Author	Isra3lite (Germany)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	United States
Participants	treadasaurusrex (AAR)
Play Date	2025-08-05
Language	English
Scenario	ElsR012

It was the best of times. It was the [goddammit]!

Treadasaurus's excellent AAR will suffice for the blow-by-blow account of this scenario.

So the best things first....

As the Germans, I called the Lederhosen League, the intercolated setup of forces was very useful and pushed the Germans out of their safety zone, some (like my more experienced opponent) might think of this style setup with wrecks and alternating unit setups as gamey and unrealistic. However, I believe this helped get us into the action faster and with several tactical advantages as being able to start assaults on the first turn in the northern and southern towns added to the variety of early situations that we were able to play from almost the first turn. Personally, I also like meeting engagement-styled battles and this, initially, felt like it fit the bill for that.

Now, for the painful....

Assault rules are VERY gamey and unintuitive, so if you are in a position to conduct a close assault or extended assault in the town, it will be a multi-turn (or whole game) slog, preventing and pinning these units any useful maneuver, spotting, oppty fires, arty strikes, etc. With victory being relegated to unit losses, the German survival of the towns pretty much went the way of the dominant assault hex; a zero-sum game of win or lose, with no in-between. What the Germans lost by underdeploying in the northern town simply extended the loss to the southern town, when trying to inflict damage on the American armor. There was no significant damage to the US infantry past the initial 2-3 turns as they dug in and occupied the northern town in which they dominated.

Artillery is VASTLY unbalanced against the Germans, even removing the American 82mm mortar on Turn 1, the single German 81mm mortar has almost a comically bad firepower. Same with the four batteries of off-map, useable but just barely, given the heavy woods, towns, and severe leader spotting requirements, some of which had to do with that initial depolyment, above. Biggest German error was to deploy in force to the eastern wooded hills that, while protecting that precious mortar platoon, pinned these units making them unavailable for any maneuver action to the west.

Rather annoyingly, the US M18 tanks with their 14 MP move/fire capability and reasonably thin armor made them easy rather armor targets but almost impervious to infantry and artillery, giving them a "rock-paper-scissors" effect where the M18 guns provided assault capability and far range, but weak to Panzers. Panzers though were unaffected by the M18 guns (or just about anything else) were up against the rules limitations often pinning them in place. German infantry units, as they were deployed, were generally never useful to the Panzers. So maybe, in a roundabout way, these were the most realistic elements of this scenario.

In all, I enjoyed the gameplay with my opponent, but would have deployed to the southern town and held court there as a single base of German operations, instyead of splitting forces in the wooded hills and both towns.