This was another straight forward scenario with low counter densities, and straight foward objectives to capture (i.e. an edge "exit hex" and a main town hex objective). As with most scenarios in teh Airborne IE game so far, this one broke down to a similar strategy. move in closer than 3 hexes away, position your leaders for combined fire attacks, soften up the hexes of interest to mess with the opponents morale and cause them to loose "time" recovering morale, and when they fail some morale checks and have some step losses along the way, pounce on the hex with an assault with as good of odds for the US as possible. This worked for the first village hex at 0803 that the US captured. That hex was the US's first goal in order to eliminate an annoying mortor team that was harassing the US forces so far that day. The US then went on to capture the "exit hex" to control one of the two objectives of the scenario. However, by turn 0915, the scenario was called a DRAW by both sides. The US was not able to muster enough DF or Assault odds to take the remaining town hex objective at hex 1101. The GER forces has 13 DF points in the Town hex and the US was trying to soften them up with only 12 DF points (2 full strength PARA units and 5 leaders in two adjacent hexes to the town). After MULTIPLE DF attacks on the town hex the US was unable to phase the GER defenders and couldn't damage their morale nor inflict any step losses. On the other side, the GER did create havoc and stress for the US player through their own DF of 16 causing an annoying array of morale failures and just enough step losses to damage the US's ability to bring enough force to bare on that hex. In the end, both sides agreed it was a draw and the outcome ended in a similar way to history. Our "story" of the scenarios ending is that the US PARA forces were indeed ordered to abandon this particular objective due to insufficient force strength and needs for these units elsewhere. Has the US player persisted, we both felt that the odds would keep dwingling in GER favor and the US would be forced to withdraw to the town hex at 0803 and a stalemate would ensue.

In the end, this was a great scenario demonstrating the power of a stong set of defending units in a Town hex and their ability to defend against direct fire and/or assaults. Without some heavy on board artillery bombardment or off-board bombardment factors to "soften up" the town, the -2 column shift is very hard to overcome without overwhelming firepower to DF and/or assault the objective hex. With this scenario, the US had neither and was just unable to put a dent in that last objective hex. Overall, another fun scenario that illustrated some interesting points of the game system for us today.