My modest playing area allows for just a 6 map capacity. Usually during the course of a scenario I can eventually remove a few of the boards once units have made contact but there was no chance of that with this one. This battle was literally, "all over the place". The reason being that the Soviets have to try to keep at least one unit on four separate road areas running east-to-west; two of those roads on the northern map and the other two on the south one. The two forces facing each other are about equal in strength but ultimately that will favor Germany being on the defense and that their VCs are a little more relaxed, just having to prevent one of the four road hexes from being occupied at the scenario's end. The larger town hexes on the southwestern map are treated as woods and combined with the exisiting woods hexes made for a lot of foilage. This one large wooded area also divided the southern east-west road and would also provide the setting for a very long and drawn-out forest fight between the bulk of the opposing foot units. Meanwhile, most of the opposing armored units would fight it out in every other corner of the frontier.

The Germans intially had a tough time pushing through the southern woods where the Soviets met them head-on. But German foot unit losses were very light compared to the Soviet's and eventually the assaults there would favor the attacker. This was the portion of the battle that the Soviets had to win and in time all Soviet leaders (except for the Kommisar), foot and support units there would be annihilated by 14:45/turn 34. It would be too tedious to attempt to write or account for the duration that particular battle. It wasn't easy for the Germans to accomplish that feat but once that area was secured so too was the German victory. What kept things interesting the duration were the armored engagements that took place further north; in that case the Soviets fared much better. The thin-skinned Bt-7s were able to use their high speed to reach some hills in the northeast and dig-in there by that east-west road, effectively bringing their armor value up from a 1 rating up to a 3. This would put them on par with the PzIIIFs. However, to get to them the panzers would have to get through the one T-34A platoon guarding the road. The PzIIIFs were able to manuever around the T-34s and survive a few lucky misses to effectively arrange crossfire at long range. Then the one platoon of PzIVEs rolls out from the cover of the central town to complicate things more. The T-34 platoon is not efficient so it only gets one shot. And what a shot it was rolling "boxcars" eliminating the entire PzIV platoon in one swipe. However, that would be the T-34s swan song as every shot after missed the lowly PzIIIs and their crossfire finally took the T-34s out.

The Soviet T-26s saw plenty of action as well and outfought most of the other panzers. However, in the end all but one of the roads had been cleared of Soviet armored units once German infantry caught up with them. As horrible of a loss this battle was for the Soviets, two platoons of Bt-7s and a reduced T-26 survived the duration of 40 turns. Other than trucks the only other Soviet unit to survive this debacle was the Komissar who was kept very busy through out the course of events. The Kommisar became infuriated a few times with Soviet units that failed to rally and at one point hopped onto a reduced and demoralized T-26 unit, opened up the hatch and shot the entire crew. Also, was interesting to watch the many pathes the Kommisar took to attempt to reach demoralized units far away; once half the distance was covered a unit would get polished off and the KOM would be moving in an entirely new direction but then get foiled again. Despite the KOM having a "10" rating his success rate in "re-educating" units was only about 50/50.

Anyway, that about wraps this one up in brief. It wasn't the most enjoyable EF experience, especially with a very cramped playing space. Midway, a Soviet victory was already deemed highly unlikely but a lot of effort was made to frustrate the Germans; being a solo play it ultimately served to frustrate myself to that effect. I still give a "3" however because I like a good tank battle and in that aspect this one delivered.