Two battalions of Americans, one armored infantry and one armored, take on a reinforced battalion of Lehr troopers in this one. The Americans have to cover one and a half long boards and at the end of the trip have to either try to take a town from the Germans, exit a ton of steps, or both.

My Germans made a terrible setup mistake and left an avenue for the American armor to get into cover and move towards the exit with minimal loss. In addition, the reinforcements which are critical to the defense were very late in coming on, arriving on Turn 13 of 14. Despite these terrible mistakes the Germans were still able to capture a draw.

This is a really tough one for the Americans as there is a ton of open space they need to traverse and the Germans are amply armed with both artillery and AT guns making the movement forward very dangerous. In addition the Germans manned a small village in an advanced position to both block the road and force the Americans to come out of cover to deal with the roadblock.

The Americans found the hole in the German setup at roughly turn 6 and poured the armored battalion through the hole. The armored infantry dismounted and advanced towards the town but was somewhat delayed by three early FoW rolls. In any event the armor continued to move forward and dealt with a StG platoon that blocked them briefly. With a victory nearly in hand suddenly the German reinforcements (an armored infantry company with a company of PzIVhs) arrived and blocked much of the exit area. They were, however, dealt with by the American tanks and artillery, wiping out 2 steps of infantry with Op Fire and 2 steps of armor from point blank Sherman fire.

The final score was 53-50 so the play was fine and exciting but really was the result of the poor setup and late arrival of the reinforcements. In any "normal" play I would expect a workmanlike victory for the Germans. I give it a "2" for the likely result as the Americans will be savaged as they advance and the time pressure is immense.