I played the Americans trying to hold the east-west road against the overwhelming German assault. My face-to-face opponent ended up with a Major Axis Victory, but it came right down to the last turn and could just have easily ended in a draw with a few lucky dice rolls. We used the Fog of War optional rule and played on the winter versions of the maps.

As the Americans, I put some heavy machine gun teams in the larger town near the middle of map 23. I also put some entrenched infantry and heavy machine guns across the road in the light woods tree line around the base of the hill. On map 25, I put my two mortars in the heavy woods of hex 0606 on top of the hill and kept a few infantry and leaders nearby as reserves. My reinforcement rolls worked out well and my leader and IR platoon were eligible to arrive on the first turn allowed (turn 6 or 7 I think).

The Germans mainly advanced through the light woods on map 23 at first with a smaller detail taking up positions in and around the small town in 0403, 0404, 0504. 75% to 80% of the game was the knock-down, drag-out slug fest in those light woods around my entrenched position as he picked his way closer while I tried to use my artillery to maintain some distance. Disrupted and demoralized units scattered the woods and the clearings nearby, but eventually the Germans positioned coordinated fire teams across multiple hexes to demoralize and break my units out of their entrenched positions. This finally came together after a few unsuccessful rolls to get the German reinforcements into play.

Once my entrenched positions broke and the German reinforcements arrived, the American step-losses began to explode. I managed to use my artillery to somewhat keep up with inflicting casualties, but it was obvious that I would soon be overwhelmed. The German armor took the lead and began assisting (quite successfully) with clearing out my straggling forces trying to secure the road. Here I did make a few tactical errors. Some groups got stranded in the open over-stacked, and I should have kept my IR platoon reinforcements further back to hold part of the road and make my opponent have to drive further into map 25 to clear me out.

In the final turn, my artillery managed to get the German step losses to 15 (a requirement for a Minor Allied Victory), but the Germans were able to demoralize my last ditch effort to move some units onto the map 23 east-west road to secure that Minor Allied Victory. In doing so, my opponent secured the Axis Major Victory on some of the final rolls of the game.

Great scenario, only 18 turns but it took us a while to get through as we tried to each crack our half of the puzzle of securing that light woods hill on map 23.