I'm really not the best at "enter and exit" scenarios; especially as the attacker/runner because its hard for me to pass by a good fight rather than making an escape the priority. In this case I was able to keep a balance with the axis and have it both ways. The battle starts off with the Soviets getting the intiative and they are able to get units down the road first to try to halt or delay the axis advance. The combined Romanian and German recon units split up with their motorcycle units on either flank while other units make for the fields. The Soviets immediately send their SMG units to attempt to engage the enemy at close quarters and though they survive some intense opportunity fire they are quickly mowed down in the fields the next few turns after losing the initiative before they can make any assaults. Soon the remaining disordered SMG units would be tracked down and finished off and by battles end 4 of the 5 SMG units would be eliminated -so much for the Soviet infantry. Meanwhile the Soviet Ba-10M armored cars and T-37 light tanks would cover the exit areas triple stacked. There is a brief showdown between the German SdkFz 222 and the Soviet Ba-6 armored cars but neither side is able to do any damage to each other. However, German INF units are able to quickly flank that one armored car platoon and in turn quickly assault and annihilate it.

Meanwhile axis motorcycle units continue to make for the north edge of the map while combined axis INF keep the assaults going and easly overrun Soviet AT guns set up as a futile roadblock. It looks like a total defeat for the Soviets but the triple stacked armored units guarding the maps edge do manage to slow the axis exit. In fact the otherwise useless T-37s are able to come into thier own this battle and manage to elimnate one step of Romanian MTCs and disrupt or demoralize a few other platoons. The Ba-10Ms assist with DF in keeping axis units at least disrupted so that even the MTCs can only move one hex or attempt recovery but then there is a trick to not moving closer to demoralized units at maps edge so they cannot easily flee off-map from recovery failures. Keeping the T-37s on the short east-west road by the north map edge allows them to stay somewhat mobile and effective. The Soviets know they cannot prevent the axis from exiting the required steps so they try their best to eliminate the 7 required enemy steps for the win and keep units pinned down. As the battle begins to close all mobile axis units have exited but the INF units are left behind to fight their way through. In this case I played a very dangerous game with the axis attempting to exit all units rather then have the remaining INF units flee back to limiting terrain and/or dig-in to ride out the remaining turns. I knew this was tempting fate but wanted to see if they could pull it off. Well, right before battles end the two last German INF units attempt to exit but the T-37s strike hard again destroying one entire German INF platoon at the map's edge along with eliminating the German Major. This causes decapitation and the remaining disrupted INF unit cannot move the next turn though it is right on the map edge. So on the last turn the remaining Soviet units gang up on this last axis straggler spray it down with DF and then assault it but it holds out through all that abuse. In the end it is a Romanian victory as they only lost 3 steps and exited well over the required amount of units off-map.

Playing this solo I took a lot of unnecessary risks with the axis but really felt that even then it would still be hard for them to lose this one; in a shared match I would not have gambled so much with them. Had I played this one out "safe" for a Romanian/German win then it would of really been a bore; instead I got a good battle out of it and in turn was able to rate it a "3" instead of a "2" but this one would probably be enjoyed best played face-to-face rather than solo. Also believe that if the Soviets forget trying to prevent axis steps from exiting and get lucky with back-to-back initiative roll wins (as Wayne pointed out in his AAR) and then throw everything at the axis including the kitchen sink then they do stand a good chance of eliminating the 7 required axis steps for the win, regardless of how many axis units make it off-board.