I recently played the "New Mission" Scenario, which is a deliberate 3 player scenario with the two allied divisions not being allowed to talk after the game starts. This is to simulate the prejudice that still existed between the white infantry and the black tank squadrons. I played the infantry, which initially set up directly in front of two building surrounded by barbed wire, mines and a tank trap. The germans in this scenario have 3 or 4 mortar units which can conveniently be placed out of range of all attacks. The infantry have few special units (3 engineers and an officer and only the side directly in front of the mines and barbed wire has any cover hexes. The tanks in their separate setup board are limited in their break through to a single forest hex on the opposite side of the board.

I started out the first round, the only round the allies have the initiative with an engineer squad in the only hex on the set up side with a mine and removed it. During play the German player dropped repeated suppressive fire attacks on my units lined up hoping to break through and stopped there movement and prevented their movement. Then during play the German player used units inside the building and within normal range to shoot the engineer unit out of existence. Since the Germans start out on top of 4 initiative points to the Allied 2, the German took the initiative for all subsequent rounds. By round 4, with out ever having had a chance to move a single unit, every one of my 8 squads had been destroyed, 7 by mortar attacks and then the pinned unit with my officer in it was attacked by an elite unit moving out of the buildings. During all of this the tanks provided some relief and even destroyed a few units. I on the other hand got to roll a few red defensive dice and the game was over!

If any of you have played this scenario, I would like to know what you did with the infantry, other than using them as mortar fodder. I am thinking the best setup might be to keep the units back, out of Line of Sight so the mortars can not attack them and wait until the tanks get moving enough to pin the units in the building. The only other strategy I can think of is to line up as many as I can right on the border for the first turn and use them to assault the building by first removing the one center mine hex. It looks like a suicide run but it may be the allies best chance for advance. Frankly this looks like suicide for the allied infantry and I do not understand how they managed in the real life scenario. I couldn't find much tactical information about the original battle as most of the references I found talk about the personalities and the the military strategies employed.

I will be playing this scenario again on Tuesday evening and would love to hear any suggestions. I will post with the results.

Thanks in advance!

My gaming group has played this scenario 3 times with the first two being a routing of the allies by the Germans, including one of those routes being applied to myself. After replaying at home and scouring the rules I realized the error by the German player. He was loading up the buildings along the front that the allied infantry would be attacking from and then pouring down mortar fire on any units within LOS. I realized that the Allied Tanks can line up on those buildings while well out of range of the German Panzerfaust and use the same strategy of destroying units within LOS. On the 3rd play, my second I setup only two squads within LOS of the buildings. The first performed an Fire and Move, Firing first at half strength and backing up out of Line of Sight. The other unit, an Engineer squad dropped an entrenchment where they stood. I am not sure how helpful this was, but this gave the Germans a target for their Mortar units. Over the first turn the tank dropped fire down on the 3 front hexes of the building destroying one unit and reducing 2 others. By the end of the 3rd turn there were no more units in the building within Line of Sight and I moved my tanks forward, most still out of range of his Panzerfaust. However by moving up one tank at a time, just within range he finally exposed his hidden Panzerfaust allowing my tanks which survived to counter attack. Unfortunately we ran out of time and I have to wait until Wednesday to find out how it will end but at least I still have most of my infantry as I move towards the two German victory locations.

If any of you have played this scenario, I would love to hear how it went.