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This scenario was extremely disappointing. On the surface, there is an interesting engagement to play out. You have a large Soviet formation attacking a densely defended German line. As the attack is developing, the Soviet player must make the decision to fully support it playing for the win, or alternatively decide to break off the attack as it begins to falter and establish their own defensive line in an attempt to stop the German counterattack and play for the draw. The "twist" of having the scenario (and the engagement it is modeling) switch off the attacker role in the middle of the scenario is somewhat unusual for the very early PZG modules.
Unfortunately there are numerous issues here that make this practically impossible for the Soviet player. The first being the river. This was during a time in PZG history where the scenario designers seemingly forgot how river crossings work. The scenario gives river crossing numbers, but neither side has engineers. (This issue unfortunately spans many modules in this era). Playing RAW this means the Soviets have to cram a more or less regimental size force of morale 7 dorks across a single, heavily defended bridge hex. For the sake of giving them a chance I would recommend letting them cross with the river crossing procedure sans engineers, which has been recommended by many for the similarly constrained EFD scenarios...
However, this wont help you much, as the Germans have just about as many troops as you do. Enough to literally stack every town hex in question 3 high while still defending the bridge directly with 2 companies of heavy weapons. What we are supposed to do against that is an unsolvable problem. Play balance was never a major concern for these early modules, and it shows here. The design philosophy tended to be "here is the OOB, here is the historic objective, deal with it". This one was far worse than most in that regard.
My playthrough went about as well as expected. The German OBA wrecked the low morale Soviets before they could get across the river. Those that even got close got tore up by the German machine guns. They limped back to their own town hexes and got mopped up by the equally large, but better morale, and better firepower Germans. Well, thats what happened IRL so whats the problem I suppose?
If I had to play this one again (which isnt likely to happen), and I grant the river crossing concession to the Soviets, they MIGHT have a chance by playing extremely "gamey" and scattering their forces to the wind in the backfield; waiting until the last 10 turns or so to rush the German spawn and assault all the town hexes simultaneously The objective is to occupy, not control, the hexes. Still, even then youre looking at like a 1 in 10 chance of pulling it off, which sadly is better than playing it straight up.
I gave this one a "2". Its a VERY low 2, probably a 1.5 that gets rounded up because PZG. I reserve ratings of "1" for scenarios that are mechanically broken (ie not enough turns to complete the objective while playing unopposed, exit more steps off the board than the player starts with, etc.) but the balance is so bad here that it certainly flirts with it. In the end, the decision of when to switch to the defensive for the Soviet player gives it enough spice to grant it a 2 and move on with my life.
As always, I may have just been missing something here too.
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Edel008 
