In this scenario, a large Soviet force with reasonable morale, significant OBA, and air support is trying to overrun German (Austrian) defenders with high morale, high firepower, excellent leadership, and some OBA, partially dug in on rough hills. Victory is determined by ownership of three hills; whomever controls two wins. Losses are immaterial to the Soviets, while the Germans need to avoid too many losses as they can only get a draw with more than ten steps lost.

The Germans set up heavy on the middle hill, using three of their four dug in positions to protect their on board artillery and positions supporting the flanking hills. Unfortunately, the right flank hill is too far away for overlapping fields of fire, and even the left flank hill is not in range, but there is a definite valley of death between the hills. The left flank hill is defended by two full strength units dug in on top, with a another unit directly behind the dug in position. The right flank hill is defended by three full strength and one half strength units, but no dug in positions. The right flank hill is significantly farther back from the Soviet start line and farther from reinforcing units, so the lack of dug in positions or HMGs leads me to believe that hill is the throw away position. I still need to take it, but suspect my opponent isn’t all in on defending it. The real surprise is the left hill has no HMG, which means all three are in the center and I have no intent on attacking the center.

I split the Soviets into three groups. Two are essential large and equal forces, one on each extreme flank, with the intent of taking the flanking hills. The third force is a relatively small force containing two LTs, the mortars, and some infantry support located to the right of my center. The mortar force is powerful, but due to a lack of leaders with combat support value (zero) I need to stack them together to take advantage of the firepower.

The Germans get initiative (almost every turn) and immediately hit the mortar stack with their OBA, rolling snakeyes, killing two mortars and the LT with them. The third mortar only lasts a couple turns before it disintegrates following a demoralization. Over the course of the game, my opponent rolls snakeyes on his OBA several times, and his 20 points of OBA do as much or more damage than my 48 point strikes. Apparently my artillerists fight like they train and use training ammo…

With the mortars no longer a viable force, and the German center holding still while I advance on both flanks, my center infantry obliques right and heads to join what will be the real battle, taking the German left. I slowly advance on both flanks (I have to start moving through broken rock, which is slow, then advance at the speed of HMGs), going straight at the German right while circling the German left with the left flank force while my center approaches the front. I form a semi-circle around the German left hill, advancing to just past rifle range. At this point my opponent discovers the horrible mistake he made. He thought he placed an HMG in the dug in position! Desperation begins to take hold as he realizes he must move an HMG from the center to his left.

On his right my force eventually reaches the hill. His units perform an effective, slow withdrawal from the hill. I figured his odds of fighting for it were about 50/50, and a slow retreat until he gives up the hill is his strategy. I don’t trust him, so some airpower and arty go after his units to eventually reduce them to about 50 percent of their starting strength, mostly to prevent them from becoming reinforcements late in the game, or from circling back to try and re-occupy the hill. My forces on that side slowly wheel to create a slow line advancing from the hill to the center hill to prevent the Germans from coming back. It is very effective, and that side of the board comes under Soviet control with the German force having little influence on the rest of the game. While almost no ammo is expended on either side, the hill is captured at the cost of a significant delay of nearly half my force from supporting the effort against the German left. FoW ends many turns early, and this force suffers accordingly.

I have a huge force circling half the German left hill, and my opponent expects a bum rush. Of course, a bum rush takes multiple turns since I cannot move across the lower portions of the hill quickly since it is broken rock (he has much more movement flexibility with his mountain troops). What is preventing the bum rush is two factors. First, my arty is horrible (and my airpower is worse, having zero effect over the first nineteen turns). Second is the unit behind the dug in position. That unit reduces the amount of contact I can make with the dug in position while creating hell with opfire. Yes, his rolls this battle were that good. Arty did half step the unit, but even with three points and a one point leader he was inflicting morale checks on the 1 and 2 columns. To the point that one unit demoralized, then compound demoralized for a step loss! His 1 and 2 column shots were more effective than my 48 point arty for several turns.

I finally decide my arty is useless and rush his rear unit with enough force to survive the opfire. He holds opfire from his dug in unit fearing a rush on that spot, but FoW ends the turn before I can rush. The next turn I launch an assault on the rear position and rush the dug in position. His opfire is ineffective, and the turn ends with me in position. The next turn he realizes he is on the losing end of one position, but can get the upper hand on the other. He chooses to save the dug in location, and his hilltop status begins to collapse. He has been moving troops from the center, and I have tried using arty to slow them down with some success. He’s still getting there, but slower than he needs to. He advances up his side of the hill, makes my rear position assault party pay a wicked price, and reinforces his failing dug in position. I revector arty support to positions adjacent to my forces, and my crews have apparently realized training ammo doesn’t work (actually began using my opponents dice – I’m not getting snakeyes, but I am at least having an effect on some rolls). As we both “feed the weasel” on the top of the hill, my numbers begin to tell while my arty causes hell on the two HMGs he’s brought over (one regularly disrupting just before joining the assault, the other taking a step and then disrupting).

To make matters worse for my opponent, I begin to improve the condition of my units as the LT with the morale bonus brings up several disrupted units, and my commissar brings up several demoralized units (after the first execution occurs everyone begins to listen to the commissar). My opponent finally has a chance to make my assault parties pay as my 2xHMG, 1 Inf team is heavily disrupted, and he can execute a wicked assault on them while having little to fear in return. But he doesn’t notice that opportunity until after I manage to return them to good order, and the opportunity passes. Meanwhile I have slowly surrounded the final assault hex, choking off the path for reinforcements to scurry up the slopes.

Airpower even gets into play, finally causing an effective morale check on turn 20, then inflicting a step loss on turn 21. The combination of newly effective arty and airpower, a quickly emptying center that can’t afford to send any more reinforcements without fear of losing the center hill to my advancing left flank, the massive losses already suffered by the Germans, and the improving condition of the Soviet units makes the German left flank untenable. The Germans accept defeat.

In the end, the Soviets suffer sixteen step losses and two leader deaths, fairly evenly distributed during the battle (never more than two in one turn). This is a very low number given the intensity of combat. A full third are from the fairly weak artillery of the Germans, several from direct and assault fire, two compound demoralizations (one a mortar), and one from commissar executions. The German, however, lose 15 steps and three leaders, all but three steps following turn 12. Arty claims five, airpower one, direct fire zero, but assaults account for nine! This was a very high rate for German losses compared to Soviet, and as German loss rates increased the Soviet loss rate went down. Once the assaults began to tip in the Soviet favor the Germans began to disintegrate at a quicker pace. The German force, despite it’s incredible firepower, morale, and leadership, was quite fragile to losses beyond about six steps.

We both agreed the German player made two major mistakes. The first was no HMG on the left flank. That made my decision to hit both flanks simultaneously very easy, vice pouring everything against one hill and then turning to the center. The second mistake was not moving forces to the left sooner once it was obvious I was committed to taking that hill. The center forces held in place too long, giving my arty a chance to interdict movement just long enough to erode the original positions before reinforcements arrived. A strong force on that hilltop even three turns earlier would have made my efforts so much harder. But the fighting withdrawal on the right was very effective against my forces, as my moving wall was effective at maintaining control of that side. The assault hex surround was also complimented as it made the German units in the valley of death nearly ineffective.

Overall I rate this one a 3. The play was intense, moved along nicely, and presented some good puzzles for defender and attacker alike. I believe the Germans have a heftier challenge (unless the dice gods smile upon them as they did my opponent; even he owned up to having miracle dice) since they must get close and dirty to have a chance to repel the Soviets. My real beef comes with the German loss restriction. If the Germans lose more than ten steps they cannot get better than a draw. We tossed that out once the German casualties began to climb. You cannot fight to take/hold a hill without losses! I could buy this condition if the number were increased to at least 15 (as the Germans have 31 to start), but with the Soviet arty and airpower, 11 is too easy to achieve. Then who wants to play for a draw? Especially since the Germans are heavily outnumbered (Soviets start with 69 steps) and face a large challenge to begin with. A good (not great), solid scenario that forced some good thought processes.