, might as well grab what VPs I can. I advance forward into a "light" field sector, and am immediately tossed into another battle encounter.
Another Ambush of course! An enemy truck is reported dead ahead at long range, but more important an AT gun appears to our right at medium range. It opens fire at our lead tank, but fails to score a kill. Our turn begins and we ID the gun as a Pak 38.
I forgot to grab a screenshot of this AT gun's stat card, but it doesn't tell you much. The Pak 38 is a 50mm Anti-tank gun first used relatively early into the war. While quite capable in its heyday, by mid 1944 it is past its prime. Classified as a 50L gun, the Pak 38 has poor odds of from the sides and the rear due to the turret being rather rounded and curved. However our flat, unslopped side and rear hull armor is still quite vulnerable to this enemy, and it has good odds of scoring a kill against us if it hits us there.
The Pak 38 is the weakest enemy that is actually capable of killing our tank, but it is capable of killing us! Don't take it too lightly. Still, if you manage to achieve hull down status with your turret facing it, the Pak 38 probably won't kill you while you're murdering that Panther. Probably. Just don't give it any more chances to take pot-shots than you need to.
Ignoring the truck I go defensive to set up for killing the Pak. I toss a smoke grenade and order the driver to reverse to hull down while the gun crew sets up for the shot. We fail to get hull down, but fortunately the driver does manage to shift the Pak's position relative to us. This means we've moved out of the Pak's narrow field of fire and the AT gun has to spend a turn re-emplacing itself to face us again. The truck, meanwhile, moves away from us, as their actions are generally weighted towards "Run Away" since they're, ya know, a truck. Because it was already at long range, this means the truck retreats off the battle map and is out of the fight. We get no victory points for enemies that retreat off the map.
Not wanting to give the Pak a chance to fire, we empty the ready rack of HE shells, area fire bombarding the AT gun with 5 rounds. Shells land all around the AT gun and the second shell causes it to be stunned. The next two fail to score kills but the fifth one scores another stun result. Since the AT gun is already stunned, this means the weapon's terrified crew decide to exercise the better part of valour and run the fuck away before they get exploded, abandoning the gun. I wonder if command will let me keep it as trophy? Finally a battle encounter ends with a positive Victory Point total! I am awarded a meager 4 victory points. I'm gonna get the Medal of Honor any day now at this rate!
Only an hour remains in the day, exactly enough to check a neighboring sector and move into it without roads. The next sector is empty and the combat day ends with the setting of the sun. After a hard day of fighting we are awarded with a lousy 43 victory points. Sure we destroyed a lot of enemies, but we lost so many ourselves. To make matters worse, the experience points our crew get is based on the Victory Points we have at the end of the day, so our crew gets shit for experience. Bah!
With that over we're deposited back at the campaign map, which now lists the date as July 30th. Two days passed without us receiving the Call of Duty, and during that time our unit has secured the town of Coutances, but now we're being sent back into action once again as part of the fighting to take the French town of Avranches back from the Germans. General Patton has been pushing our unit forward in a furious advance the last few days, not bothering to protect our flanks. Operation Cobra, part of the Battle of Normady, grinds onwards.