I chose this scenario as one of the unplayed ones. Plus, it was a nice, meaty scenario with tanks on both sides. The British come in with 30 infantry units of various types, 8 tanks (5 Shermans, 2 Fireflys and an Achilles) plus supporting mortars, AT guns and OBA. The Germans oppose them with SS GREN, various mortars and AT guns, some OBA and, oh yeah, 3 Panther units that enter on turn 1. The scenario starts in the daylight and ends after dark.

Historically, the British, who set up on Board 58 and are trying to exit Board 57, plus take towns and a hill there, got their butts spanked and ran back to the large town on Board 58. This scenario really illustrates why.

I set up with strong forces going down the east side of the map to contest the hill, with tanks and infantry trying to break through in the middle. The AT guns and more infantry went down the west side. I covered the advance with smoke as long as I could. For their part, the Germans defended the town and hill strongly, with a bunch of hidden units to cause trouble for the Brits. I'm using the suggested method of writing down 2x as many hexes and drawing from a cup. In this particular scenario, I wanted all of the Germans to be stacked 2/hex. I ran into some interesting issues. For instance, there were some HMG among the hidden units. So, when a unit got within 5 hexes of a potential hidden hex, I'd draw. And sometimes I'd draw GREN, who shouldn't come out that quickly. I settled on basically counting draws like that as "no draw" and keeping it as a potential hidden hex.

This one turned ugly quickly. Once the British guns started to run out of smoke, the Panthers started tearing apart the Shermans, whose thin armor couldn't stand up to their guns. Before dying, the Fireflys did take out a platoon of Panthers, however the other 2 platoons were more than enough. Some of the tanks did survive, however the step losses gave a lot of points to the Germans. In addition, the German OBA and on-board artillery was causing havoc with the advance, inflicting some step losses, and disrupting and demoralizing a lot of troops. The British attempted to respond, however they werre firing at units either dug in or in a town for the most part, and just weren't as effective. The British assaults made it to the smaller hill, although with a weak force, and were making some headway in the middle, however the casualties were appalling. 25 steps for the British (about half of that was armor counting double) to about 6 for the Germans. And, by turn 12 when I called it, they were nowhere close to taking any of their objectives or exiting the map.

I was going to play out all the turns, however one of my cats decided to jump on the board yesterday. Amazingly, she avoided all the counters. However, she started to walk, and I tried to lift her off, and that's when stacks went flying. Given the lopsided score in the scenario so far, I decided to move on and not try to recreate things.

This is an interesting scenario, I suspect different British tactics might have provided a better result. However, the superiority of the Panthers, having to cross open ground to get to their objectives, the hidden Germans and the quality of the Germans will make this one a tough fight. This is one I think I'd really enjoy FtF.