I was Vince's Soviet opponent in this one. As he indicated I rather botched my setup by putting too much emphasis on holding the road and not enough units on the flank.

This is a tough scenario for the Soviets but has a lot of interesting features. It's tough to make good use of the five morale militia. Most of the time they will fail even a simple morale check and they will demoralize very easily. They are extremely tough to rally --- once demoralized they only rally on a two or three! Coupled with limited Soviet leaders (and only one with a morale modifier) I was forced to mostly use them as speed bumps. Vince was able to approach them without a great deal of fear (they are rated 2-2) and they typical started to crumble the first time they were fired on. I did have a few make heroic stands and even recover on their rally roles, but their main job was simply to slow the Germans.

The KVs are another story. These tanks are absolute monsters and it was nice to play an early war scenario where the Germans had to fear Soviet tanks. Their only drawback is that they are slow so proper deployment is crucial.

The Soviet player is really on the defensive here. The trick is to maximize deployment, decent artillery and anti-tank guns, nearly useless militia, and extremely powerful tanks.

I will say that I was impressed by Vince's skillful sequencing of moves and attacks and the masterful way he used terrain (his units always seemed to be one hex out of range or just blocked by a stand of trees).