Bulge 16.01s alt

[Plain Ian]

Turn 75 German 10 am 



One quick map. I'm afraid I'll have to do high level maps with little detail as I've still to start the turn.

Its 'shock and awe' time in the south as Indragnir applies the psychological thumb screws. He targets units not in Forest with werfer and artillery fire.
 
The 10th Armoured Infantry lose 32 men with 2 blast and then a further 6 to a third.
CCB HQ/4th Armoured receives the same treatment except he decides to keep going and uses all of his artillery to destroy the whole unit. 100 men gone. The unit miraculously respawns disrupted with 57 men and fatigue 197. A zombie HQ. Just what I need for fighting the undead.
 
The intention is pretty clear. He wants to show me that any infantry unit not in Forest will be heavily punished. Pretty impressive. I guess I just have to somehow stay in the woods and fight forward, or just use tanks or just accept that 1 unit a turn will get very badly beaten up.......
 
As usually with each painful lesson dished out by Indragnir I looked at a few things. Defensive strengths. My armoured infantry were beaten up pretty easily. I checked their defensive strengths. 16.  I checked a standard US infantry unit. 16. Mmmh so no difference?
 
The one surprise I did get when looking at all the defensive strengths was finding out that a German ‘mechanised’ Bn in a Panzer Division (shown with half tracks) is also 16 BUT an SS equivalent unit is a 6 BUT IS A HARD TARGET????  That explains a lot of my results against him at Spa. Pourqoui?
 
Anyway as to his turn, at Bigonville his Pz Lehr tanks followed up my retreat and killed 3 tanks with one shot. (stack firing....yes we all do it because sometimes tactically it makes sense but what would happen if we played a game with a house rule which said units had to fire individually?) 
It just reinforces my view that in PzC sometimes the best defense is no defense....so keep my tanks away from him. Artillery then rained down on the 5th Rangers who started the game with 450 men and are now down to 344.
 
The 5th Division lost just under a 100 men and another M4 tank this turn. He sent in a unit from the 276th VGD to make contact with his cut off 352nd stack. He pulled out one Bn but left one Bn and the 75mm unit still dug in (TRENCH) on the river line. This did however cost him 22 men due to opp fire.
 
5th Division is in a tricky spot and its hard to see how I can get them out. They got battered by artillery (more?) and fire from adjacent units. I really regret bringing them on, because if they were not there I would be saying sod this keep this terrain Indragnir, and pull back to Attert.  Best defense is no defense so lets not bother defending. 

I noticed VG units appearing behind Pz Lehr and of course a VG unit appeared in the far south to stop the 1-2nd sneaking past his roadblock in the south. 

Night.