Even after all the scenarios I have played I am still amazed at the rapidity of a defensive collapse. Typically it goes like this: an initial assault which fails, lots of reinforcements get fed in, slowly morale deteriorates, then suddenly a key unit fails to recover, must flee and massive changes set in. Not surprisingly, if I lead an AAR with that kind of comment, it happened here.

A small Slovak force is attempting to hold a line against a medium sized Soviet force. The Slovaks have reasonable initial morale but once they have taken a loss they are likely to run (their morale drops to "4"). Aiding them is a ditch running the width of the board which provides "dug in" status to any unit occupying it.

This is a relatively short scenario so the Soviets move forward, pounding the Slovaks with artillery fire but getting very little reaction due to the dug in nature of the defenders and the two Slovak leaders with morale modifiers. Ah well, nothing for it but to assault. In short order several hexes are cleared but three remain past the 9 turn mark (there are only 16 turns), one containing one of those peasky leaders with a morale modifier and an HMG and two with unlikely survivors of full scale assaults.

The Soviets, however, have developed a problem. The constant wearing of the assault combat has left a string of demoralized units to the rear. While one leader is corraling them and trying to get them to recover the strength of the assault force has been whittled down due to these temporary losses. In addition, you will note that one of the Slovak leaders with a morale modifier is not in the ditch. He is back with the routed troops organizing a counterattack.

Three more turns go by and some miraculous Slovak recoveries have happened (a one step infantry unit, demoralized rolls a "2" to recover to full strength when only a two could have resulted in them staying in the hex). The Soviets are beginning to despair when the HMG finally misses its morale check, runs from the ditch and is gunned down as it runs. the other two hexes similarly collapse. The Soviets go from despair to elation, but wait, is that the Slovaks counterattacking?

The Stotnik has organized a three platoon counterattack and leads it back to the ditch but, unluckily for them, opportunity fire by some of the Soviets has demoralized the troops as they arrive. By the end of turn 15 the counterattacking Slovaks are removed from the ditch and they have no chance to get back in. Soviet victory.

This scenario seems very tough for the Slovaks but with good leaders they had a real chance to win. This is a small unit count but a bit of an intricate affair. I give it a three.