Breakthrough at Lanzerath - Battlegroup Wacht Am Rhein

Breakthrough at Lanzerath - that's the name of the scenario which we recently played. Its a first scenario from the mini campaign included in the Battlegroup Wacht Am Rhein it features the Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon of the 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division US Army they are dug in in the forest overlooking small village. They are up against 2nd Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Fallschirmjäger Regiment which at that time was just reinforced by green recruits.

In this mission US troops are veteran quality and are behind 2+ cover, while the attacking paratroopers are Inexperienced and are advancing through the open ground.

On paper it looks like an easy win for Germans, but as it turned out frontal assault across open field at the entrenched troops is not an easy task. Not to mention small size of US teams which makes it harder to spot them.

I finished the first Phase as soon as I could to get the off-table mortars. By the end of 2nd phase around half of the US forces were left on the field.
I was able to win but just barely. Its pretty much impossible to break morale of the small US force so I had to wipe them out. Also the fire superiority makes a huuuuge difference especially when there is 1-2 RoF to begin with.

The table looks huge, did you play with 28mm minis?

No we played 20mm minis, table 6x4 feet, standard for squad level.

Looks bigger on the pictures.

Yeah it was a lot ground to cover