Despite the Title of AAR sounding like a complaint or dislike, it rather represents the large, painful task at hand for the Indian player to secure his victory conditions. I did enjoy the scenario and though it took us a better part of a year to complete, it was an interesting battle to play and despite the nearly unattainable victory conditions, it was fun.

The victory conditions are all dependent on 4 objectives needed by the Indians which basically boiled down to having all roads and town hexes clear of undemoralized Hyderabadis, while managing to absorb less than 10 steps of elimination for the Indians.

Most of my forces were setup to move down the main road towards the ultimate goal of the town. The Shermans were ordered to split into 2 groups of 2 platoons, with one group going around the north end of the woods on board 6 and the others going around the south end. The mortar group followed the Shermans to the south. Knowing that the woods held many hidden Razakars (the "boil" in this scenario), we had to proceed with the intent of protecting the roads while still pushing to get to the town hexes with enough time to clear them. Standing in the way was regular Hyderabadi troops as well with a 17-pdr and 6-pdr A/T guns to keep the Shermans honest.

Over the course of the battle, the battle group of Infantry and Sappers moved down the road through the woods and were successful for the most part to clear the forest road, with several units splitting off into the northern and southern woods to chase down any hidden RAZ fanatics. The Shermans to the north had to stay out of the 17 pdr range as it was well placed in a field between the woods and the town. The Hyderabadis also had Stags and Humbers that reinforced the infantry troops after several turns. The southern group of Shermans along with the 3-inch mortars made their way around and setup the mortars to try and barrage the dug in units on the road as well as attempting to take out the 17 and 6 pdr guns, which eventually they were able to do. All while this was going on, the Stags and Shermans played a game of cat (Shermans) and mouse (Stags) with the mouse getting a few scratches on the cat but for the most part, the cat was able to pounce several times and the mice pretty much stayed in the woods after taking numerous losses.

At this point, The Indians made a final push to the town. the Shermans, after running off the Stags, began to patrol the roads and kept good lines of fire. Despite the valiant efforts of the woods sweeping units keeping the Razakars on the run and demoralizing them at every turn, there were just too many to deal with. As the Indians moved in after causing the enemy LT COL to run away, 3 short turns in a row (with FOW coming at almost the minimum number of activations) near the end of the game did not allow enough time to secure the town. In addition, the Razakars made a dash to secure the roads on all boards, thus sealing the major victory.

In the end, the Indians were only able to secure one objective of suffering less than 10 steps of elimination. The scenario was a fun and interesting exercise that, if the turns had proceeded to conclusion without the FOW, an Indian minor victory is possible.