Occassionally we all forget. My wife considers this to be the norm for me. In previous years she has called me "sieve-brain", offhandedly noting that some of the big things do get caught in my memory. One of the big things you would think would get caught would be the concept of concentration of effort in these scenarios. Apparently the holes in my sieve are increasing with age.

Lehr starts out with a scratch force on board facing a large American force complete with 3 platoons of Shermans. The Germans are tasked with defending the hilltop town in the north, the large town in the center of the board and the wooded hill to the south. They receive reinforcements on the first turn including some Pumas. The Pumas worried me as I didn't want to lose any Shermans to them.

I sent the Shermans to try to reduce the hilltop town and let the PBI deal with the large town. We would see about the wooded hill later if we had time (there are only 14 turns in the scenario so time is of the essence). This division of forces caused some serious issues as the Germans were able to buttress their town defense with halftracks and the Americans had few answers to that. It took several turns to move the Shermans back south (mud, of course) and by the time they got there the PBI had reduced the Pumas to inconsequential (reduced and demoralized).

Upon the arrival of the Shermans, the town assault became unstoppable. Unfortunately for the Americans the clock ran out before the Germans did and the Americans ended up with no objectives completely acheived, a major victory for the Germans.

This is certainly winnable for the Americans if you don't mess up like I did and keep your force concentrated. As in all Lehr scenarios, there are hidden forces which means that if you don't have comfort pretending that you don't know where the Germans are you should not play this one solo. The hidden units are critical to masking the defensive priority of the initial German setup and will determine the American initial thrust. I give it a "3" for solo play with a supposed "4" for ftf

This play-through was face-to-face over 2 sessions and completed on Thanksgiving Day before the delicious roast turkey was served. My worthy opponent led the relentless Germans of Panzer Lehr on the defensive. Happily, I was the Americans and had a combined arms force that included 3 platoons of Sherman tanks. We did not use the FOW rule, but did use the enhanced Sherman counters from the Spearhead game. My opponent split his forces and defended the hilltop town in the north, the large town in the center of the map, and the southern wooded hill. As expected, hidden Germen units played havoc with the American advance elements as the Americans probed the vicinity of the large town as the primary Allied objective. With only 14 turns, the US side had to move as fast as possible and the hilltop town was designated as the secondary objective after consolidating on the primary objective. Naturally, plans like this don't last long as the Germans aggressively used their Puma armored cars like they were tanks, forcing the Shermans to engage them directly, rather than being part of combined arms stacks taking on the two town garrisons. As luck would have it, the north hilltop town fell first, due in part to charging Pumas keeping the US armor company occupied in the center. Eventually, with the end of the Puma menace, the central town was taken relatively quickly and the southern hill position was liberated on the last turn of this rather short scenario. If the Germans had not moved off that southern hill to counterattack in the center of the map, this probably would have been a draw or an Axis minor victory. In the end, all US objectives were achieved and a costly victory was won.

Thanks to observations and tactical suggestions from others' AARs, I kept the US side as concentrated, and as centralized as possible. Strong probing actions and close assaults in the towns finally did paid off. We agreed that this scenario merits a 3.