Opening positions and situation:

The scenario covers the siege of Bastogne, and the relief efforts of 4th Armoured. It runs from 19th through the 26th of December, 8 turns.

2^nd Panzer, 26^th VG and Panzer Lehr are tasked with clearing Bastogne and making way to the Meuse. The networks of roads and rail all lead essentially to Bastogne. So at the opening all three formations have Ghost trains and coordination markers as they attempt to ram home to their objectives.

Historically 2^nd Pzr and Lehr were tasked or retasked with going around Bastogne and it would fall to the 26^th to clear the 101^st out.

Some elements of the Lehr were cross attached to 26^th, but the bulk were forced to press on. These historical limitations are not presented in this version of the Bulge. What is forced upon the German is a requirement to exit units for victory conditions from both 2nd Panzer and Lehr by the 22nd of December. So this will induce historical play. Nice!

By moving units forward along the above purple lines we can hopefully remove coordination markers on the 20^th. Ghost trains will be harder to remove.

This shows how we have both moved units in a bit more of a co-ordinated fashion and have lines of approach that form up ‘neater’ blobs for the formations, while still achieving some level of success with our planned advance.

Several years ago I had read about the concepts of formations in this game and the need to manage MSR’s [main supply routes], avoid ‘crossing the streams’ [I suspect a Ghost Buster fan coined that term] and the need to think in formations vs discrete units.

With a fresh re read of the excellent resource guide in the new Panzers last stand [ I think you can get it online too ] that reinforced those notions but with more and clearer explanation. Last Blitzkrieg with all its usability flaws [no divisional stripes for US], blending greens on the map and plethora of ‘hq’ info counters was a great 1^st effort, but now with new tools, and formation identification much easier the system as presented in other battles plays so much easier than this V1.0 version.

All that said we have the opportunity here to see how the system evolves and plays now with the V2.0 rules which are much more precise and clear, despite all the new ‘terminology’.
19^th December battle details to come next.

I paused play for play space reasons.

I look forward to giving this another go.