It is December 21, 1944, at the height of the Bulge. The Germans (Kampfgruppe Peiper) are low on fuel, holed up in the Stoumont area, and under attack by the recovering Americans. Victory for either side .depends on step losses and town control. Thanks to the gasoline crisis, German armor cannot move (whether in an activation or to flee if demoralization requires it) unless it rolls a 6 on 1d6. If it fails the roll it is still counted as moved/fired – worse, if a vehicle required to flee fails the move roll, its men abandon their vehicles and the unit is destroyed.

For this replay, the Germans started with a GREN and a Tiger II in the town at the northern point of the long wooded ridge. few scattered towns in the middle. Besides these “point men,” the large town on the south board was almost completely occupied by infantry and mortars, plus a Panther unit. On the middle board, several scattered towns had infantry (and one had the reduced King Tiger) plus there were a couple of stacks (including the other Panther) dug in between the middle towns and one that is furthest east on that board, near the woods. The north board has no towns and no Germans set up there, but it was where the US infantry arrived.

To open the ball, the US used an M5 Stuart to try and get an early shot on the ridge-top Tiger, to (a) set up a crossfire and (2) force the Tiger to reveal itself so the US could hit the town with some "wrath of God" OBA. The initial attempt failed, but (at great cost to the M5’s) the desired crossfire was eventually set up; the Tiger was reduced and demoralized, and it subsequently was abandoned. That town fell quickly, but the balance of them were a different matter. After disgorging their infantry, US halftracks set up in some woods to hose the large village with MG fire (they set up where the resident Panther could not see them) while, after a brief attempt by infantry to assault their way into that metropolis, they fell back to the cover of the wooded ridge and set themselves up to call in OBA.

Meanwhile, the doggies of the 30th entered the north board and steadily closed in on that flank, using the woods for cover. As they approached the one empty town, a previously dug-in GREN occupied it, and a Panther got the coveted "6" and was able to move in with the GREN. Soon, OBA reduced and demoralized the GREN, sending it in flight and setting up an assault on the (now) lone Panther. The initial attack cut the AFV platoon in half, but the remainder was able to hold out in the face of renewed assaults for another 4 turns (possibly helped by the fact that I completely forgot about the bazooka rule.) Eventually it was demoralized, failed recovery and again got the “6” to move – it fled to the next town over, joining a GREN and a reduced Tiger II, and recovered to normal by Turn 16. The next turn, US infantry began assaulting that town. Another village three hexes away had caused some trouble for the approaching US infantry but then had to defend itself against others.

Back on the south board, the US used the repeated failure to move (and thus repeated wasted activations) of the Panther in the large town to sneak three M3 halftrack units and the Sherman to the edge of town but out of LOS of the Panther - after first clearing the edge of town with DF from the M3's and OBA. But They also started advancing infantry assistance - but long-range HMG fire, the Panther (giving up its move attempts to blast at infantry in the open instead) and 2 81mm mortars in the center of town combined to disrupt or demoralize pretty much everyone. More infantry was moved to the empty edge of town, only to get blasted into smithereens by OBA and a couple of "hot" DF rolls also. The Germans left two town hexes open for the taking, but they were adjacent to the Panther and thus difficult to enter. The Panther's recent attention to the infantry did allow a Sherman platoon to work its way around to the east of town in light woods, but a Tiger in the next town over, and a sudden move roll by the Panther, chased it deeper into the light woods.

Heading into the last 2 hours of combat, the situation was tense, with the Germans holding 6 of the 7 hexes in the major town, plus being the last to have held the seventh. The Americans had made unimpressive progress – but the defense of the large town had taken a heavy toll of GRENs. While US infantry losses had been minimal early on, those were now mounting too. Multiple assaults were in progress for the rest of the contest. In the three-hex town on the central board a reduced Tiger failed a move roll on a flee result and was abandoned. Meanwhile the battle raged in and around the 7-hex town on the south board. The see-saw combat allowed the US M4/76 and more infantry to arrive – the M4 was destroyed eventually, as was a full-strength Panther in a different town (by movement failure on a flee result, of course.) The contest was still grinding along as the game came to a close. The count of “possessed” town hexes s (VP for town hexes being 2 for German, 3 for US) was German 6 and US 2, with 4 hexes still under contention.

Final loss tally in steps was:

German - 15 GREN, 3 Tiger II, 3 Panther, 2 SPW251. US - 9 INF, 3 HMG, 6 M5 Stuart, 1 M4/76. In addition, leader losses (no VP's here) were a 11-1-1 HPTSTFR and a 9-1-1 OSTFR for the Germans, and a 9-1-0 CAPT, 10-1-0 LT and 8-0-0 LT for the Yanks.

Final VP tally: Germans 38, US 35. Since a minor victory requires a 5-point edge, this one was a draw. Had the Germans been able to kick just one US group out of an assault hex, it would have been a marginal German victory - that's how close this was. As it was, the US could thank various events of the prior few days for the fact that Peiper was just about out of fuel – this played a part in almost every German AFV step loss.

I’ve probably learned quite a bit since this November 2008 battle, one of my earlier ones within the system. Perhaps things would have ended differently had I more consistently remembered the late-war infantry AT capabilities for assaults…