A Solo Effort Not Inspiring

Having only been PG'ing about 3 years (as opposed to any other wargaming beforehand) I have only clocked up around 50 odd scenarios, all against opponents across a table, on email or via live internet. This would be my first solo recorded play.

Well I was a bit hungry for a completed game last night and decided to use PG-HQ search engine to find me a short quick play scenario with few turns and counters and also, straight forward VC's. Of the choices offered, I took this one. This would be my first venture also onto the 'Arctic Front'.

The Soviet force must enter a completely wooded board, (light, normal and dense woods) and ski their way to occupy the main road and either stay on it or jump on it at the last turn. The Finns also have to do the same, albeit they own it at the start. Casualties inflicted also add to points.

The Finns have a 2 morale point advantage and of the 3 leaders selected, two had +2 morale mods and another a +1. They also had between them a 9,10 & 11 morale. This was a super- commando force !

I tried to manouvre the Soviets into an advantageous position, but of the 8 turns in this scenario, my random electric dice roller never rolled lower than a 5 for the Finns in initiative. Therefore,each time or turn they needed to, the Finns were just simply able to rule the battlefield. On top of that, unless shot to death, they could practically advance anywhere unharmed due to the 'premium' morale factors of their leaders added to their base morale. This was accentuated by the fact that every hex is a wood and it is night ... so therefore, not a great time for small arms fire columns. Looking back, maybe I should have simply made this a game of Ski-Tag. Let the Finns try to close with the Soviets and then slyly have the Stalinites ski-away ?

With all that written above, the Finns thrashed the hide of the Soviets winning by 22 pts to 1 point. I was at first going to say that this seems impossible for the Soviets to win, but two things stayed my hand.

Firstly, somebody has already logged a Soviet win, so it can be done.

Secondly, with super initiative throws and leaders the like of which the Finns had here, it appears I may have been playing with some rather exceptional circumstances rather than the average norm. Would like to try this again with somebody playing the Soviets to confirm or deny my view.

At present rated a 2 by me : Not a 1 because it was not boring and had some funny moves and things going on. But not a 3 or more as my version was just too lob-sided to provide any real excitement.