The Americans are faced with an interesting dilemma in this one. The victory conditions make it clear that they are to take towns and hills. Unfortunately for the Americans the towns are in one of the two mapboards while the hills are several kilometers away. Therefore the Americans have to choose to go after towns or hills first. Either way they will have to face considerable AT gunnery (a Panther, a StuG and a 71mm await). The Americans, on the other hand have a lot of tanks and tank destroyers and enough infantry and support weapons (including M3s) to have a firepower advantage should they decide to use it.

My Americans decided to pursue a two part battle strategy. In the first part of the game they took over the towns and put some very careful M4s on the smaller of the two objectve hills to begin to remove the Germans. This was accomplished primarily with the infantry component of the force with the tank destroyers and upgunned Shermans taking on a defeating the Panther.

At this point, the Wild Buffalos had arrived and were swarming over the larger hill. The Americans began advancing from the town and were seeking cover in the light woods at the eastern edge of the hill. Seeing that the Americans were aiming to provide support to the M4s which were in position to fire on the remaining German entrenchment on the small hill, the Wild Buffalos sent a strong force to flank the Americans and keep them from that objective. Unfortunately for the Buffalos, they became statistics quite quickly. Artillery slammed home and caused losses and demoralizations and then the infantry force stopped off to permit the destruction of the Buffalos to proceed. The counterattack was over before it really started.

At the same time as the counterattack was being sliced and diced, the StuG blew its cover while slaughtering M3s. This led to some M4/76s getting the range on the StuG and making sure that its one fire activation was the only one it would have in this playing.

On the penultimate turn the Americans were able to reduce the entrenchment on the small hill and with the 10 point swing in the victory calculation, the Americans pulled out a hard fought win. This was a lot fo fun with multiple decision points for both sides. I give it a "4".