I finally got a game in on Eastern Front Deluxe. I played scenario #43 Red Steel: Tank Battle at Chisinau

This, is a good-small, just armor on armor battle. It is suppose to be 40 turns but it was over in about 10 turns the way I played it anyway. I just went for the straight head on advance, trying to exit the Romanians as soon as possible off the South end of the board and rushed the Russians to engage them but I should of just setup a Russian blocking force. But my way was probably more historical as it became mixed-up armored mess on the field of battle. The Romanian Air unit needed a roll of a two or a twelve to get a disruption on the Soviet armor but that roll never came. As the armor became mangled and mixed-up on the board the Romanians were able to exit 6 steps of R2’s off the board, 2 full strength units and two half strength units. They did lose 6 steps of R2’s which helped the Soviets fulfill their victory condition as well making this game a draw. In all fairness, after I exited the required Romanian units off the south side, I kept the remainder of the R2’s on the board to see how they would do against the Russian T-26’s & T34A’s. The Russians rolled low and the Romanians high. The R2’s took out 3 step of T-26 and one step of T-34’s. The T-34 step was taken out as a result of an 11 dice roll by an adjacent R2 which equals 11+2+1-4=10 on the AT result table (one step loss)!

A fun fast playing scenario! Next time I play this one I’ll try to exit more of theR2’s as the Romanians, denying the Soviet their victory. As The Russians I’ll setup line defense line at the South end of the board and just fire away and hopefully get better dice rolls this time. Hey, it was my first time with this scenario and I just want to get the action on. Even though it was a draw, I really thought the Russian armor would just over power the R2’s but they have a good 3 armor factor for defense. It was good to see this battle on a platoon level, as I have played Red Steel on the higher level. It always takes me two plays of any scenario to get the prefect setup and strategies right. Next time I play, I feel I can win with the Russians! We’ll see?