For an action which probably didn't happen and if it did there was no reason for it anyhow (read through the conclusion to the scenario), this hypothetical, nonsensical sceanrio was a blast to play. The Slovaks are charged with defending against a fugitive Soviet unit looking to break out of the Kiev pocket. To do so, they must cross the Dnepr River. The Slovaks need to keep them from doing so. The "measure" of success is that the Soviets need to get 15 steps across.

If you haven't played a river crossing scenario this is a clean clear version. Many river crossings get caught up in Op Fire and direct fire at the engineers who are helping the crossing. In this case, the Soviets have so much artillery that if the Slovak shows themselves at all they're crazy. So this is quite simply a process of moving the Soviet engineers into the river, and then crossing. Oh, did I forget to mention that the Slovak player gets to fire his artillery at the engineers? This can make things a little more difficult.

After 13 turns of frustration the Soviets got their first troops across the river. They had already lost one engineer to artillery fire and were soon to lose another. A third ran away at a particularly inopportune time leaving one engineer solidly entrenched (as a figure of speech, not literally) in a river crosing in a small town which protected it against being sighted once the Soviet artillery had cleared away the sighting leader and his troops in the fields to the south.

What followed was a string of such good crossing rolls (< or equal to 6) that the Slovaks knew their goose was likely cooked. On most turns after turn 18 two units crossed, resulting in a large build up. The only problem was that the Slovaks turned their guns away from the engineer and onto the troops that had crossed, demoralizing them. The victory conditions called for 15 "undemoralized" steps to be across. This number fluctuated wildly from turn to turn as the Soviets remained 7/6 morale and continued to fail checks of M1, etc.

On turn 24 after all combat, the Soviets had managed to keep 16 steps in good order or disrupted leading to a 23-14 victory and a minor victory. One more unit demoralized (and there were several chances during the turn) and the final score would have been 29-21 Slovakia. Truly the victory was on a knife edge.

I give this one a three for the tactical study of crossing rivers. The victory conditions make crossing the river the single most important thing going on. The Soviets need to use their artillery to clear out defenders who can spot the engineers for the Slovak guns, find a safe spot to cross (the town/river hex on Board 20 is your best bet), and then roll low on the crossing numbers. Lots to learn, hope I got it right...