The Italians face a challenge in this opening scenario. They only have marginally more attacking forces than the Soviets, but the victory conditions are diverse and difficult. In addition to trying to exit the bulk of their forces off the map, they must also try to capture the lone hill hex and prevent Soviet forces from occupying any road hexes. Whew!

The thick mud prevents the Italian's transport from leaving the road, except for the highly valuable motorcycle units which are dramatically slowed down.

The Italian plan of attack was multiple flanking movements. First the m/c's swept (slowly) to the north to try to unseat the Soviet mortars and OBA spotter from the hill. They succeeded just before Soviet reinforcements from the center arrived to counterattack. This took the Soviet OBA out of the game, since a special rule only permitted OBA spotting from the hill. However, the Soviet mortars were devestatingly accurate all game long, reducing the reinforced m/c company to essentially a platoon of effectives and a bunch of disorganized stragglers.

The main body of Italians proceeded (slowly) down the central road in two groups, before breaking to the south. Italian artillery was pretty effective at breaking Soviet morale, and it looked for a time like the Soviet defenders would just melt away under demoralized counters. The Italians continued to lose steps and suffer demoralizations from uncannily effective mortar fire, so instead of assaulting the weakened Soviet defenders they continued around the defender's position and made for the exits.

The heroic m/c units continued to defend the key hill right up until the last turn, when a steadily reinforced Soviet counterattack finished them off.

The final tally: Italians fail to inflict enough step losses and just miss exiting enough units, while the Soviets recapture the hill and control at least one road hex.

Soviet minor victory.

I liked this scenario, it played quite quickly and was a bit of a puzzle. It would take real luck for the Italians to win, though.