*Needing to play another battle from Go For Broke, I picked this one. 4 map boards, two battle-groups of Germans starting on the map, one battle group of Germans that enters the map on turn one and two different battle groups of Americans that enter the map on turn one in two different directions. Four victory point objectives: The Merlin Castle on map 25, the major road crossing hex on map 9, the Bruyeres towns hexes on map 24 and lastly eliminated enemy steps. Many decisions to make for both sides and I nice mix of unit types but the Americans have a much better off-board artillery, more Infantry and higher morale to boot.

*The Germans setup their 16th & 716th Infantry Divisions and the 19th SS Police Regiment on board protecting all three major victory condition areas but this spreads them out. Then the Americans 36th Infantry & 753rd Tank Battalion enter from the South, then the Germans 192nd Panzer Grenadiers & 21st Panzer Regiment enter from the North, then the Nisei 442nn Regimental Combat Team enters from the West. What spread out fight this was! The Americans after seeing where the Germans Northern Battle Group was heading, decided to try to take the Road crossing 0510 on map 9 and all the Bruyeres town hexes on map 24 and leaving the Merlin Castle for latter if things went well.

*The Americans were able to take the towns hexes on map 24 with some losses but less then the Germans and the Nisei units up North were able to take the road crossing on map 9 after a lot of cat & mouse through two forests one open space area which produced a tank battle with one Sherman step and two StuGIII steps burning, as the Americans were able to bring six steps of Shermans to bare after taking care of a Marder II unit down south. They also shot –up some Germans PPW-251 halftracks. The massive American Artillery real blow German Infantry to pieces caught in the wrong areas.

*In the end the Americans controlled 16 victory objectives and the Germans controlled 4, as the Americans bypassed the Castle and went for the bigger prizes. Also the Americans lost 9 steps vs. the Germans losses of 30 steps. Pretty bloody combat with many options on how to play this scenario out, which makes it a great scenario in my books! The Americans Win a Major victory with 50 points to the Germans 13 points.

A bit of a slaughter in this one. The Germans decided to try to hold back the regulars and provided Merlin Castle with some extra support. The Panzergrenadiers held the road block behind Merlin Castle and protected the artillery. A strong roadblock was established on the way to Bruyeres in the wooded entry level.

This Nisei grabbed a hold of Merlin Castle and crushed the life out of it by turn 8 and had begun moving towards the road junction, sending one company and the engineers cross country towards Bruyeres. The remainder of the 36th had entered and decided that the strong road block in front of them needed to be warmed up a little. They assaulted with the FLM engineers and the German defenders were fried to a crispy crunch by turn 6.

As a result of the quick demise of the roadblock the entire German position was upset and the Volksgrenadiers were quickly destroyed in detail, leaving Bruyeres relatively lightly defended. In the final analysis the Nisei merely screened the Panzergrenadiers and sent another company to assist in the reduction of Bruyeres leading to a very clear American victory.

I had not played with the FLM before and the combination of its firepower with an two other infantry units, as well as a morale superiority and a leader will keep you on the top assault column constantly. I was going to send them to assist the Nisei in taking out Merlin Castle (to eliminate the first fire capability of the entrenchment) but it fell too quickly. It was a fun and, for Go For Broke, a large scenario. I give it a "4" and I would seriously reconsider my deployment as the German player. A forward defense only destroys your defenders before they can cause any troubles for the Americans.