I wanted to try a fairly small Grossdeutschland senario, and this looked like a good one - until I saw the board details: Both sides locked into a half-board, with the dreaded town hexes everywhere, and a river with no bridges. Plus the French get five casemates, four entrenchements, and all of that town terrain...

But the town was actually a blessing for the Germans this time. With much of the riverfront saturated on BOTH sides by urban landscape, the Germans could use the cover to brazenly move within close range of the strength-challenged defenders, and set to blasting them with superior firepower. The French also are morale-deficient, and were not aided by the fact that only one of their leaders had a positive morale modifier.

The French covered the riverfront as best possible, though perhaps misreading the potential of the casemates - the decision to place a couple of them to the back of the front line, as a "defense in depth," may have been a mistake. In addition, there were so few French units that some of the entrenchments (placed in the gap between the woods at the west edge of the allowed battlefield and the main stretch of town hexes)were empty, planned as fallback positions. (As things developed, they never got to use fallback positions, as they mostly fled instead.)

The Germans brought on the infantry and HMG's in the center, with one group split off to the east to confront a lone casemate accompanied by a RES, an HMG, and a casemate. Two other infantry groups worked their way to the western end of the line, opposite a casemate (which proved to be a 3-3 DF only unit) and some entrenched infantry. Between these two groups, the AFV's and Bufla took position in a town hex across from the French entrenchments and commenced blasting away. But not without loss: In the initial approach, the lone French 25mm ATG took out a step of PZ-II befoe being demoralized (and eliminated whem it failed to recover) by heavy OBA. Meanwhile, some entrenched defenders in that area were demoralized and fled - the French morale was causing serious problems today - and uncovered a casemate with a 2-4 AT strength, which promptly flipped the Bufla to it half-strength side. But that casemate was soon taken out by OBA and direct fire.

Most of this proved to be a sidelight to the main effort (other than taking out some French steps south of the river, helping to pave the way for potential victory.) At the eastern flank the German INF/HMG stack ran afoul of the casemate-aided French there, eventually fleeing back further into the town north of the river. But in the center, the enhanced firepower of the GD units proved too much for the French defenders. Beside providing cover for the attackers, the town also limited the LOS for other French units, and as soon as a couple of hexes were cleared of defenders, the German engineers - having been placed backing the line, waiting for just such an opportunity - moved into the river, where infantry and HMG's began crossing at an impressive rate. One tough French leader and HMG were kept busy for the balance of the scenario in an assault, while German units rolled past the firefight in a series of crossings. The bridgehead soon bulged several hexes deep in the center, allowing some of the advance forces to take out the lone 81mm mortar and to either destroy still-demoralized French that had fled from the front line, or to force them to flee further.

Eventually, with the ATG and AT-enabled casemate out in the open eliminated, the German armor was able to move into a river (though not across it, of course) and blast away with impunity at entrenched Frenchmen, who could not answer with an assault, since they had no engineers of their own and thus could not cross to the tanks' side of the river. And the Bufla even managed to move to the center and cross the river!

At game's end, the French had five Reserve steps, 4 HMG steps and 2 casemates still south of the river and undemoralized. They had lost 2 RES, 4 HMG and 2 Casemates. But the Germans not only lost just the one Bufla and one PZ-II step, they had - undemoralized, of course - a whole passel of troops south of the river: 1 Bufla step, 14 INF, 6 HMG and 2 ENG. It was a suprisingly easy German victory, though perhaps a better French setup would have made things much tougher. (Not to mention that the best French casemate - 16-4 DF, 2-4 AT - was in one of the reserve positions and was only uncovered at the end of the game, when Germans finally came into its LOF.)

I give this one, cautiously, a "4." Fun, quick, a reasonable amount of variety in units, and PERHAPS not as imbalanced as my result. This was played solo, and the only house rule that had any impact was allowing the 25mm ATG (as well as the 2-4 AT in one casemate, which must be a 25mm also) first-shot effcicency. It was the "efficiency" shot by each that took out the PZ-II and Bufla steps.

LATE NOTE - I somehow missed the fact that the French start Disrupted. That's kind of a major thing to miss...and since i had a pretty good rollover despite missing this fact, I'll drop it to a "3." Fun to play, but probably not very well balanced. (And, for the record, I never even used smoke...)