Daniel and I played this one in three sessions totaling about 10 hours of play time. The ranking that we both gave it should give you an idea of whether we believe this time to have been well spent...

This is a pretty large scenario with a regiment of grenadiers joined by what seems to be most of a panzer regiment fighting against a whole slew of RKKA men and tanks. The Germans are attacking and the Soviets have some significant reinforcements. The Soviets have some minefields and some good defensible terrain. At 30 turns this is one of the longer scenarios in KSF.

At first the Germans job does not seem to be too difficult. They must enter the first board and proceed to clear the second and third boards of Soviets on the hills and in the towns. The Germans have far better armor and will have engineers tanks and morale advantages in assault combat. Plus they come with two Tiger platoons which alone can scare the crud out of even the T-34Cs which the Soviets bring to bear. The trick, however, is to do this without losing 21 or more steps and to do so, when much of your strength is mechanized, during a torrential downpour which will make even travel on trail painful.

In our last play my panzers were incredible shots and this may have led me to be a little more aggressive in my armor play but, in the end, that did not play into the result.

Daniel set up with heavy forces in the large town on the middle board as well as a strong outpost in the small town on the large board. In addition he was able to station some significant forces on the two hills on the middle board. The third board was much more lightly manned but with 7 tanks platoons and 6 SMG platoons coming on later these could be seen as relatively secure. As a delaying force Daniel had some light troops and AT guns in the large field to the right front of the large town.

I advanced along both wings with heavy infantry forces and PZ IVs in support. My goal was to clear both hills and then use them as staging areas to launch the assault on the towns. While this approach was working I had some early trouble with several step losses due to Opportunity Fire from the Soviets. I was clearly making good progress but the cost was higher than I wanted. In any event by turn 10 things seemed to be under control, if only the losses would hold off.

Then the sky opened up. With the thunderstorm two things happened. First I lost any help that I could get from the air (as did Daniel but I could have used it to silence his guns), second the ground was now so saturated that the Tigers could only move 1 hex in the open or two on a trail. All of my vehicles were similarly hamstrung. Given the force composition and the losses I had taken to that point this effectively took one of the three victory conditions out of my hands. I now had to take the remaining town hexes on the middle board and keep them under my control through the rest of the game without reaching 21 losses. At least it was a goal, albeit a tough one.

I set out to do so by advancing towards the town. Unlike in previous situations I did not rush the town but stood off and used heavy weapons to try to subdue the defenders. While this was effective at times, the lack of a strong presence near the town was permitting Daniel to reinforce the town. I needed to start clearing it out! As I advanced to begin the assaults my men fell to murderous Opportunity Fire, total losses rising from 9 to 18 in a matter of 3 turns. My heart fell as now it appeared as though I would have to fight like a demon just to keep Daniel from a major victory.

As my assaults took hold, however, some odd things happened. First, my column shifts along with some good dice were resulting in true slaughter in the town. Second, Daniel's dice seemed to have deserted him. Nevertheless by turn 18 of 30 I had already lost 20 steps. One more step loss and I would be stuck on the losing end of the game. I still had four more town hexes to clear, three of which were already contested.

Then the truly odd occurred. I was able to clear all four town hexes without any loss at all. During this time it became more and more likely that I could keep from losing another step. Daniel had several rolls on the 13 Assault column and not a one produced a 5 or 6 roll. In addition, I had some of the usual flotsam and jetsam of demoralized units trailing the battlefield which held up under bombardment until the guns were silenced.

Finally Daniel had to use some of his reserves to try to attack the small town and the hill behind it to try to shake my hold on those objectives since I was now in position to get a minor victory. One of his platoons got adjacent to one hill and I felt it was just too close and my forces were just weak enough to need to dislodge the unit. The unit (a full strength SMG) was disrupted but I had some massed mortars and, this really was Daniel's last shot. So I fired the mortars, caused a step loss on him and the unit was demoralized, completely ending the threat and securing my position. Indeed the step loss was the 101st point of step losses for the Soviets in the scenario (tanks count 2), meaning that I had caused five times the losses that I had experienced. This is pretty darn good.

The target of the mortar barrage did happen to be adjacent to one of my units but these are German guns firing and you need a one to have a friendly fire event so "what, me worry?" Yeah, I rolled a 1 but hey this is friendly fire, nothing ever happened on friendly fire, unless you roll a column 5, and snake eyes. It seemed somehow fitting. Earlier in the day, Daniel's wife Cara had stopped in and we had mentioned the situation that Daniel needed to cause one more casualty but that he had not been able to do so. We were able, upon completion of the scenario to point out that Daniel indeed had been unable to cause the casualty so I had gracefully done so myself. After all, since we were playing at Daniel's it seemed somehow crass to win simply because I was able to avoid casualties for something like9 turns.

Both Daniel and I felt that this was one of the more fun scenarios we have played. While I think that the early thunderstorm (it hit on the first possible turn) and my early losses made for a great deal of difficulty that won't always be felt by the German, that luck was more than countered by the multiple times that Daniel had a 1/3 or 1/6 chance of causing the last casualty and came up empty. I think Daniel said it best: in a tight contest there are usually 3-4 turns where the issue is clearly in doubt. In this one there were about 20 where our hopes rose and fell on every roll of the dice.

It has just got to be a "5"

This is among the best PG scenarios I've played so far. It had many tactical options for both sides, constant action and maneuver and it went right down to the last turn.

The German plan was, after clearing the small western hill, to bypass the State Farm in the center of Board 38 with the main attack with a supporting attack to clear the eastern hill and town. Then with the tanks and Panzergrenadiers, move deep and take the Board 39 Objectives and then wait for the counterattack. If needed, then the State Farm could be taken. This was driven by the notion of not taking heavy casualties by fighting for the farm.

But no plan survives contact. the thunderstorms and Soviet reinforcements came early thus the mud slowed down the German advance. The Soviets decided to move the reinforcements to the hills on Board 39 and dig in while causing German casualties to exceed the cap. This decision turned out to be the one that allowed the Soviet victory. The German, now slowed by mud, and with casualties mounting, changed plans and attacked the farm, which they cleared out before turn 20. Then they turned to clear Board 39 which turned out to be a bridge too far. But they had a chance to do so all the way to the en but in the end could only get 2 of the five objectives on Board 39.

This was a horrible scenario as I played it. The Russians had sealed off the edges of the board with minefields, and the fields around the road bristled with AT guns. Thus I was forced to go through the fields and clear them out as best I could. But the Russians held on in certain pockets and although the rain hadn't even started by turn 16, I was never going to clear out the town, the big hill and then the NEXT BOARD!

I made some bad choices in my initial set up- I had only lighter tanks (armor:4) on my right flank, my Tigers in the middle (to use the road), and then the heavier tanks (armor:5) on the left flank. The right flank was chewed up by his forward-positioned T-34s and by a horrible assault roll that cost me six steps at once. I was harassed and blown to pieces by all that soviet artillery long before I even started clearing out Russian front line positions. I think I was too conservative with the Tigers; but I've seen them get caught in crossfires before…

The latest devious trick I learned from the Russians was using his infantry to drag an entire line of AT guns back out of sight. I'd get positioned to deal with them, and whoosh! they'd disappear.