It seems odd to be writing a summary of a battle, albeit a paper one, with the title of subtle but it is a subtle difference that is highlighted within the National Uprising scenarios that is clearly seen here. The design inherent in PG really shines in this one.

A strong SS force is approaching a munitions depot guarded by 2 companies of Slovak regulars and a like number of partisans. The Slovaks are bolstered by an entire company of LT38s to help with firepower. The SS choose to take the road in order to move quickly onto the board as they must get the bulk of their forces across two boards and take towns on the third by the end of 6 hours.

The Slovaks expected the road to be the entry point and prepared a partisan ambush which dented the German advance. Unfortunately for the partisans they were immediately hit with massive firepower, destroying an entire company within the first hour of battle. On the other hand, the problems with SS troops, and particularly their leaders began to appear.

SS leaders are incredibly brave, carrying personal morale of 9 or 10, but they are inept leaders of men, having very few modifiers and most of those being combat modifiers. As a result the SS troops which have fair morale, often become disrupted and can easily become demoralized (with an effective morale of 6, requiring an unmodified roll of 5 or less to begin the recovery process. Woe to your units if they lose a step and become demoralized as then they only have a one in six chance of beginning the recovery).

As a result, the SS battlefield is littered with unrecovered units and good order leaders running around yelling at the troops to pay attention and start moving or at least doing something constructive. Since in many cases, SS units were composed of non-German, Aryans (e.g. sorta Germanic peoples from outside of Germany) there could have been language issues as well. Finally, the SS felt that an appropriate political outlook was a good substitute for military training for their leaders and their troops. All of these can be "felt" by the player as they continue to roll sevens and their troops remain useless.

After two and a half hours, the SS were stalled in front of a large hill where the Slovaks had placed a company of partisans and a company of regulars along with ten tanks. The tanks and the partisans had been causing some losses and disrupting and demoralizing the SS infantry. The SS armor had begun looping around to the south of the hill and was coming up behind the Slovak position. The Luftwaffe had, in the meantime eliminated the threat of the 75 AT gun position on the hill.

Suddenly the Slovak position seemed to disintegrate. The SS tanks ran through the regulars and destroyed the remaining Slovak tanks while what infantry that wasn't disrupted or demoralized passed through towards the towns.

The Slovaks had little to defend the towns with as the SS armor had swept up the potential retreating units. The SS poured into the towns and destroyed the retreating Slovaks. by turn 20 the result was clear and only the final score was in question. The Germans had 44 points, to the Slovaks 23, but in that 23 were 13 steps that never quite made it across the width of two boards. It was clear that it would take another several hours for the SS to recover enough to be combat effective again.

The design elements of PG that accomplish this evocative simulation are so simple but the remaifications so dramatic that it was stunning. After two scenarios of running across boards with Heer forces of similar composition but different leadership, the contrast with the SS performance was striking. Had the Heer forces demonstrated the inability to recover that the SS did in this scenario they could not have won those battles.

Perfectly acceptable scenario, tense at times with the SS armor being the major difference maker. But the "4" goes to the revealed design of the rank and file SS vs. their leaders.