The German player gets to choose their objective in this scenario. As the Russian doesn't know whether the Germans will be attacking the town or the troops themselves but they do know that the Tiger tanks are something new to be dealt with they deploy to maximize their ability to gain crossfire bonuses on the Tiger (their victory condition requires the elimination of the Tigers).

Since the conditions are for terrible mud the Tiger's movement factor is reduced to 2. This basically confines the Tiger to movement on the roads so I chose to go for control of the town as my victory condition. This would take the Tiger directly through the heavily targeted crossroads and into the face of the largest number of Soviet infantry which could attempt to assault the Tiger.

The scenario notes indicate that the actual loss of the Tigers in this battle was due to their foundering in the mud. Luckily, mine did not (there is a SSR for getting stuck) and advanced through the intersection. The sound of AT rounds bouncing off of armor must have been terrifying to the Soviets. The best shot they could muster was a minus one and that was only available on one turn as the Tigers motored on towards the town.

Once arriving at the town the Tigers stood off and started firing to reduce the morale of the defendes as the infantry came up. The Soviet captain in the town was a staunch defender of the Motherland and brought his troops out to menace the odd machines. A well placed DF attack demoralized his troops and resulted in another martyr for Communism. Now leaderless the potential attackers were quickly dispatched by DF and artillery fire. The infantry now moved in and with the help of the tanks chased the Soviets out of town.

All in all a very one sided affair. At first I thought that the choice of victory condition would hamper the solo play but the Soviets, without knowing the objective have to defend the town heavily which means that either objective will cause the Germans to attack the town in some fashion. I ended up destroying 17 steps despite the fact that my objective was to control the town.

If the Tiger had foundered in the mud this would have been a very different scenario as the Soviets would have been able to pursue an attack on the prostrate tanks. My play was more of a "2" but I give it a "3" for the might-have-beens.