There is a part of me that really wants to believe that a well led small force can completely disrupt the advance of a larger foe, even when that force is also well led, through use of delay tactics. Playing this way in PG often tells me that penny packets of force are merely lost quickly and to no real benefit. Every once in a while, however, the romantic vision of the brave defenders buying time for the main force is reinforced. This is just such a time.

The Germans set up one HMG dug in on the road at the top of the hill near Pariana. The Americans need to clear the road as one of their victory conditions and the two steps that will probably be lost there should not tip the scales towards an American victory (they need 5 to meet another victory condition).

The Americans advance quickly and begin to make contact, however the roadblock is also within range of the remaining Germans who are holed up in Pariana. By turn 3 the Americans had lost 3 steps and had only made contact with the Germans. The roadblock held for the first 8 turns (2 hours) and severely impacted the remainder of the advance.

Due to the lost time the Americans boldly advanced against the Germans. This caused additional Op Fire losses and ultimately led to a gamble to try to cause losses on the Germans to reach a second objective (the first was to clear the road). The third objective, control of Pariana was clearly beyond their ability to reach.

The gamble was to assault one hex of the town which had taken a loss from DF softening up to see if they couldn't cause two more losses. In order to take that hex the forces guarding the road needed to be weakened for 15 minutes while reinforcements were moved back to the road from a flanking party.

The Germans noticed the possibility to assault and did so, establishing a presence on the road. They were not successful, however, in removing the American forces and an assault hex remained. The reinforcements were caught in the open by the German OBA and disrupted on the next to last turn and were therefore unable to enter the assault remove the Germans from the road.

The final result was a major German victory, but the margin was very slim. Two die rolls on either the last or next to last turns would have given the Americans a minor victory. This is a very close result and I believe that most plays will result in an American victory. The scenario is however a tightly contested one and I give it a "4".