Just to let fans know, there is another solid contribution of a scenario this time from Ray Trochim. He combines the Normandy expansion and Fury of the Bear.

Visit my site to grab it - http://www.brummbar44.com

Enjoy!

Good to see that even when it seems FFG isn't doing much to keep the game alive, we the fans are!

Looks like a good scenario. I might give it a try when I return from hospital.

Oops, typo… just ignore one of the L's in "ballance" on page 3.

Playing this one on Sunday December 9. Will post AAR afterwards!

OK. I'll post a more elaborate AAR at a later time, but here are the most important observations:

Based on just one play I'd say that it's a fairly balanced scenario (VERY balanced scenario compared to the vast majority of most of the official ones), although we had the impression that the Germans have somewhat of an edge. My opponent played the Germans and is far less experienced at TOI than I am. For the majority of the game he played far too timidly. Had he been more aggressive we were pretty confident he would have relatively easily pulled out a win. Now it came down to one unit being pinned or not (which in fact happened) causing it not to be able to move onto the objective. Obviously a more aggressive type of gameplay would have resulted in more German casualties, but in this scenario the number of casualties the Germans sustain is irrelevant: as long as you have a single figure on the bridge at the end of round 7 you win. We had the idea that a 6 round game would have made it just that little bit harder on the Germans that it would have been very challenging for both sides. Then again, this may be one of the balance options provided by the author, I don't recall, and also, as I started out saying, all this is solely based on a single play.

I did find the scenario to provide a nice feel of Peiper in the Ardennes trying to cross vital bridges before the Americans manage to blow them up (which is what round 7 could symbolize, or perhaps even does). The winter map also seems to fit aesthetically more so than the Ardennes scenarios that come with the base game and use "Summer maps". All the US units being engineers gives them the opportunity to dig entrenchments and make certain positions into strongholds. This is also what actually happened during the Battle of the Bulge. Finally, recreating a sense of the actual battle is done with a minimum of special rules (the most importnat one being "bogging down": vehicles moving off road must roll for immobilization"). Personally I usually incorporate many more special rules into my own TOI scenarios to make it feel as historically accurate as possible. I'm therefore impressed by the author of this one being able to accomplish that with just a bare minimum of special rules.

All in all a very enjoyable scenario with a good feel for the actual battle and Í'm certainly going to try it again one day. Then we'll switch sides.

Next scenario on our to play list is Red House, which can also be found at www.brummbar44.com