Played face to face with Hugmenot in our continuing series of Indian Unity. After this we will have only one to go to finish up.

This is a totally fictional scenario as the actual armor units (Valentines and Stuarts) which the Hyderabadis were hoping to acquire remained unavailable and the lack of such armor is felt in many of the scenarios in the supplement. This gives us a straight up tank battle with very litte terrain to worry about (board 8 is like that.

Daniel got the initiative and pushed his Stuarts directly across the board towards my entry area. I entered in three groups with the Valentines and their higher armor protection (and 6 pdr guns, the best in the scenario) advancing straight at the Stuarts and the Stags and Hyderabaid Stuart taking up flanking positions to get crossfire bonuses.

It became immediately apparent that Daniel's Stuarts were in a kill zone and he pulled back towards the small woods on board 5 where much of the remainder of the action played out with cover being used and lost as both sides looked to take out a few more steps of the enemy. With only 10 turns the scenario wrapped up quickly.

The scenario itself is a good one to give a chance to try out tactics with armor. The goal is to eliminate enemy steps and in our case the Hyderabadis led 8-6 at the end. The vehicles are typically low armor protection (most of the Hyderabaids have "1" armor all of the Indians have "2" values) and crossfire and/or adjacency are crucial items to increase teh likelihood of success.

I strongly recommend playing this scenario if you have it before playing any of the large early war armor clashes on the Eastern Front as the lessons are clearer here than in any place else except for maybe "The Duel" a tank battle in EFDx which has limited numbers of counters.

Here you can see the value of a hopeless shot that gives a crossfire bonus or the need to move rather than fire to eliminate that bonus. It is a great learning scenario no matter how it plays as a competitive scenario.

Given the small number of units, it is unlikely that either side can have enough luck eliminating the enemy and avoiding their own loss to get to even a minor victory (a 3 loss margin). As a result, despite its value as a learning scenario, I can only give it a "4" as the draw is a near certainty.