My wife and I went to New York to see "Into the Woods" performed. It was a pleasant musical with a good deal of humor and well worth the trip from (at that point in our lives) Western Massachusetts. The story line includes a mishmash of fairy tales strung together with the slightest of literary thread, as in any musical. It did, however include the titular woods and the promise of some level of menace to be found there. This play of Reitwein Forest (with Vince) showed what happens when you go into those woods.

The Germans and Soviets each start with a battalion of troops. The Germans have higher direct fire and they have an antitank gun section. This comes in handy as the Soviets have brought along an SU-76 which levels out the direct fire consideration but only brings along an armor value of "0" and thus cannot ever be seen by an unlimbered 75/41 (with its 6-8 AT fire). The Soviets do have a little more artillery (2X12 OBA plus a mortar against two German mortars. So basically a straight up battalion to battalion fight with neither side having a significant force advantage.

On the other hand the Germans do have one critical advantage. The goal is to control more town hexes than the opposing player while also inflicted a higher loss on them. If one player is to get into the towns before the opposing played it is likely that they will be able to use opporunity fire and defensive assault combat to cause higher losses on the attacker. The Germans enter along a road and all of the town hexes are within three turns movement along the road. The Soviets enter the board without any towns and frustratingly have to move cross country to get to the towns.

The leader draw also favored the Germans with two leaders with "2" morale modifiers in addition to having several more leaders than the Soviets. As you can see the scenario records provide an idea of the way the scenario favors the Germans. So I took my task of commanding the Soviets with some "lower expectations" shall we say.

Vince's cadets (the German force is drawn from an officer's training school - kind of a VMI regiment story in a way) enter and establish a very strong line between the two large woods and in front of and in the larger of the two towns. He sends a small force to reinforce the platoon that starts in the smaller town and brings along the AT gun to make the Soviet SU-76 move with some caution.

I feint towards the larger town but the defense at this point is just too strong with the town, dug in defenses and those darn "2" morale leaders. Once the feint has been addressed by the AT gun I move the SP guns and a company of infantry to an attack position in front of the small town. Accurate mortar fire causes a morale check on some of my troops who fail abysmally (two straight "12" rolls). Luckily the Kommissar is nearby and easily brings both units back to good order in the following turn. Vince's town defenders are not so lucky and take the first step loss from point blank range from the SP guns supported by some Soviet infantry.

I have a turn's worth of suspense before Vince decides to yield the small town to my advance which did threaten to overwhelm his defenders. This left me with control of two town hexes to Vince's four although I had a slight lead in step losses (1-0).

I then spread my forces to both flanks to see what response I would get. Vince reacted slightly to the north which was good as my stronger units, including by HMGs were to the north. I decided to move some of my strength from the fields to the north of the small town to the woods north of Vince's line in order to begin pressuring the northern flank of his line. Vince threw some mortar fire on my HMGs and I prepared to laugh it off until I saw the "2". One HMG was reduced and both were demoralized. This was a disaster! I quickly went from hunting to being hunted. Vince moved some troops up to assault the units while I got my Kommissar to the hex and brought up supporting infantry which, unfortunately couldn't get to the hex witht he HMGs.

On the next turn Vince got the initiative and assaulted my demoralized heavy weapons causing a step loss. Unfortunately for Vince I rolled a "6" on the defense and left him with one of his "2" morale leaders demoralized along with one of two GREN platoons. The Kommissar was able to get the remaining HMG unit recovered and one INF was able to join the hex. Another INF would be able to join the hex the following turn. Vince also brought up reinforcements and it was clear that initiative in the following turn would be critical. I won and was able to cause a total of 2 step losses, one from the assault table and one from double demoralization. In addition the "2" leader became a casualty along with the second leader in the hex. Vince was able to get one unit out of the hex by separating their recovery. Unfortunately he hit the assault hex with his mortars afterwards (I was overstacked with one demoralized unit but easily passed the hit but his friendly fire eliminated the remaining GREN platoon. Losses were now 4-2 in my favor.

Initiative for the following turn would also be critical. Any Soviet initiative was likely to result in an assault on the demoralized, reduced GREN (effectrive morale 4 with no supporting leader). The Soviets wno the intiative causing a fifth step loss. At this point it became apparent that we had played to a draw. The remaining German position was quite strong and an attack by the Soviets would require them to throw nearly all their strength into it leaving themselves open to significant losses which could jeopardize their better "loss" position. Similarly, the Germans were highly unlikely to attack since any attack had no strong reason to expect success and in addition to making the loss situation more unbalanced, could result in unmasking the larger town. We decide that we had a draw on our hands at that point.

A very enjoyable romp through some late war action without the pile of tanks to get in the way of the PBI. The fight in the woods justified the scenario name and ended up giving the Soviets the position to enforce a draw, a positive result for the Soviet side in this one. I had played this one before solo but the play with Vince was substantially different and very enjoyable. I give it a "4", somewhat surprisingly what I gave it before