I think the title to this AAR sums it all up. As the Germans I had the task to cross a river, one way or the other and then take a very large town on the far eastern map. I had plenty of panzers along with a good amount of mortar platoons, one 105mm and maybe just enough foot units to get the job done. I also got to draw one aircraft on any turn for a one-time only use. Facing me were a lot of Soviet INF and HMG units, probably outnumbering mine well over two-to-one and that is not counting the Soviet reinforcements that were soon to arrive. There were also a few platoons of T-26s and some armored cars to deal with. Well, if this was just a slap-down battle then that wouldn't be too hard to contend with. The Soviets also had decent morale rated at 8/6 for a change.

In this match Wayne and I played with the hidden AT gun house rule which was a first for me. That prompted me to advance with a lot of caution with my armored units and once the first 45mm was revealed I began to focus on eliminating it and the 76.2mm that it had paired up with but not before I got caught in some deadly crossfire action. Very quickly I had lost one step of SdKfz222 armored cars along with a PzII and a PzIVE -so much for using caution!. I was utterly humiliated and my initiative level dropped very fast after that. All the while I had paid no mind to the Soviet engineer that was setting up the bridge for demolition. That was the key mistake. Everything I had in terms of available indirect fire and air support should have immediately been concentrated on at least disrupting that engineer. So three turns pass as the required time to set the charges and then, with a 50% chance of succeeding, the bridge was blown on the first try. Soon my reinforcements arrived but I had trouble managing, organizing and combining them with the originally deployed units. Time started passing very quickly and soon I found myself stuck. I had my sole ENG unit loaded with some SPW251s by the river waiting for the right moment to expose them to Soviet OBA and other fire types and then MAYBE attempt a crossing. All the while more Soviet troops are massing on the other side of the river. Overwhelmed with my predictament of trying to keep the enemy hammered down and trying to knock out more of his AT guns and artillery I overlooked that the two platoons of T-26s had moved with AT fire range of my APCs.

It was now turn 11, Soviet forces were due to arrive next turn to make matters worse and the enemy ENG was already waiting for them on the river bank to help get them across to my units - the horror!. Along with that another ENG would be arriving to either make another river crossing or to replace the existing one. The funny part of all this was that Wayne and I had stopped after 10 turns of play in our first session and he knew his tanks had my carriers ranged, I didn't. So we set up for turn 11 and he made aware that he had two shots at eliminating my APC with ENG unit needed to cross the river. So that was it, one activation, the SPW251 carrying the ENG eliminated by the T-26s -game over. I could not get a draw unless I had at least one unit across.

All in all not a terrible scenario and things may have turned out differently if the Soviet ENG had failed to blow the bridge on the first try or was somehow eliminated but I didn't have such luck. It was hard rating this one and if it were a solo play I most likely would of rated it higher, at least a "3". I also believe that I have a lot to learn about managing coordinating a large amount of units of varying types on the offensive. In a way I was kind of relieved that this ended less than halfway through the scenario length of 28 turns. I think I would of been quite frustrated if another 10 or more turns passed before the inevitable happened. It was very simple -kill the Soviet engineer maybe get a draw; kill the German engineer win the battle. So, with over 3 hours left of valuable playing time left Wayne and I set-up for another match from EF, #10-"The Duel" which was finished very quickly with the remainder of our session.