One of my favorite Willie and Joe cartoons has a British soldier passing the boys and saying, "You blokes leave an awfully messy battlefield." Must have seen this action.

The Ad Hoc task force put together from tag ends of PARA, armored infantry, etc. is tasked to take control of some hills and roads from a coherent group of SS. While the Americans have some mass they are terribly outclassed in morale and my leader group only had two leaders with morale modifiers while the Germans had nearly all of their leaders with morale modifiers. As a result, the battlefield was littered with red and black markers from the start.

The SS set up on both peaks with strong forces and the Pz IVs hiding to the south of the mountain on the road to permit a quick redeployment as necessary. Until the American armor arrives the SPW-251s are very potent weapons and are included in the defenses for fire support.

The Americans enter to the west of the board with the idea that the eastern peak is too strong to tackle immediately. As they move towards the western peak they are disrupted and demoralized like crazy by the opportunity fire. Seeing an opportunity to destroy gobs of American steps the SS tankers emerge and start clearing out the east-west road of Americans. This is helped by the early failure of the American armor to advance to support the attack.

Their arrival , however, starts a rebound in the action. Until they arrived, the SS had nearly complete control of the battle. The M18 put a hole in the Pz IVs and a follow on assault finished them off and the Major was able to assemble enough good order troops to deatroy the SS on the western peak and earn a draw. The SS were somewhat quiet during the process as they did not want to give the Americans a chance at a win but were content to hold half of each road and thereby frustrate the aim of the American attack.

The scenario was interesting for two reasons. First, the Americans usually have better morale and the lower morale in this one forces one to play very differently. Second the variable scenario ending forces both players to consider what needs to be done now versus later and gives a very tense structure to the play. I give it a "3" only because I feel that, played aggressively, the SS should not lose this one. While that is the historical result it seems a bit too programmed here. I would suggest it for any play format.