I got to use the Peruvian "modern" arsenal against the Ecuadorian masses. Given the ridiculously poor morale of the Ecuadorians I expected to roll over them with little trouble. After all I had better morale (7/5 vs. 6/5) and far better weaponry. I really didn't see how the Ecuadorians had a chance. Of course the victory conditions required crossing a minor river and holding the bridge and taking another 8 town hexes while experiencing less than 1/2 the losses of the Ecuadorians. No problem, I've got tanks and planes, machine guns, engineers, decent artillery and a numerical advantage. He's got infantry and the local constabulary.

But this is why they play the scenarios. The conflict was about as I expected. Daniel lost something like 15 steps and I lost 1. However, 15 turns into the 18 turn scenario it seemed that I was certain to lose. The Ecuadorians were making rally rolls like crazy while the Peruvians seemed to want to take a nap. Indeed one unit which was demoralized on the third turn remained that way for the rest of the play.

After I had invested the closest and larget town I sent a company of tanks and two companies of infantry and HMGs to take the remaining towns. The tanks entered one town and the infantry engaged the CARA at the smallest town. Unfortunately several of my leaders were down for the count trying to recover their morale and could not be bothered to help my assault on the smallest town until turn 14 or so by which time the second group of CARA had counterattacked my tanks and taken some of the town hexes from the armored fist of Peru.

Finally on turn 15, the Ecuadorians began acting like a force with a 6/5 morale and failing their morale rolls. With only two contested town hexes going into turn 18 and no ability to gain any more traction for the forces of Ecuador. The town hexes only had CARA units and in one case it was a reduced one. It looked even better after the initial assaults as in both hexes the remaining defenders were demoralized. Daniel failed his first roll and it came down to the last demoralized, single step CARA unit, which, of course, passed its recovery roll. After a throw away artillery barrage on the assault hex I was forced to concede.

Any game that goes down to the last roll of the dice has to be rated reasonably well but in this case it wasn't just tension that gave it its flavor. The juxtaposition of the advanced weaponry with only fair morale was a surprise to me. The Peruvian army felt much like the early war Slovaks to me, as even though their morale was vastly better than the Ecuadorian army it was still only as good as the Soviets in 1941. I needed to take more note of that and try to provide for a better mass when attacking.

It was, however a great time. I give it a "4".