The Kursk scenarios leave very little room for making mistakes; if you advance blunderingly, or if you set up clumsily, there's very little you can do to salvage the situation once the bullets start flying. As the defender in this one, I did my best to spread out the majority of my forces across the line of advance, allowing for maximum AT crossfire, on the second set of boards the Germans needed to advance onto. A suicide detachment was left in the town closest to the German lines. (These guys died to a man-about 16 steps, and only caused 1 step loss for the Germans!) And another rather large battlegroup was massed out of sight in the far field on board 36. I used minefield counters to seal off any approach on the outer flank of the big hill (four German infantry were caught up and shelled mercilessly in these minefields), and the other minefields, mostly dummies, were put on the road outside the town that would inevitably fall to the Germans. This little trick caused the Germans to swing wide of the town or go through it.

The Germans came at the Russians en masse on the flank opposite the fallen Russian town, but the forces that came through the town never really got their act togther after taking the town. The Russians managed to survive the German advance and even were able to counterattack in several assaults that nearly evened up the step loss count (Russians had lost 26; the Germans 22 or 24 by the time the German player conceded.) The Germans were losing their infantry steps at a prodigious rate... and the Germans seemed to be constantly trying to get into position for the following turn, not the current one. This was further exacerbated by the fact that EVERY turn ended with a fog of war roll of 16+! By turn 14 the German player was convinced the game was lost and declared a Russian victory.

I wasn't so sure of this. My line was thin- the only place I really had depth to my defense was in the field on board 36 where counterassaults were taking their toll on the Germans. If those Tigers had gotten into action, even my dug in T34's on the hill would have been mincemeat.

It turned out that in this playing, it was more important to break the opponent than to break his forces.