Elsenborn Ridge: scenario # 21, Crossroads: The Last Gasp

I really like the scenarios from Battle of the Bulge 2: Elsenborn Ridge and haven’t played one for years but yesterday I returned to this game and used the winter maps and the upgraded Sherman tanks.

One mess up in my game play for the first turn only as I used the visibility chart on turn one assuming turn one of 2 hex visibility until I saw the first turn starts on 0630 which is 4 hexes of visibility. I am not sure why the Germans would use trucks to bring their infantry on for their southern group but on the eastern group it would help to bring on your infantry undercover of the lack of visibility and unload right before you got into the American’s range of fire.

This was bloody battle, both sides have about the same amount of off-board artillery but the Germans have about twice the Infantry force and their 3 platoons of Panthers and 4 platoons of Pz IVH are better than the American’s 2 M4/76, 1 M18 and 1 M36 platoons. The American rolled terrible with their armor and lost all of them, in fact the Germans only lost one step of armor to an American AT Gun. The Infantry loses were bloody on both sides but the Germans with numbers, engineers and armor prevailed in conquering the towns on map 22 with a major victory but at a cost to their Infantry.