Despite the fact that this one ended as a draw it is highly weighted towards a Polish victory. The time indicated in the title of the AAR is reflective of the rolls of the Soviets artillery during the first 6 turns. The losses and disruption this caused the Poles led to a slow development of their offensive and the inability of the Poles to clear the last step of Soviets from the last objective, despite rolling ont he 24 column for assault and the morale of 6.

Around turn 10 I actually had some doubts as to the Poles ability to do the job at all. They were slowly moving across the bridge but their secondary crossings in the center and far right of the line were not getting any traction. At that point the Polish artillery and mortars began rolling like Soviets and the far left of teh Soviet line evaporated.

Since the Soviets had already reached their minor victory condition of 20 Polish losses the Poles could be a bit more daring and pushed hard to reach their major victory conditions. Starting at turn 16, the Soviets began running away and really didn't stop appreciably through the rest of the game.

An interesting sidelight to the game was the Polish airdrop. These troops were almost without effect until the very end of the scenario when they were the primary infantry component of the assault on the town on board 19. Indeed the JSU-122s ran through some of the paratroopers until a Black Prince platoon shook loose and left a bunch of burning hulks.

In the final analysis, the tremendous fire results for the Soviets in the early part of the game resulted in their ability to hang on by their fingernails for a draw. Without those it seems certain that the Poles would have captured a major victory but in the end result here it was only two minor victories matched up. In general I would expect the Soviets to reach a minor victory anyway due to their ability to have some serious firepower in their assault hexes and they do have a bunch of artillery. Due to the likely results I can only give this a "3". It just doesn't seem to have enough variability to earn anything higher.