This play-through was face-to-face over 2 sessions and completed on Thanksgiving Day before the delicious roast turkey was served. My worthy opponent led the relentless Germans of Panzer Lehr on the defensive. Happily, I was the Americans and had a combined arms force that included 3 platoons of Sherman tanks. We did not use the FOW rule, but did use the enhanced Sherman counters from the Spearhead game. My opponent split his forces and defended the hilltop town in the north, the large town in the center of the map, and the southern wooded hill. As expected, hidden Germen units played havoc with the American advance elements as the Americans probed the vicinity of the large town as the primary Allied objective. With only 14 turns, the US side had to move as fast as possible and the hilltop town was designated as the secondary objective after consolidating on the primary objective. Naturally, plans like this don't last long as the Germans aggressively used their Puma armored cars like they were tanks, forcing the Shermans to engage them directly, rather than being part of combined arms stacks taking on the two town garrisons. As luck would have it, the north hilltop town fell first, due in part to charging Pumas keeping the US armor company occupied in the center. Eventually, with the end of the Puma menace, the central town was taken relatively quickly and the southern hill position was liberated on the last turn of this rather short scenario. If the Germans had not moved off that southern hill to counterattack in the center of the map, this probably would have been a draw or an Axis minor victory. In the end, all US objectives were achieved and a costly victory was won.

Thanks to observations and tactical suggestions from others' AARs, I kept the US side as concentrated, and as centralized as possible. Strong probing actions and close assaults in the towns finally did paid off. We agreed that this scenario merits a 3.