This was a Skype game played against Vince Hughes over three sessions. It is a tough river crossing for the Soviets in the middle of December, a rough time to go for a swim. We had good sessions with the troops but low morale and firepower kept the casualties relativity light. I found the at the Soviets have a lot of men but they are fairly brittle with morale. Leaders favored the Slovaks with two good leaders, high morale and modifiers, while the Soviets were the uninspired leftovers from Stalin's purge. So on with the battle.

The scenario starts at dawn and the Soviets get a chance to move up with lowered visiblity, but they must advance from a couple of kilometers away. I had the troops in two groups, one to press the town with the blown up bridge and the other force to move south to the town in the center by the river. The tricky part was to be to disguise where the ENGs would setup. I knew that they would attract all the fire from the Slovaks once they reached the river.

The northern force reached the town first, with the T-26's in the lead. They setup to blast away at the Slovaks in the opposite town with an infantry force to help. The Slovaks were discovered in the town and stategicly dugin behind. A 37mm AT soon started firing at the T-26's in the town without much effect. INF's and HMG's were behind the river bank covering the crossing. For my Soviets, the 76mm guns setup in the fields behind the town to provide crossing support. The commanding Colonel started the battle with them to combine there fire but had to move out later to provide inspiration to the men. The support fire was ok, with some disruptions and demoralization's to the Slovaks, but low fire power numbers should have been a keep to be a bit more aggressive with their deployment. The ENG's assigned to the northern group attempted to cross south of the town but were quickly fired at and they skedaddled back to the fields. The other ENG move to the northern end of the board and was able to setup a crossing point on the edge.

In the town the T-26's hammered away at the Slovak INF's for many turns before the morale started to crack. But a bigger key was the loss of a Slovak HMG trying to reposition itself. This loss of the key unit was something thing at severely weakened the defense. With the Slovaks falling back, the second ENG back in good order, the second crossing point was established just south of the town. But now the troops had to get across.

At this point I will put a little commentary on the river crossings, particularly for the Soviets. With this scenario, Vince and I hashed out a few particularities of the river crossings, which inspired me to do some research on this. The Soviet early war river were not like late war or Western Allies crossings. They were troops reaching a river and the leaders saying you need to go across any way possible. They did not have any specialized equipment, many times cutting trees and strapping them together to make rafts. Many times initial units swam the river with rope and then others followed. Point being with these early crossings, they were tough for the Soviets and this scenario shows it.

The first troops to try to cross on the northern crossing point waited several turns before the require '6' was rolled. Subjected to Slovak fire, there was a couple of times they did disrupt and had to recover, before they tried again. But while they recovered the ENG's dugin to keep themselves safe from fire. South of the town the other ENG's started to cross troops. They were a bit more successful with two units crossing and capturing the other part of town opposite the river. The Slovaks musters more units to defend bringing the other 37mm AT gun up as well as some INF's from the south. The AT's seemed more of a nuisance rather than a threat, but the 37's were able to muster hits on the T-26's, three of them for some valuable points. I had been a bit cavalier in there positioning and should have moved them back to a better hidden position from the guns.

The bigger drama occurred at the end of the game at the southern crossing point the Soviets were able to mass three INF's to cross at once. With the volume of dice rolls I knew I had to get a low number and get a another unit across. This was key because at that point I only need two units across to counter the Slovak VC points. On the last turn the Soviets were able to get the final unit across, but the then had to face OP and BF fire from the Slovaks. With the volume that they threw at the unit, some sort of morale check was going to occur, and with the low morale the unit demoralized. This gave the Slovak's back the point and the game barely at a draw. The Soviets cemented the draw when the crew of one of the pesky 37mm guns gave up after heavy Soviet BF fire.

To the south, not much happened of the two crossing points established at the center town and the south end of the board only one unit was able to make it across. These locations were able to lock some key Slovak units from coming to the rescue of the northern defense, but there was far too many Soviets that were also locked in the as well.

All in all it was a good game, tough for both sides, and lessons learned with there fickle Soviets.