My pre-battle worries of how to get 6 German units and/or leaders off the southern edge of the map without losing more than 4 steps were alleviated by the conclusion of the second or third turn. Soviet mortar fire assisted by the bold advance of a forward observer was responsible for this straight away as I allowed a triple stacked hex to be spotted after my first movement. I expected to possibly take in damage from this error but did not fathom that "snake eyes" would be rolled and thus causing a step loss on turn 1. The same mortar fire would continue to reduce that stack until there was just one step of 6 steps left! By turn 3 it was clear that I would be playing for draw.

Both my opponent and I's strategy and tactics would change the remainder of the battle but a lot of stress was lifted as I still need only exit one unit off the map to prevent a total defeat and force a draw. A Soviet victory seemed much tougher in order to prevent just one German unit from exiting the south edge. Eventually I would lose 6 steps total by battle's end but did manage to get 4 units of infantry and two leaders off before the conclusion of turn 13; so both sides met just half of their victory requirements. So what could of been an easy German victory was denied by my own poor judgement from the start. Had I forseen that the Soviet forward observer could easily spot that triple stacked hex and moved one click further west on the first turn, or at least reduced the number of units in it, the outcome may have turned out much differently. Once German units had made their way past the first forest area a nice little skirmish took place and though inflicting Soviet step losses were not part of my objective I did manage to eliminate one RCN and two HMG steps along with disrupting or demoralizing units positioned to block my escape attempt.

Overall though, my opponent played his hand much better than I and made it very difficult for most of my units attempting to exit. We both agreed that it is very hard for either side to lose this scenario but that it would be much easier for the Germans to win it than the Soviets. I'm still adjusting my playing style after over a year of playing solitaire and a lot of old, bad habits still need changing but I enjoyed this shared play with Wayne; at least it wasn't another loss! I suppose that this play helped judge my overall PG performance which is maybe progressing with shared plays but still needs a lot of improvement. I give this one a hairline, low '3' as it seems a bit tougher for the Soviets to win it though a draw is a lot easier to obtain.