I bought FCRS quite recently, and after playing the tutorial scenario decided to jump into campaign featuring USA forces, judging from my previous experiences with strategy games that it will be the easiest (familiar equipment to most new players, doctrine etc). And boy, I couldn't be more wrong.
I actually had to pause during 1st scenario and play some smaller single scenarios to learn more about the game (for example I made the mistake of assuming that forces can't start in view of each other and deployed poorly in few sectors). Then I read few AAR's and decided to prepare myself more and put more effort in manner of "proper" intelligence preparation of the battlefield and operational planning.
I don't think that this campaign, while it is reactively easy in middle scenarios, is good for the beginner.
First battle for me was the hardest, tensest, most dynamic and frustrating one. Most of this comes form the fact, that you have to fight a delaying action, at least in some sectors, and wait for your reinforcements to come gradually. Since I read few AAR's concerning this scenario I decided to go "spoiler-free" for the rest of the campaign, and for the first scenario adopt different approach - surprisingly, the most common approach seems to to create the "Bucholz-Steinbeck killing gap". I went with trying to hold Bucholz till I have reinforcements, but that didn't work out very well, I had to execute a counter attack from the north flank to recapture VP in this towns and destroy remaining Russian forces. That was a long and bloody battle, took me many hours to recapture the terrain, even as the air forces came to help.
In subsequent scenarios you start with all your forces at your disposition form the beginning, so they turn into simple defence mission, that thanks to your excellent tutorial (showing you how to be not afraid of liberal usage of smoke and mines) and properly identifying enemy COA's (thanks to the community for wonderful and educative AAR's).
I was able to play the last mission only with 2.06 beta patch, which brought some issues with it as well. After Sudden Death pop-up screen I tried to proceed and wipe enemy forces with a prepared counter-attack, since I was in relatively good shape, but I suffered very heavy tank losses due to enemy artillery fire (yes, DAG is brutal).
Edit: I would forget about one thing. While I liked the experience of playing this campaign in general, I found the scenarios (and it's only my personal, subjective opinion) boring, except for the first and the last one.
I guess I prefer more mobile scenarios, with smaller amount of units. In this campaign, "middle" scenarios got predictable - define probable enemy COA's, deploy, confirm them with recon and eventually shift your forces, then wait for them to bleed in attacks. Too many units on those maps for my tastes.
Here is the final screen. With knowledge form the first play through's I think one could easily improve the "scores". Most of the battles was lost or won during planning phase and deployment, when my troops had to pay price in blood for my mistakes.
