Well, this one was on my table for 7 months! To say nothing of the fact that I'm finally getting around to writing this up two more months later. My life is so busy that my gaming time gets squeezed into non-existence sometimes. I took quite a few pictures, I may put them up on CSW at some point.

But to the game: Hello, artillery! A scratch force of Americans has to hold two towns ("The Twin Villages") against a literal horde of SS. The one thing in the Americans' favor is a heaping helping of artillery: 5x24 plus 8x18. The task for the U.S. is to make sure the full weight of this barrage comes down on the Germans every turn. Sounds easy, but there are too many Germans for a "just hunker down in the towns" strategy to work. There needs to be some forward deployment to slow down the advance enough to let the barrages take their toll on Germans at the edge of the woods and in the open ground in front of the towns. (Oh, that's the other U.S. advantage, a narrow front of one board.) But there aren't many US units, and, significantly, not very many leaders either. A few too many leader losses and artillery spotting may become a problem.

I'll write a more detailed summary someday, using my pictures, but the gist of it was that the Americans somehow held on for the draw. They were able to disrupt each wave of attacks just enough to hold on to enough town hexes at the end. Had the game gone a few more turns the Germans would likely have taken the towns. There were some epic turns of events in the final few turns, including a point blank Panther assauls on US infantry in the southern town causing a 2X result, followed immediately by an artillery stonk demoralizing the Panthers! The Lt. Colonel recovering from demoralized to good order in one roll only to have his Inf. platoon shot out from under him next impulse. That sort of stuff!