Example of German decision making in Ardennes II

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:01]Good day, folks. Welcome to this situation in this play-through of Ardennes 2. This is turn five, the 23rd of December. The Germans have broken through in parts, but the Germans Americans are always responding.

[00:00:11]And here we are up in the north with the 6th Panzer Army, and I have three SS divisions in the area here. You can see first SS Panzer, 12th, 9th back here.

[00:00:28]And they've got a lot of flexibility.

[00:00:30]They're on these main roads, so they can strike north, east, northwest through Malmedy, uh west and try and come out here. You can see parts of the 150th 150th Panzer Brigade out here. Uh advanced elements of first SS have driven way out here past Vielsalm, and then you've got other elements of the 150th down in the south southwest of or south of Bovigny with the potential to drive out here.

[00:00:56]So, the Germans right now have a lot of potential roads to use to attack and overrun. You're only allowed to overrun across these roads.

[00:01:09]The question is where do they strike?

[00:01:11]And you'll notice the depth of these American positions. So, the American the Americans have to defend in depth because of overruns. So, the Germans can overrun sort of isolated positions. So, this 9th Armored uh task force here, all the way down the south, way down here, it can potentially potentially be overrun and cleared out.

[00:01:36]So, you can see they've got another formation uh behind the lines here. And then they've got another formation behind the lines here. So, the idea is if this is overrun, then the Germans will have to uh assault and engage in combat here during the combat phase. And if that succeeds, then they can potentially overrun here.

[00:01:57]And then I've got more depth behind there.

[00:01:59]So, this is kind of like this this drives the the German depth of defenses. This idea of overrun combat exploitation, you can overrun the exploitation phase, and so forth.

[00:02:10]But now the Americans are kind of caught onto this this need, [sighs] it it poses a problem for the Germans.

[00:02:16]What do the Germans do, and where do they strike? Uh you can see there's there's slim chances of overrunning. I'm not allowed to inspect the stacks. Uh I can't let There's a slim chance of overrunning these big stacks.

[00:02:30]Potential overrun here, but this will be slow movement along here. This costs mechanized movement uh units two MPs each to move along these hexes. Uh this here looks like a very choked up road through Tour points.

[00:02:47]Um yeah, so tough going through here.

[00:02:50]There's a secondary road along here that again that'll be very expensive. If I hit this hex here, and I think I've got 32 30th division units in here. If I can break through there, then I've only got artillery behind the lines, and I can potentially race through there. I can probably quite easily overrun uh this unit up in the north.

[00:03:10]This might be a better avenue, pushing through here. But even better might be Malmedy. So, Malmedy here is is only defended by one unit, but if I need to break through here first. So, if I can push through here, potentially overrun Malmedy, then I need to overrun here as well. The artillery will scoot away.

[00:03:30]Um that might be a way to go. Looking further to the north, looking further to the north, uh it's tough defenses behind um behind the Wash River.

[00:03:44]And that might be very difficult. If I can get If I can If I can get through here, then there There many. This is artillery, they'll have to scoot away.

[00:03:53]But it's getting beyond getting beyond this area here and there's only this one road leading through here. The Americans still hold Butgenbach.

[00:04:03]Uh So, yeah. Tough tough German decisions and it's this typical kind of uh Battle of the Bulge mentality. Where where do you look to strike? Where do you look to break these American defenses and can you exploit through any Can you open any gaps? Can you exploit through any gaps?

[00:04:23]The overrun rules in the standard combat series uh generally quite generous, but right now >> [snorts] >> the Germans don't have a lot of good stacks. So, what they'd be looking to do is in the movement phase consolidate these units together, all right? Get them into a stack. Uh they can attack in the combat phase. If they force the defenders away sufficiently then [snorts] maybe they can overrun in the Maybe they can exploit. They need to be exploit capable by not being adjacent to a defender.

[00:04:55]Uh yeah, lots of these tough decisions in a very in a you know, relatively light rule set.

[00:05:01]Uh it's facilitating these kind of Yeah, this this interesting decision choice.

[00:05:07]Back behind the lines here, we've got 9th SS back here.

[00:05:11]Uh what can I do? I could I could Yeah, not much, really. I'm I'm just looking north of Butgenbach up here. If I can push through there, there's only artillery behind the lines. Also, Elsenborn here pushing through. I need to push through and and it's lightly defended. One battalion, one battalion pushing through here. Nah, it's going to be tough.

[00:05:34]Uh everywhere I look, the Americans um yeah, have got this this decent defense.

[00:05:41]So, there you go, folks. I just want to capture that kind of sense of uh the challenges that the Germans face. A lot of decisions open to them.

[00:05:52]Pros and cons with each avenue.

[00:05:56]Down in the south, I I didn't really capture it, but way down in the south I do have the 116th Panzer division. So, they are here.

[00:06:05]They could They could hit 7th Armored. So, you can see here 150th Panzer Brigade have swung around.

[00:06:14]But, there's still this road here. So, they could strike 7th Armored and then lead out west towards Houffalize down in the south. A lot of options. A lot of options here. I don't know what to do.

[00:06:28]All right, more to come soon. Thanks for watching everyone. Take care.