Baseball is a game that is taught to American children at an early age. It is an odd sport involving a lot of hand/eye coordination and a rule book rivaling ASL in length and complexity. My wife and I have gone to several games this year and she is learning how the game is played and rules such as the infield fly rule (a particularly notorious rule involving a ball played into the air by the batter and the potential for fielders to play the ball to their advantage, rather than the batting team's advantage), etc. No doubt baseball players were highly involved in the drafting of some of the rule books we have seen.

Integral to baseball is the ability to stay in the "batter's box" while the pitcher throws the ball. Batters have a tendency to "step in the bucket" or step away from the path of the ball once it is pitched even if they intend to swing at the ball. This, of course, causes them to miss when they swing. This tendency is due to the fact that if the pitched ball hits the batter it hurts. So, it is a self defense mechanism.

In FA 15 we are given the opportunity to see the Slovaks with their foot in the bucket. They are understrength, stretched and faced with a Soviet force with ample armor, tons of artillery and plentiful infantry. But perhaps more important, they are low morale. The top end "7" is no great shakes but their units dissolve once they have taken a step loss due to the low end morale of "5". The narrative points out that the Slovaks were ready to run or quit and the scenario clearly shows that impact.

The Soviets were able to launch three prongs, one at each bridge and one to cross the river using engineers. It turned out that, due to incredible artillery fire, lousy morale rolls and sheer weight of direct fire both bridges had fallen to the Soviets within the first hour. By turn 9 the first hill had fallen and by turn 12 the second hill was held by one demoralized Slovak step. Two platoons occupied a one hex woods on board 7 but were going to be in sight by the next turn and the repeated high roll artillery would have destroyed them in short order.

The one bright spot for the Slovaks was the 88. It managed to knock out 2 steps of T-34s and withstood 3 assaults, demoralizing an entire stack and withstanding their own OBA which hit the hex with the demoralized attackers and the 88 and caused another 2 step losses to the Soviets.

The Slovaks are in quite a terrible predicament and a victory of any type depends on holding a bridge and delaying the Soviet crossings as much as possible. Given the massive amount of artillery and the low morale of the Slovaks it just doesn't seem as though there will be any Slovak victory parties with this one, even with the short timeframe, just like in reality (funny that). Instructive but not a blast, I give it a 2.