This game was played over one session with Matt Ward on Skype. It's a smallish infantry v infantry encounter. Victory is given to the side that controls most of the six town hexes AND has eliminated more of the enemy than his opponent.

In the opening moves, the KS Dresden Cadet Regt heads straight up the road from the west edge and takes control of the bigger 4 hex town. The Soviet 172nd Gds Rifle Regt come in on the north edge and fan out towards the smaller town where one German GREN unit initially sets up.

There is a small gun battle at the smaller town where initially the GREN company appears to be doing well as two of the attacking GDS plns demoralise in the face of the enemy. But poor German back up fire and immediate action by a Komissar restored the men to Uncle Joe's mission. The supporting SU76 also assisted in inflicting a step-loss on the defending German platoon and from that point it was time to bug out of the small town for the survivors.

The battle now looked as if it would be fought out ahead of the big town. Some Soviet troops entered the large forest to the north of the large town including their two HMG units. A German spotter went out to spot them for the mortars and the resulting fire found snake-eyes to remove a step. Both HMG's then demoralised. In reaction to this, a '2' morale LT and 2 x GREN plns went out to put in the coup degrace next turn, surviving some opportunity fire on the way.

The game result was now decided in the following action in the Reitwein Wald. The Germans won the next initiative and the GREN's assaulted the demoralised HMG's achieving another step loss. The full strength HMG survived morale checks and the return assault, a rolled 6 M2 in turn demoralised the German '2' leader and a GREN. This was crucial as now the SOV guardsmen homed in on the assualt hex. The KOM recovered the HMG in the meantime. Another German GREN pln also made its way to the location to enter next turn as the following initiative roll would probably determine the result in that hex. Unfortunately, for me, Matt's Soviets won it and they had no hesitation piling into the weakened German units in the assault and causing casualties. They received little in return, and with a step loss from the SOV assault plus another in a compound DEM, the German position was a mess in that hex. The other GREN that had positioned itself to support them in case of a German initiative win duly retired back to the town area as his entry would otherwise have been throwing good money after bad.

With a 5-2 casualty advantage, the Guards hunkered down in their location teasing the Germans to attack. Likewise, the Germans sat in the town jeering the cowardly attackers to attack something worth catching (ie -The town). With this stalemate, the game ended as a draw.

I was tempted to rate this as a '2', but finally marked it as a low '3'. I'm not keen on VC's where both sides can accept their position without fighting for it. Draws should be last turn game-end results coming from a serious fight. As the scenario currently stands, whichever side has a casualty advantage could conceivably melt away from the action immediately upon inflicting the first casualty and call the draw. A simple way of stopping that would be to have VC's call for a minimum infliction of casualties before allowing the casualty win. That said, had I won the assault initiative roll, the result may have not come so soon for that outcome. This was my second game against Matt and as he is such a cheerful soul and getting to grips with the hamete dice & skype thing, we will be looking to start some games that are a bit meatier and involved. Perhaps a series of scenarios linked in some way, a mini-series. More on that in our next encounter.