An Army At Dawn, scenario #16: Clearing Ousseltia Valley

I played this one because of another PG Player’s AAR post on CSW, that made this scenario seem interesting and it was. Both sides get points for eliminating enemy steps. The Italian also get points for American steps still on the map by the end of turn 16, while the Americans get points for exiting steps off the western edge of the map by the end of turn 16. Both sides get off-board artillery and variable air-support.

The Italians start dug-in and have three minefields and can use the terrain to channel the Americans into a funnel, at least on the center where the main road runs through. I found the Americans don’t have enough leaders to not stack many stack to three units instead of two, to avoid that negative modifiers for stacks of three.

The American begin by pushing their Lee tanks forward, followed by everyone else but stretched out from north to south, trying to find weaknesses in the Italian lines. The Italian Air-Force struck first followed by both on and off-board bombardments and casualties. The American Lee Tanks push forward but were hit on both flanks by 47mm and 75mm gun fire and paid the price. Out of the six steps only 2 steps made it off the western edge of the map by the end of turn 16, the rest were burning wrecks.

Fighting continued throughout the 16 turns but at some point, the Americans realized that they couldn’t get tangled up in fighting too long or they would lose their mission objective of moving west. Some desperation set in to move west.

By the end of the scenario, the Americans had lost 13 steps, as the Armor steps count double, while the Italian in their dug-in positions with great terrain defenses only lost 3 steps, sure many were not in a good status morale wise. The biggest problem for the Americans was losing two leaders, as they were already short of these, to keep the forward progress going and to recover Disrupted and Demoralized units. One Leader was lost riding in and jeep unit pulling a 37mm AT Gun. By the end of the scenario the Americans had exited 29 steps but left 25 still on the Battlefield. With the total points, Americans 32, Italians 38, for a difference of 6 points and a minor Italian Victory.

A fun scenario to play and much depends on your Italian step up and your Americans being able have some cohesion in their attack and advance and maybe avoiding combat in some situations.