A beseiged battalion of highly motivated Germans must escape their encirclement by two Soviet Guards battalions. Helping the Germans is a ridiculous 9/8 morale level compared to the Soviet 8/6.

Having read over Shad's AAR I decided to try a mass breakout with nearly my entire mobile force. By turn 3 this looked to be a tremendous choice despite some poor luck with morale checks on Soviet artillery strikes. Then I found that even highly motivated skilled troops have limitations. First, on turn 4 the German major was captured, decapitating the force and sticking them in place for the following turn (since they were compact in their attempt to break out. This left them as sitting ducks for the Soviet artillery.

The troops stood the shelling quite well and those troops in assaults continued to whittle away at their Soviet counterparts exceptionally well. Indeed, in combat the Germans were clearly superiod and if losses were to be factored into the victory we would have been looking at a German victory. However, escape was the only criterion and here the immobilization from the decapitation was a significant annoyance.

Still it appeared as though the Germans would still get the bulk of their force off the board, until the leaders with the shelled troops apparently decided that it would be better to run away into the woods than to stay with their troops (failed DEM recoveries on two key leaders). This led to the remainder of the scenario being consumed with attempts to get lone leaders back to the abandoned troops. The final loss tallies for the Germans were 7 steps and 4 leaders lost, three in the attempts to get back to the units.

Finally the lagging HMGs and their captain were able to bust through to the abandoned troops and the assaults which had been initiated on turn 3 resolved in favor of the Germans (6 German GREN steps causing 9 step losses to the Soviets alone). At this point, however, the Soviets from the following force had made it to blocking positions and used pinning assaults to immobilize the Germans within 4 hexes of exit. The last two mobile units were caught in the open by artillery and turned into mulch.

I only rated this one a "3" but I believe that my rating was highly flavored by the immobilization of the Germans. I did get one unit off the board so it wasn't a Soviet major victory but frustration at my cold footed German leaders was a major portion of the rating.