Mike Seningen and I just finished a game of Chateau Cherry. It proved quite interesting. When I first played this scenario, I hated it. I just kept making a zillion mistakes about LOS, winter camo, falling snow, you name it. It came down to the last turn, but I just didn't enjoy such sloppiness. I played it a second time, this time against Mike (who was new to the scenario), and this time I won due only to my greater experience with it. He made a number of mistakes, just as I had done, and it was another sloppy game. But we both felt that the scenario looked good, and Mike wanted a rematch. He felt he had some good ideas for the Germans.
The scenario features a couple of very exciting OBs, duking it out during the Ardennes offensive, with the chateau of board 6 the primary objective for the Germans. The Germans get a Wirblewind, a few PzIVs, a few halftracks, a FT, a DC, a couple of PSKs, and a mixed bag of infantry. The Americans get a 10-2, a .50HMG, a MMG, a mix of 747s and 667s, a jeep with a .50cal, and the infamous M3(MMG) that everyone on the list has been talking about, plus an "Easy Eight" Sherman. Board 30-something is used next to board 6 to provide lots of woods terrain. Oh yeah, the Americans also get a roadblock, which can easily be used to seal off an entry area for the Germans.
In our first playing, Mike set up just about all his guys on board, and got jammed up behind the roadblock, setting his schedule back too far to recover. So in this playing, I expected him to do something different. And he sure did, setting almost nobody up on board, except for a few 447s that immediately moved to start clearing the roadblock. I didn't have the roadblock well covered with fire this time, because the first time I lost guys too easily there. He brought on some concealed infantry and tanks on my far right, and immediately plunged one of the tanks into the woods and passed his bog roll. Soon he had a trailbreak and his other vehicles could pass through easily, in an area where I couldn't bring effective fire on them. Meanwhile, his squads cleared the roadblock with ease, and before long he was bringing in forces on my left as well. I lost a few of my delaying units. Board 6 can be very deceiving. It looks like you can get back to the chateau easily, but it's not the case. Broken guys often have to rout to one of those pesky stand-alone woods hexes. In my 3 playings of this scenario, the Americans have always lost some of their perimeter units for this reason. I had a MMG and a -1 leader in the smaller 2-level building near the chateau, but they had to bug out very quickly when they saw his 9-2 directed kill stack. So I guess they weren't much of a delaying force. It was looking grim for the Americans, except for the lone highlight of the early game, in which the Sherman knocked out one of his halftracks, laden with passengers. I deduced later that he lost his FT here. Shortly thereafter, Mike parked the Wirblewind at a safe distance to start hammering the chateau. It was being escorted by 2 PzIVs, which parked nearby. The Sherman's commander could hear them somewhere behind the trees nearby, so he started up and moved along the stone wall until 1 tank and the Wirblewind came into sight. I figured it must have been a good move (a rare occurrence indeed) because the Germans just about shit bricks. They tried to get in motion but failed. Then the tank fired at the Sherman but missed. He even used intensive fire, but still missed. The US tank commander (a 9-1 armor leader) needed only a 6 or so to hit either the tank or the Wirblewind, but he missed. Knowing that he would get clobbered in prep fire, he used the rest of his movement to bug out. Right about there Mike and I broke for the night, to continue the game the following week.
When we resumed, I was worried. I had had time to think about Mike's approach, and I thought it was brilliant. He was approaching from all directions, and forcing me to make difficult decisions. He had most of his forces intact, except for the unfortunate passengers of the wrecked halftrack. But the dice started to swing drastically in my favor. It seemed like I could roll nothing but 3s, as a 126 with a MMG shredded a big stack of his with several consecutive 4 +2 attacks. I even felt a little sorry for Mike, although I usually need a lot of good rolls to beat him. He was playing a great game but was getting diced under. To his credit, he passed his personal morale check and kept the pressure on. My good units were staying on the OTHER side of the chateau from the Wirblewind, but they still had a few targets and the dice were still hot, so the German casualties mounted. (Not only do the Germans have to take the building, but they have a cap on the number of casualties they can take.) My only good move in the latter part of the game was repositioning the sniper on a 2. He was on the left flank, so I moved him to the right, smack dab in the middle of two CE tanks, the CE Wirblewind, and his 9-2. Eventually the sniper stunned both tanks and recalled the Wirblewind (but of course after he had gotten just about all he could out of it). His flanking force of 2 halftracks and a few squads, a leader, a DC, and a PSK was having equally bad (or worse) luck, including taking a sustained fire 2 -2 from a MMG on which the dice showed snake eyes. Ouch. The .50cals shredded these guys, and the Sherman moved over to try to score some easy VPs on the halftracks. But Mike is a wily player, and he used all his resources. His escorting infantry couldn't knock out the Sherman, but one halftrack did escape. The other, earlier abandoned by its crew, was eventually killed.
The last part of the game saw the Americans doing a lot of slinking, and using bodies to block stairwells from the Germans. It turned out to be just barely enough. The Sherman headed off to the road on the left, since taking the chateau was not enough for the Germans to win. They also need to ensure that no American units have LOS in normal range to a road on this part of the board. But one of the PzIVs knocked him out anyway. The dice started evening out a little at the end, but it wasn't enough and the Americans eked out a win.
Conclusions: First of all, Mike played an outstanding game and really should have won. The mailing list's record shows a lot of American victories, but I wouldn't want anyone to avoid this scenario for that reason alone. My guess is that those American victories may be due, in large part, to inexperience with the scenario. If both sides don't know anything about the scenario at all, I think the American side has the edge, since the Germans have a lot of ways to go wrong. But I think that Mike showed that, if played well, the Germans can certainly be right in the thick of it at the end, even with some good rolling by the American. I think the scenario improves for players as they play it more often, and yet the options available to both sides (especially the German) prevent it from growing stale. And there are always the Australian balance provisions (which we didn't use). Make sure you agree on how many MGs, and what kind exactly, come off that halftrack. :-)
Matt