Played as the third in Hugmenot's and my South American campaign. Up to this point the Ecuadorians have won both engagements. As the eventual winner of the war it is important for me to uphold the honor and ability of Peruvian arms!

One of the benefits of having played so many scenarios is the ability to learn from other situations and apply it to your current play. After the first two scenarios I became aware that the Peruvians were very similar to the Slovakian army of 1941; well endowed with advanced weaponry but woefully lacking in the troop discipline to be able to take advantage of that situation. Having made that connection helped me to temper my excitement at having such a armament quality advantage over the Ecuadorians and realize that this is a situation where my troops are still going to have to use numbers to overwhelm the Ecuadorians, not because the Ecuadorians won't run but because the Peruvians are almost as likely to run.

It is tempting to look at the fact that the Peruvians have motorized troops, paratroopers and airmobile troops, amphibious landings, naval gunnery and airstrikes against an undisciplined horde of Ecuadorians whose sole long range capability is a 65 mm gun which has a range of 14 and an attack factor of 4, and decide to try to do too much.

The Ecuadorians are well distributed in each of the front line towns and in both coastal towns. There is no obvious strong point to avoid. I decide to focus my entire motorized assault at the far eastern town, hpoing to quickly advance to assault and, using my better morale and leadership move through that town and provide support to my airlanding troops who will be landing in the center rear, well away from the Ecuadorians on turns 4 and 5. Prior to the aerial assault, I focus my artillery on the Ecuadorians defenders of the single hex coastal town (with the two potential landing hexes for my marines, who are currently fishing).

The motorized forces are able to quickly move into assault positions and enter the assault and promptly fail to gain any tractions. For the first 12 turns I focus on two hexes of the town with assaults on the 13 column and fail to roll anything useful.

Luckily, my paratroopers and "airmobile" troops are doing much better. After collecting themselves they are able to advance on the small town and through an undermanned assault on the defenders who had been softened significantly by the cruiser gunfire they are able to occupy a landing hex for the marines.

The Ecuadorian masses in the other two front line towns initially started sending reinforcements to the far eastern town that was under assault by my motorized column but then began assembling to provide reinforcements to the coastal town. It was not to be in time, however as the quickly arriving marines entered the town and were able to take control from the Ecuadorians after a series of bloody assaults.

Even before the town was completely taken, a column of paratroopers and marines set off to contest the larger coastal town which was heavily garrisoned by the Ecuadorians and two of their HMGs. A bold frontal move was stopped by accurate HMG fire so the "elite" Peruvians moved to contact through the fields east of town.

Meanwhile back with the motorized column the commander made the decision to invest the town without necessarily taking any of it, in order to avoid losses and tie down a large segment of the Ecuadorian provincial forces.

With that decision, and the progress of the Peruvian elite in the large coastal town the victory began to slip away from the Ecuadorian forces. Understanding the imperative to contest my progress in the large coastal town, the Ecuadorians sent a company to reinforce their troops. This company was harrassed by aerial strikes and mortar fire from the garrison of the small coastal town and on turn 24 of 28 they were demoralized and failed their recovery. At this point the Colonel of the marine force saw the opportunity for a coup and advanced to an assault position. On gaining the intiative (with a +3 it was highly likely) the colonel assaulted the two demoralized infantry platoons with a single infantry platoon and managed to, in the course of two turns destroy them providing a crucial 4 additional victory points to the Peruvians.

This led the Ecuadorian commander to try some last turn heroics in the far eastern front line town through assault which, expectedly, failed to either cause Peruvian losses or take back control of the town hexes. After the assaults were attempted the Ecuadorian commander conceded a Peruvian major victory.

The final score was 40 to 23, with only 9 points from the control of town hexes for the Peruvians vs. 16 for the Ecuadorians. The key was that the Peruvians contested 13 points worth of town hexes at the conclusion of the game. An interesting side note is that in three scenarios the Ecuadorians have yet to completely eliminate a single Peruvian unit. They did inflict 7 step losses on the Peruvians in this scenario but on 7 separate units.

This was a lot of fun to play, with the victory up in the air until quite late in the game. I give it a "4" and almost a 5.