Maueschen, Himmelsdorf, did I do the right thing by falling back?

[Tanager 150]

http://wotreplays.eu/site/4534061#himmelsdorf-tanager-m_uschen

So I'm in a Maueschen, tier 10 game, Himmelsdorf.  I figure I'll try to slow down the tank alley push.  I can see I'm not gonna get any assistance, but I figure I'll peek.  Wham, I take two big hits and am down more than half my HP right at the start.  I can see that I am facing probably 5 tanks or so without assistance, so I decide to beat a retreat back down the road towards our base so I have a chance of bottlenecking them and taking them on one, maybe no more than two, at a time.

This works reasonably well, but then our TVP just starts sperging at me.  I should have let it go, and I was probably wrong for calling out our 277, but I was ticked that I had no assistance and that our team had just folded like that.  I'm human like anyone else.

Since the TVP accused me of camping base (which was not actually true initially), I wondered if I'd done the right thing - I don't see that I had any good alternative I would rather have been in the roads to the SE, so that the 277 and I could have caught them in a crossfire, but lemons, lemonade, etc.

It's not a great game, but I honestly feel like I made the most of what I had, at least given my skill level.  If you think otherwise, I'd appreciate any constructive input on what I could have done better beyond perhaps being more cautious when I initially approached the tank alley corner.

[neokai 116]

Watched the replay. Some context - have not played the Maus or Mauschen, but have played the VK100 and am woefully familiar with Tier X matching and the tactics to adapt to said matching.

• At the start of the game, when you were driving to your spot: You should not have stopped to aim at the Foch (you spotted 2 other tanks). Getting penned was unfortunate (the 268 AP round was a lucky pen roll imo), but you knew you were there only to slow the enemy push, and that means getting intel and not losing hp unnecessarily.
• Looking at how the enemy deployed in the banana and the 2min hesitation despite your hill folks being spotted (they had good intel on where almost all your tanks are) the banana enemies are not very brave. If you were at full hp you could have bottled up those 4 cowards for as long as you stayed out of 1 shot territory (>800 hp).  I will say this once more, losing hp at the start like that when you already had spotted the enemy was a waste of hp. You are there to stall, that means your hp is the barometer of how fast the enemy will advance, or how aggressively they will push in - killing an enemy is worth losing some hp over.
• I would have withdrawn to H8 and used the arches to sneak cheeky shots-, taking care to make sure I was completely unspotted till the enemy engages friendly 777 and T32.  It is better to hold them at a potential crossfire point with the Obj 777 and T32 as your unwitting anvil than to pull so far back you brought yourself out of the fight altogether.
• Anyway since you pulled all the way back to J6, I would  alternatively have gone to the road at H8/9 to set up a crossfire if the enemy chose to commit further past the banana. Using the H89 road also moves you out of arty's kill zone. This move depends on how fast you gauge the enemy's advance vs your own movement speed.

Overall this battle wasn't yours to win - that laid solely on the hill which had the majority of the team pushing.

However, the battle was yours to lose - you chose to bottle the banana, but failed to do so effectively, which led  to their team opening up the middle, which had the ripple effect of making the hill group push more recklessly which led to their demise.

Basically, the opening first 3 min determined the flow of your decision-making from that point on and while I could nit-pick on your fall back position the overall flow of the game was determined elsewhere. Remember, try to force some cross-fire situations on the enemy, don't take your gun out of the fight unless you intend to go another flank altogether.