#16_14s Wacht am Rhein (Herbstnebel)

[Plain Ian]

I've been helping Brian Jennings make adjustments to his Bulge campaign scenario. Brian thinks he is close to making his final adjustments to this detailed scenario so I thought I would do a quick-ish AAR of my second playthrough. 

We have already played one round of 6 turns and are on turn 4 of our second play through. I'm not sure how far we will play before we stop, but on we go. I'm playing as the Americans so most of my comments will be from that view point.

Lets start with the map.



As you can see this scenario uses a slighted extended map than the standard campaign scenarios (#16_01s and the Alt version). The map has been extended north so that Eupen is now showing on the map and Verviers is now not anchored on the map edge. 

V Corps HQ now starts at Eupen and not the map edge and because of the extended front we have two more Divisions on the map. 
The US 78th Division and all of the German 272nd VGD. The US 78th starts Fixed and some of its units are heavily fatigued. It won't be making much of a contribution to the battle. 
The 272nd is not Fixed but there are valuable VP hexes behind it. I'm guessing that the Germans won't be poking the bear with a stick in this area and will let sleeping dogs lie.

I've played #16_01s before and one of the bug bears I had with it was the northern map edge and the fact that the supply was tied to the two roads which ran to Eupen. (off map) This is now fixed.

The other pain was west east movement from Seraing to say Monschau. A lot of reinforcements came in at Seraing and had to be routed via Verviers along the torturous south bank. With the north network around Eupen now being made available, route planning should now be easier.



The map has also been extended south. This hasn't made too many differences to the starting OOB. The US 4th Division now has the 12th and 8th Regiments starting on map along with some elements of 4th Armoured.  
The Germans appear to unchanged as the units down here are mostly Festung type units which won't be participating in the battle since they are Fixed. 
I'm not sure how much of a difference this extra space in the south will be. I guess I will find out when I start falling back west. 

Next up will be the OOB/TOE changes. Since I had space on the maps I've shown some of these above.