Two companies of absolutely green Americans stumble up a road and into three companies of roughly equivalent Germans who have the luck to have some off board artillery. A classic meeting engagement where really neither side wants to meet anyone. In this case, however, something goes horribly wrong for the Americans.

For the first half hour the two forces proceed on a collision course without any real knowledge of what is facing them. The Germans know that they must clear the road from north to south so they are moving with some urgency. The Americans also feel some urgency as the further north they can move the more likely that they can have more than one line on the road and try to block the Germans.

45 minutes into the action the Germans get a look at some Americans starting to set up a line in the light woods. An artillery strike causes the American units to become demoralized adn ultimately run away. The Americans move up some troops to fill the position.

At this point and for the next hour and fire fight at 400 meters takes place with both sides causing some disruption and demoralization to the opposite side. As the Americans are terribly outnumbered given the loss of an entire company to a retrograde movement to attempt to recover morale, the Germans are able to move into assault positions.

The following turn the Germans get the initiative and run two assaults that are extremely effective. In the next 45 minutes the Americans lose 8 steps and 3 leaders including their major, decapitating the entire remaining force which is then destroyed to a man.

The key here is that, although the leaders looked to be superior to their green troops, apparently the edginess rubbed off on the leaders who failed their morale checks constantly.

This is a fun, quick scenario which could easily have gone a different way. The Americans did not have one demoralized unit recover during the entire play. The Germans were not taking losses but at the end of the play 5 platoons of Germans were demoralized. This one is well worth a "3" and would score higher but for the limited strategic options for the players. They both have to race to contact in order to have the best chance to acheive their victory conditions.