AAR of my very first Panzer Grenadier scenario: Road To Berlin #26. I chose it for its relative simplicity (ie few turns, not much armour, no arty) with a few special rules (night time, bridges).

0100 Hrs - Game start. Overall plan for the Germans was to march to the village of Kienitz under cover of darkness and straight assault into the town hexes, at first I thought it would be a cake walk, 17 German GREN to 5 Sov SMG, with the Germans aided by a full strength armour. For the Soviets - easy, just hold onto the town hexes, deny the bridge.

0230 Hrs. Germans at the outskirts of Kienitz, plan is to obtain casualties through Direct Fire first, then follow up with Assaults. The main problem is the Soviets have far superior initiative (+3), which constantly allows them to restore morale and hold the town.

0330 Hrs. The Assaults start, and things are not working out for the Germans. The Panzer IV's decide to reposition to the Southern sector of town, and end up being completely annihilated by the depleted T34's lurking in the town. Thus far initiative and rolls have been completely with the Soviets! Unfortunately the Soviets' beloved Lieutenant lays down his life for the motherland during the fighting in the Northern Sector.

0430 Hrs. The "Herr Major" realizes the assaults by his "Leutnants" are not producing the desired results, and must act decisively before dawn and Soviet reinforcements arrive!

The Major takes direct control of the remaining full strength Grenadiers in his vicinity and launches an assault into the Southern (weaker) sector, success! The Soviet Captain and his troops are forced to retreat to the other side the bridge, subsequent Morale recovery rolls are unsuccessful and his troops retreat into the darkness on the Eastern side of the map.

0515 Hrs. Game end. With the evacuation of the Southern sector and the wild panic of their fellow troops, the SMG platoons that have been valiantly holding off repeated assaults by desperate Germans retreat to defend the Bridge Hex, leaving only a depleted platoon behind to tie down troops. Hopefully this action will keep the Bridge itself in Soviet hands until reinforcements arrive.

The German Major orders one of his already tired Leutnants to assault the Bridge and take it at the last possible minute to deny passage to Soviet reinforcements. After the Major Direct Fires into the Hex, the Leutnant Assaults - Sieg!! Major Victory at the last possible minute!!

Overall excellent first scenario. Soviets are outnumbered but have initiative and town cover on their side. Only question remains (for me personally) is a clear definition of the characteristics of bridge hex 0704- Bridge in a town hex over a major river. For the purposes of this scenario I treated it as a town hex.

5 SMG platoons and a reduced T34 of average morale have to defend four town hexes including a bridge from a horde (2 battalions and a platoon of PzIVs) of really uninspired Germans (morale 6/5). While the Germans melt away from Opportunity Fire quite easily one must actually get a result in order for that to happen. Helping the Germans again is that this is a night fight so their bumbling advance and poor morale are only evident when they get real close.

As a result, it is nearly impossible to keep the Germans from assaulting the Soviet forces. The good news is that virtually any result in the assault will result in plenty of morale failures amongst the German troops, but there are just so darn many of them.

In the end, numbers mattered and the Germans overwhelmed the Soviet defenders. The firepower and mass of the Germans was critical. This is a great scenario for understanding how to use mass and reserves in assault combat. It is essential for the Germans to keep their troops in hand and pursue rapid reinforcement of the assault hexes. Leaders with morale bonuses must be available for rally activity.

Trading fire with the Soviets is insane, just assault and don't worry about the detritus (losses or those red and black counters on top of your units). With the numbers you have you can't worry. Consider yourself Zulus. Oh wait, that wouldn't work for Nazis would it? Never mind.

This really is an excellent training scenario for assault combat. If as the Germans you don't keep at least two good order GREN platoons adjacent to each assault hex to reinforce the hex as the current occupants get disrupted or demoralized you will not be able to win. Give the Soviets a chance to recover and you have lost the game. I give it a "4" for the lessons taught.

This small night action pits a bunch of low morale German infantry and armor against a slightly better morale Soviet element holding a town and bridge. Setting up the Russians is a matter of which town hex gets the tanks and which one gets more SMG troops, and which one should get which of the 2 leaders. There are enough leaders for the Germans to split up into company stacks of 3 platoons with the Major getting the last 2 as a reaction force as the Panzers maneuver on their own. I was able to take advantage of the long scenario and the lack of fire from the soviets in town to maneuver everything into a circle around the town and then in one turn, move all but one stack adjacent, leaving the worst LT and his 3 platoons to send replacements when needed once assaults stared. German direct fire was much more damaging than the Russians, with lots of disrupted German units vs Russian step losses, especially when the 2 Mk IV units rolled a 2 result taking out 2 steps and then a roll of 2 again for leader loss. In the next town hex, the Russians were just about breaking even with disruptions and demoralizations, but with the German advantage in numbers, it couldn't last long, and finally the Germans assaulted both town hexes. The Russians in the northern town hex, having lost their leader, didn't last much longer and inflicted little damage before they died, but the other hex with 2 SMGs and the T-34c held out a bit longer, with both SMG platoons finally dying in place but the T-34 continuing to play cat and mouse in the town streets. On turn 10, a German assault rolled a 12, killing both steps of the T-34s in one shot. The Soviet captain managed to evade capture and was last seen moving south along the river bank looking for survivors and stragglers for a next time. With the Germans in control of both town hexes and having moved one stack onto the bridge, the Germans got the Major Victory.

I thought this made a good introductory scenario. The darkness means the spotting rules don't need to be worried about and the lack of indirect-fire weapons also simplifies things.

I placed a coupld SMG squads in the small town without a leader, not realizing at the time how important a Lt. would be. However, I also sent too many grenadiers against the small town. Fortunately for the Germans, I recognized this before the other group of Grenadiers had quite reached the larger town; I had them wait outside of LOS until the other group joined them.

A few lucky rolls by the Germans plus a few early instances of misunderstanding compound morale failure resulted in the Germans taking all town hexes by 3:45.

Overall a good scenario to get familiarized with the rules. Gameplay-wise, the Soviets don't have much to do until the Germans appear out of the darkness.

In this scenario, a large, low quality German force assaults two towns and a bridge along the Oder river. The Soviets left a single platoon to defend the small town, while the rest if their forces, including an understrength T-34 platoon, were concentrated around the bridge. The Germans split their forces into two groups, one to assault the small town, and another to assault the larger town and bridge. Unfortunately for the Germans, their only armored support, a platoon of Panzer IV F2s, advanced too far ahead of the infantry initially, and while halted on the outskirts of the larger town, they were overwhelmed by a surprise assault from Soviet infantry who had sallied out of the town.

Despite this initial setback, the attack went on. The Germans moved right in to assault the small town, and they tried to bring the weight of their superior numbers to bear outside the larger town, but it was tough going in the face of constant Soviet fire. The fragile morale of the German infantry made it difficult to bring enough force to bear, as Soviet fire constantly knocked German platoons out of the fight. After hours of back and forth in the small town, the Germans' numbers finally prevailed, and the Soviet defenders were eliminated. After an even longer firefight outside the large town, the Soviets were finally forced out of a town hex by a failure to recover their morale, and the Germans exploited this advantage and moved in. An immediate counterattack by Soviet infantry and armor failed to dislodge them, but the Germans didn't have the strength to push through to the bridge, ending the game with a German minor victory.

This was another decent small scenario for getting into the system. It was quick and straightforward, but it wasn't the most exciting and immersive experience. I am still hoping that bigger scenarios with more variety will deliver a better gameplay experience.

This smallish night time scenario has a Ad Hoc force (hence the title) of German GREN with a PzIV in support take on a small group of Soviet SMG supported by a reduced T34. This may be an ideal game for a first solo scenario but to be honest there is very little else to recommend it. The Russian commander really has little to do but watch the German horde advance give it his best shot with opportunity fire and then wait for the assaults to come in. With 17 GREN v 5 SMG there are just to many German units for their to be any doubt about the outcome, the German player also has plenty of time (18 turns) and normally better leaders. In my game the Soviet units were wiped out by GT10, I have had more fun watching paint dry.