To start of with, I chose to go with the spirit of the victory conditions rather than the letter. The Germans could easily win this if they just held up east of the railroad until the last one or two turns of the scenario, then rush across the railroad. All the Germans have to do to win is have an undemoralized unit on the west side of the railroad at the end of the game. However that would make for a boring game. This game was interesting in that to offset the French armor advantage the Germans sought to engage in close action and to get a stronghold in the cities, where they could defend well against counterattacks. This resulted in some close actions in the woods in order to get to the cities. Both sides, depending on how the close action was going, would bring down artillery on these hexes in an attempt to break the deadlock. Since the odds were the "friendly fire" column would be lower than the column applied to the opponent this actually made a huge difference. In the end this was better for the Germans as their artillery was less likely to hit adjacent hexes occupied by friendly troops.

En este escenario una poderosa fuerza francesa, integrada por dos batallones de infantería y dos compañías de tanques R 35, apoyados por secciones de morteros y artillería fuera del tablero, AT y antiaérea, atacan las posiciones alemanas defendidas por un batallón de infantería y algunas unidades auxiliares.

Los franceses deben expulsar a las unidades alemanas situadas al oeste de la línea de ferrocarril y impedir que las que se encuentran al este de dicha línea la crucen. La batalla se entabla principalmente sobre el hex de ciudad 510, donde los alemanes han creado su principal punto de apoyo al oeste de la línea férrea. Los franceses concentran sobre este punto toda su artillería, morteros y el fuego de sus unidades de infantería, pero los alemanes se defienden espléndidamente y aunque sufren bajas consiguen mantenerse en el terreno hasta el final de la partida.

Al final del turno 12 los franceses se dan por vencidos y conceden la victoria al adversario.

Dos aspectos caracterizan esta partida: 1) La influencia decisiva de un líder alemán con modificador moral de "2" en el hex 510. 2) La incapacidad ofensiva de las unidades francesas, motivada por su escasa capacidad de fuego directo, de ahí el título de este AAR.

This scenario gave me a chance to play with my bright red Division Marocain units, who were tasked with taking back German gains north of Gembloux. Essentially, they had to push the Germans back to the rail line, having none in the town itself. As other AARs have mentioned, the victory conditions as written are virtually impossible to achieve, as it's too easy for the Germans to rush a few platoons into assaults late in the scenario and the French won't have time to eliminate them. In addition, I was playing with the 4-3 ESC, while the original scenario calls for 3-3 INF. Using the original units would make things much more difficult (i.e., 2 units are only 6 FP, the 4 column instead of 8 FP for the 7 column; 3 units in an assault with a 1 leader are 10 FP, for the 9 column as opposed to 13 FP for the 13 column).

The French have a good amount of OBA in this one, however the Germans have more. They also have tank support. The Germans have tanks, however they are mostly PzIs and PzIIs. The French did have a lot more infantry.

My plan for the Moroccans was to have the units in the main town of Gembloux mostly hold the line, hoping to pick off a few units because the Germans didn't have much in the way of depth. My main effort would be to force the units away from North Gembloux, where the terrain was more open, and back to the railway. As the Germans, my plan was basically to make the Moroccans pay dearly for every inch of ground they took.

This game is played on about 2/3 of a map, and is relatively static as the French push forward hex by hex. In the North, I was able to push the Germans back to the railroad at the cost of high casualties to both sides, except for 1 town that refused to fall. I did manage to get both units in the town demoralized, however only 1 of them routed out (and because the French had mostly bypassed the town, he routed deeper into Gembloux! To the south, the Germans tried an incursion into a weak part of the French line, sending a platoon of Panzer IIs and one of Infantry to a weakly held spot in the French defenses. The Panzers soon died at the hands of Moroccan AT guns, however I was unable to dislodge the infantry, and it repeatedly demoralize many of the troops assaulting it.

I called the game early on turn 15 of 16 as it became obvious that the Moroccans could not dislodge the Germans from the 3 town hexes they occupied. I had actually crossed the railroad in the south with a couple of HMG platoons and taken 2 town hexes there before they ran into armor that would have been a risky assault, however those hexes don't count in the scenario as published. Casualties were very high on both sides in all the close range fighting.

This is a hard scenario to recommend. It was nice to use my red counters, and they made it a balanced fight, however it wasn't an exciting fight. It was a WW1 type battle of attrition, and the Germans held on by the skin of their teeth. There wasn't much movement, and most of it was 1 hex a turn. So, while the situation is militarily interesting, it didn't make a great game.

Author	waynebaumber (France)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	Germany
Participants	unknown
Play Date	2021-03-21
Language	English
Scenario	FaoF021

This scenario has the excellent French Moroccan troops counter attacking elements of the 3rd Panzer division near the sites of previous battles ( #17 & #18 of this series). Like the previous encounters this battle soon developed into a series of close assaults, with the German firepower, armour and excellent leadership eventually prevailed.

Good scenario and probably deserving of a higher score I sure Bangla will score it a 4 has he was the German commander in this one

Author	treadasaurusrex (France)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	France
Participants	Blackcloud6 (AAR)
Play Date	2021-12-29
Language	English
Scenario	FaoF021

Here is yet another unplaytested scenario with a number of relatively unexamined issues. For example, should the Moroccan infantry be represented by ESC counters (4-3) from the 1ere Marocaine Division counter set, or should the French ground troops be represented by French metropolitan INF (3-3) counters? If the former, does this make the game unbalanced in favor of the French side as some have suggested, or would the results possibly be closer to the reality of the actual historical situation. In our playthrough, my aggressive opponent played the Germans in his usual steadfast and opportunistic manner. The German Commander siezed the iniative at the start of the game and occupied advanced, town hex positions within Gembloux. This discumbobulated the initial French op plan and forced a series of right flank moves to try and get around the edge of the central German thrust. We played with the consolidation and the smoke rules and without the dreaded fog of war rule. Repeated French morale failures marred French attempts at comprehensive close assault sequencing.

In this play-through, the strength and weight of the Moroccan side's ESC infantry told the story as the game progressed. This scenario would definitely be improved in terms of play balance with modified victory conditions with a casualty limit on the French side.

This was a 4-session online match, that we ended on game turn 8, with a concession by the German Commander. At the time, the step losses were: 27 for Germans and 13 for the French, mostly reflecting dice rolling luck for the French in our first 2 online sessions. I doubt that the French side would have scored a victory if we had played the full 16-turn scenario, even with the ESC infantry units, given my penchant for bad morale and combat die rolls. In hindsight, it seems to me that a costly & frustrating French defeat was more or less inevitable with the published victory conditions. There is no way to play for a draw.

In short, I agree with my opponent's comments and the rating of a 2 for this one, although it probably deserves a 1 if played in face-to-face, online mode.

Author	Blackcloud6 (Germany)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	France
Participants	treadasaurusrex (AAR)
Play Date	2021-12-29
Language	English
Scenario	FaoF021

Did anyone play test this scenario? The sheer weight of numbers on the Moroccan side with 16 tuns make this inevitable on the outcome. The only chance I saw in this as the Germans was to hopefully get the initiative and take town hexes on the first turn to gain the defense bonuses. I did so but it still did not matter. The scenario needed either different victory conditions or a casualty limit on the Moroccans. This simply turned into a slow drudgery of watching the Moroccans assault across the map. Gadz! I hate scenarios like this. But the reason why I gave it a 2 is that it might be, just might, be interesting to play solo.

Note: We played this with the red Moroccan counter thus giving the Moroccans the stronger ESC counters. This may make a difference in balance.

My complaint with this kind of scenario is there is not much for the defending player to do except take a turn-by-turn dice rolling beating. Not much fun.

While I enjoyed the battle itself there is no way for the French to win this one with the victory conditions as listed. Interestingly the scenario designer chimed in a post and said per his notes the conditions had been for the French to hold 3 more town hexes then they started with. I think this would have made for a better game.

The Germans did the obvious/smart thing and charged across the road and assaulted into the town hexes. I manged to do some damage as they charged across but once they got into the town they just sat there daring me to assault them with the -2 town bonus. As the French units and leaders are weaker this was going to be a losing proposition and the French refused to cooperate. Instead I just tried to inflict as much damage as I could while taking the least.

By the end of the game which ended in turn 15 because of a Catastrophe (darn cats) I had inflicted about 21 steps of losses and took 7. The French consider this a moral victory. :)