I was needing some Eastern Front action so I picked a nice looking scenario from the Army Group South Ukraine supplement. It pits the Romanians and Germans against the Soviet Guard Units in the spring of 1944. Both sides have a nice mix of unit types but the Soviets have about a two to one advantage in Infantry type units, as they are the attacking force as far as victory objectives. The Romanian start defending setup on map 16 with great terrain advantage on this map with the hills and town hexes and they have a few German units and more German reinforcements entering on turn one with armor. The Soviet setup their small battle-group on map 25 with two more groups of reinforcement entering on turn one as well in two different areas of the map. The Soviets must be the aggressor to win this but the Germans need to move units over from map 22 to map 16 to help the Romanians, so there is no sitting back for either side.

As the Soviets, I rushed my units forward from map 25 to map 16 trying to get some advantage against the Romanians in those town and hill hexes before they are reinforcement by more Germans with armor. So the Soviet push the mass of their infantry forward, as both sides have only a little off and on board artillery. They also send all their T-34/76a’s & T34-/76b’s around the south of the town on map 16 and their monster JS-2’s north of the town, trying to head off the German armor. The Germans engage the T-34 A & B types with the PzV’s and PzIVE’s and Push their Tigers north the engage the JS2’s and both types are a pretty equal matchup.

Map 16 turns into the boiling point of this battle. To the South the Germans get the upper hand blowing away most of the T-34’s with the loss of a step of Panther tanks and both steps of the weaker PzIVE’s but in the north the JS-2’s had the better terrain and positioning and knocked out all of the Tigers for a change with just the loss of one step of JS-2’s. In the Middle the hordes of Soviet Infantry are finally able to fight their way through the Romanian and Germans infantry but at a pretty large price, as fighting uphill against dug-in enemy infantry or infantry embedded in buildings starts to take a toll. The Axis are force to give up control of map 16 but not the town hexes on map 22 where they regroup to form another weak defensive line but with only 24 turns the Soviet are short on time to regroup to take their final town objectives on map 22. The remaining Panther tanks and JS-2’s battle in out a little more with both sides taking a few losses but in the end the Soviets fell a little short and the Romanians receive a minor victory for Soviet step losses.

Very fun scenario to play! A large puzzle to try and solve for sure. I still need to learn better strategies for both sides in this scenario. Remember, the Soviets have armor efficiency in this scenario as well as the Germans, which I almost forgot on the first couple of turns. You will need playing piece from Road to Berlin and Red Warriors for the Germans & the Soviets and the Romanians from the Eastern Front and maps from Elsenborn Ridge and Road to Berlin but it is well worth the effort as this was a very enjoyable scenario to play, win or lose.