Solo game, I defended forward with a dug in line of a few Russian SMGs, in order to push back the German setup a few hexes. This is a debatable ploy...arguably not worth it, although I only ended up losing two steps in the retreat to the town.

The game was fairly tense for the first 6 turns as the Germans cautiously moved forward and let their firepower force the action. I kept Russian tanks at a safe distance mostly, with a few dug-in blockers. The various back and forth firing ended up taking down 7 German steps (but 10 was needed for a Russian minor).

The Germans closed in on the town and it looked like a potential bloodbath and a very difficult assault, but as time wore on any Soviet unit that wasn't infantry got Xed or routed and the Germans were able to launch massive 24 and 30 FP assaults (with Engineer support) into the town hexes (once the AT guns are gone, the German halftracks can really boost an assault stack).

After only 2 turns of assaults the Germans cleared the town by turn 12 and the rest of the Russian force (not much) melted away quickly. I played out the last 4 turns simply hoping for Russian air attacks to inflict step losses (that didn't work).

I'm not sure about balance here...16 turns didn't seem like much and the Russians have a ton of stuff. They can try strategies I didn't (my play was probably average at best). On the other hand, the Germans won it pretty easily in essentially 12 turns of cautious moving, firing and assaulting. So to be fair I'd rate it pro-German right now, but not horribly so. The Russians have a ton of stuff to play with so as the defenders they will have an impact on the outcome.