Shad's Note: I'm dumping in a bunch of my old BGG AARs. If you've followed my "work" on BGG then you've read these before...

SETUP CONSIDERATIONS

Because the Soviets must equally divide their forces between the two boards, the Germans - at least in the beginning - are roughly evenly matched as they attempt a breakout. The Soviets get a fair bit of artillery (26, 24 OBA, and 10 if placed intelligently) but the Germans will be rushing right past them so friendly-fire risk will likely restrict opportunities there. The Su-76 will be a pain in the ass, but in open terrain it moves just as fast (or slow) as infantry (7MP / 2 in Clear) so if the Germans can get behind it, they have a chance. German morale is also freakishly high - 8 for reduced platoons! - owing to their determination to break out, so they can still run through the gauntlet and have a chance.

This was solo play, so I had plenty of time to consider my setups. As the Germans I elected to entrench the 2 AT guns on the main East-West road to prevent the eastern half of the Soviet army from catching up with me too quickly. The Germans lack wagons/trucks so those guns are gonna die anyway.

With the remainder of my forces, I sent the HMGs and 2 GRENS to the south and kept the remaining 6 GRENS in the north, dividing the officers more or less equally among them.

As the Soviets, I placed my western artillery centrally to cover both exit paths, countered the southern force with one of equal deployment, and loaded up the north with the armor and remaining 6 INF. All units on the eastern map were placed as close as possible to the edge and tasked with simply catching up before everything was conclusively resolved...

BATTLE BEGINS

The scenario lasted 11 turns before the outcome was no longer in question. The southern force came charging slowly ahead (2MP HMGs...) and simply ran right past the Soviet platoons tasked with stopping them. One GREN platoon was lost along the way, but the 3 remaining units all managed to exit the board. The Soviet commander (also me!) made a serious tactical blunder here - he expected to stop the enemy with Direct Fire, not respecting the 9/8 morale's potential for bullet-dodging. The Germans danced through 2 or 3 turns of incoming fire without firing a shot in return, and then were out of range and gone. Oops.

In the north, learning from his mistake, the Soviet commander ordered all units out of their town & forest positions and into the clear to stonewall the advancing Germans. Body-counts were irrelevant, after all.

One particularly lucky German GREN & Officer managed to elude repeated pointblank & opportunity fire to exit to safety, but the remaining 5 units couldn't break free. By Turn 11 only 2.5 steps and 1 officer remained and the Soviets from the eastern deployment had reached the scene and encircled the enemy. The Germans surrendered and were promptly shipped off to Siberian deathcamps.

Shad's Conclusion

The three southern units escaped with relative ease, but the fourth from the northern contingent was unbelievably lucky. There is definitely room for either side to win, depending on approach. I would be curious to play it again with all the Germans formed up together trying to blast their way through rather than just running like crazed ferrets. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this short scenario immensely, and recommend it for both solitaire & face-to-face play. These sorts of interesting bits of WWII lore are what really make Panzer Grenadier great in my eyes...

This looks at first glance to be badly imbalanced. This proves not to be the case in play. But the Germans have crazy high morale. So the Germans move north as a concentrated force, leaving the ATGs to provide some cover from the Soviets chomping at the bit behind them. Due to the high morale, Soviet opfire and DF was ineffective, OBA disrupted 2 platoons. The Soviets were able to mire the Germans in assault, even though the Soviets took a beating. This lasted just long enough for the other half of the Soviet force to arrive. The slaughter was great and the Germans annihlated, with the Soviets having only 1/4 of their infantry left. Soviet win.

A beseiged battalion of highly motivated Germans must escape their encirclement by two Soviet Guards battalions. Helping the Germans is a ridiculous 9/8 morale level compared to the Soviet 8/6.

Having read over Shad's AAR I decided to try a mass breakout with nearly my entire mobile force. By turn 3 this looked to be a tremendous choice despite some poor luck with morale checks on Soviet artillery strikes. Then I found that even highly motivated skilled troops have limitations. First, on turn 4 the German major was captured, decapitating the force and sticking them in place for the following turn (since they were compact in their attempt to break out. This left them as sitting ducks for the Soviet artillery.

The troops stood the shelling quite well and those troops in assaults continued to whittle away at their Soviet counterparts exceptionally well. Indeed, in combat the Germans were clearly superiod and if losses were to be factored into the victory we would have been looking at a German victory. However, escape was the only criterion and here the immobilization from the decapitation was a significant annoyance.

Still it appeared as though the Germans would still get the bulk of their force off the board, until the leaders with the shelled troops apparently decided that it would be better to run away into the woods than to stay with their troops (failed DEM recoveries on two key leaders). This led to the remainder of the scenario being consumed with attempts to get lone leaders back to the abandoned troops. The final loss tallies for the Germans were 7 steps and 4 leaders lost, three in the attempts to get back to the units.

Finally the lagging HMGs and their captain were able to bust through to the abandoned troops and the assaults which had been initiated on turn 3 resolved in favor of the Germans (6 German GREN steps causing 9 step losses to the Soviets alone). At this point, however, the Soviets from the following force had made it to blocking positions and used pinning assaults to immobilize the Germans within 4 hexes of exit. The last two mobile units were caught in the open by artillery and turned into mulch.

I only rated this one a "3" but I believe that my rating was highly flavored by the immobilization of the Germans. I did get one unit off the board so it wasn't a Soviet major victory but frustration at my cold footed German leaders was a major portion of the rating.