Author	ACav (Germany)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	Soviet Union
Participants	treadasaurusrex
Play Date	2023-11-12
Language	English
Scenario	PaGr023

This ancient, 20-turn scenario from the original PG game was played over 5-sessions with my defending Germans getting beaten in what was looking like a walk-off, draw until the normally-feeble,Soviet cavalry and armored cars got behind my lines around the 12th turn. The Tredasaurus was the Russian player, who outdeployed and out-maneuvered what I thought was a good defense in this movement to contact on steroids.

We both drew pretty bad leaders to begin this confusing and bloodyy, 4-map battle. I did not like the special rule that made us bring our guys on the battlemap in what my fast-shooting opponent called "piecemeal fashion. In our play through, most of the Germans did not arrive on the map until after the 6th turn! By then, most of the Russians were on the opposite side of the map and were alreday starting to fix and flank my forward troops. The high point for the Soviets was bagging my Stug III on the 8th turn when I pushed it too far forward, without enough infantry support. My high point was a couple of lucky OBA strikes when the Russiane were stil spread out on the road. As usual, the Russians were losing lots of combat power to morale failures, but they had very good luck with iniative die rolls. I lost track of how many combat 7-die rolls we both threw, but I think that I had the edge in that category. I know that I had much worse luck in combat die rolls and in morale recoveries. We had 6 FOW-shortened turns out of 20. Oh, and we played with the consolidation, FOW and excess initiative optional rules, but overall, my side lost way more steps, mostly in 3-stack close assaults, than the Russians. They lost more steps in adjacent-hex fire fights than I did, and I thought that we would draw this one until my side got decapitated when the senior boss got killed, in a cavalry charge diring turn 15.

This one was closer than it looked and might have gone to a draw if we had not both picked the: inflict casualties, victory condition. The Russians did completely clear 2 of the map boards, but the Germans lost over 26 steps, to only 14 Russian steps. We both think that this one is okay to play in solitaire or shared play, but that the special rules and victory conditions need a rewrite.