This 20-turn scenario gives a small Soviet defending force against a slightly larger attacking SS force. The river represents a lake shore, the bridge basically a pier or loading point and the Russians have to keep the Germans from having twice as many undemoralized steps within 6 hexes of that point by the end of the game. Historically, this was an SS failure and the Finns went in after the SS failed and finished the job with little problem. That was pretty much the way this went, except the Finns haven't arrived yet at the end of this scenario. Although it is a night scenario, visibility is 12 hexes as it is that time of year this far north, with the midnight sun. I stacked the Russians with 2 infantry and an HMG with a leader in each of 5 stacks, with the mortar all by itself, starting the first 2 stacks in the woods, the other 3 set every other hex to the west of the woods. The terrain changes for this scenario, so woods on the map becomes regular woods while open becomes light woods, except for the town and fields in the north board, which are treated as clear, although they had little effect on the game since the action takes place in the southern board. Germans were set up on or adjacent to the road with a chain of command allowing for all but 1 stack to move forward on turn 1. I mention brittle in the AAR title because SS have a morale of 6/5 to the not-much-better Russians of 7/6, but the Russian player gets to pick the counters for the German commander and one of the two captains, so naturally I picked the worst 2, 7-0-0s for those, and drew not much better for the rest of them, with a single 8-0-1 in the bunch. Russians had moderately good leaders with 8s and a 9, with 2 having morale modifiers and one a combat modifier of 1. Both sides managed, even with the low morale, to regroup and go back into action, but German losses and troops fleeing outside of reach by the handful of leaders meant that it was going to be hard for them to achieve their victory conditions. Russians and Germans traded demoralizations and both sides had a tough time recovering but for the most part, leaders recovered, even the German 7-x-x leaders, within 2-3 turns. Without going into a step by step rundown, Germans were stuck in assaults, and since the Russians were defending and got first fire, assaults were bloody business, with most of the German losses coming from them, either after double step losses or as a result of failed morale checks after step loss. At the end of 20 turns, Russians had taken 4 steps and 1 leader (Russian leaders count toward losses in this one), while the Germans had taken 11 step losses, and there were 10 Russian steps still in the victory condition area, to only 4 for the Germans. This ended in a 21-9 Russian victory. Great game.

Soviets set up in a rough semi-circle six hexes from the objective hex (0909). Germans set up in an east-west line as far south as the rules permitted. The Germans advanced on the eastern part of the map using the woods as cover. They were able to advance quickly, but also suffered significant casualties. As the game progressed the fighting was concentrated in the heavy woods of board 3. Both sides suffered heavy losses, but the German superiority of numbers and their OBA eventually saw them gain an advantage. Over the last half of the scenario most of the time was spent trying to rally both sides and relatively little combat took place. In the end the Soviets had only two small stacks of disrupted units remaining and the Germans controlled most of the board, winning the scenario 33-15. Overall not a great scenario because too much time was spent rolling for recovery. According to the VC's it was still undecided until the end of the game, but the boring final half of the game means I probably won't play this scenario again.