The recurring theme in the West Wall series of scenarios is an overwhelming American force facing an underwhelming German force in a mud bowl. It is easy for the American player to become demoralized by the muck. Instead of a lightning strike against a flat footed foe you are stuck with travelling through the muck to even get to the point where your troops are even in range.

Under the circumstances the American commander is forced to make some tough decisions. Yes, it would be safer to advance through the woods but I get an extra 2-3 turns on the objective if I move down the road and accept that I will take casualties and lose some of my force to disruption and demoralization along the way. I usually have more than enough force to accomplish the task and boatloads of leaders to help in scurrying along the recovered units.

One of the biggest complaints is, however, the inability of the HMGs to keep up. With a SSR limiting their movement to 1 it often seems as though they simply can't make the trip. I find, however, that there are ususally one or two 57mm guns attached with transport. I drop the guns, mount the HMGs and move as close as I can safely before unloading, saving many turns of movement for the HMGs. I find the 57mm guns to be too light to accomplish anything anyhow.

Yep, I accept casualties and that is probably not historical behavior from the Americans, but if that is a given I find that the firepower and support (plenty of engineers to deal with emplacements and towns) makes eventual success far more likely. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the larger and more dispersed objectives of the final scenario.

In this one the Germans set up several belts of defense, starting with a batch of entrenchments on the ridge, but were ultimately unable to stop the Americans from entering the large town. I give it a "4".