Played face to face against hugmenot.

Two battalions of Soviets in fixed positions are charged witht he responsibility of stopping a battalion of Sisu from penetrating their lines. The Soviets have plentiful artillery, some armor and several entrenchments. The terrain is terrible, the area is heavily wooded with only a couple towns and fields breaking the tree line. The only advantages held by the Finns are that they are Finns, meaning they have huge advantages in morale, assault combat and speed in lousy terrain.

The Soviets spread evenly across the front and the Finns enter in a group to the south end of the field. Unfortunately for the Finns they get horribly tangled up on one of the entrenchments which holds out for 2 1/2 hours. About a third of their troops infiltrate beyond the entrenchment and find a large Soviet force has moved to box them in as a second line.

Being Finns, the Sisu immediately move to attack and begin to grind through the second line. The Soviets begin having trouble using their strong artillery without hitting their own troops and within two hours of contact the second line is breached. At that point the forces that had finished cleaning up the entrenchment were able to pour through the gap in the Soviet second line and move towards the river and the ultimate exit from the field. All that stood in the way were two batteries of 76.2s and an infantry platoon. An impulsive Sisu assault opened the road just in time for exiting to begin on turn 23 of 24.

The Soviet artillery was used to great effect causing delays to the Finns through disruptions and the occasional demoralization. Although the final result was a major Finn victory it was by no means clear that any Sisu would be exiting the field until we reached turn 21 or so. At one point, near 1/2 way through I was certain that the only way the Finns could win was to eliminate enough Soviets to counterbalance the 24 points the Soviets would get for keeping the Finns from exiting. Once I put my troops to that task, however, the hole opened in the Soviet second line and I was able to move through.

A fun scenario but a tough one for the Soviets, they are slower and have trouble in any stand up fight with the Sisu. I think hugmenot got a lot out of the Soviet troops and made the fight a lot tougher than it looked at first. I give this one a "4".