Breaking the Line

[Bemused]

Just wondering if anyone has won this as Germans? Outnumbered by defending US troops of higher quality and not matter how much fire I pour into buildings they take hardly any casualties and little suppression, even when I limit their fire back as much as possible. They have plentiful bazooka ammo to kill and rout my Green and Conscript troops. I will be amazed if any German player won this on a first go. When I first tried I distributed my troops to be able to hit several buildings. With plenty of HMGs I thought I would achieve fire superiority. Oh, only a handful of turns too. Is this scenario designed to drive you crazy?

[Bemused]

Managed to eke out a German minor victory by sneaking a unit into the nearest victory location and setting him to hide. I had the nearest US occupied building under constant fire from the game start to give this a chance and used infantry smoke liberally to actually get to the building. I managed 5 flame thrower blasts (only caused 4 casualties between them, less than 1 per blast) from the two teams on this building. At the end, one of the squads had 3/12 still fighting, two of whom were wounded and the other had 1/12 unwounded. That's 9 dead in one squad and 11 in the other and yet they still did not rout and when I sent in an assault section they weren't even suppressed and shot them down. The former was "Shaken" at the end (with a -1 leader) and the latter was "Broken" with a -2 leader. Both are Regular quality with their (-1) platoon leader in the building behind, keeping them in range. 

US had 108 ok, 25 killed and 23 wounded/Germans 96 ok, 22 killed, 38 wounded, 2 missing. 88 vs 51 VPs and, since I got 50 points for the intersection , that was the deciding factor. The AI, in its infinite wisdom had not occupied the objective in the backfield which would have made it a US victory. I guess you could game this by sneaking a small German team into the backfield to "capture" this location. Little satisfaction in this victory which felt cheap. Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but I am left scratching my head about how the US in their stone buildings took so few casualties despite the huge volume of fire (mostly ineffectual from squads by the way, HMGs caused 18 casualties between them) while my troops melted away in their stone buildings in the face of what was (in most cases) less fire. I know lower quality troops put out less effective fire, but they seem to die more effectively too!

Anyone any advice/insights?

 

[thilio]

I did not try this one.
An advice is to play the big version "Hot time in Hatten" which is worth playing.
In this version you have tanks support with your infantry to take the town.

[Vacillator]

1 hour ago, thilio said:

"Hot time in Hatten" which is worth playing

Yes, it's a good battle.  Although I played it H2H as the Americans (US Major Victory).

[Bulletpoint]

You inspired me to go back and play this scenario again. Then I remembered why I skipped it the first time around, years ago. It's simply poorly designed in my opinion.

First try, I split my forces between town and the left flank. Got wiped out.

Second try, I stacked the deck with everything I got in the town, and this time, I got a minor win after 16 minutes of intense shooting at close range.

Was surprising to win it actually, without taking any of the objectives, but causing about 70 casualties for 50 in return seems to have been enough. I could probably have sent a team forward to seize the intersection objective, which would have likely given me a tactical win.

However, it was only thanks to having played the scenario before, and knowing which buildings would be optimal to occupy.