By the end of the day, the Soviet troops are convinced that they cannot break through the village and bypass the key enemy defences, and begin withdrawing. By the end of the battle, most of the German forces were remained intact, and the village remained in German hands.
Thoughts
Clear rules make the game move along cheerfully. Activation of units depends on luck, and sometimes a turn ends before every unit has activated. This makes things chaotic rather than strictly linear, and there are also bonus events on top of this. This means you have to think before starting anything that will take more than one action: for example, is it worthwhile sending the infantry forward out in the open if they might get stuck there?
The rules are company-sized, but you can play at least at regimental level. In the game, one soldier equals one man, one model equals one tank: imagine getting a whole German tank battalion onto the table...
This isn't in my opinion, a set of rules made for tournaments: for example, there is no points system covering differences in armament, different skills, the experience of soldiers, list size, etc. In the battle you choose troops based on lists from their nationality. And everything is quite arbitrary: it is possible to change everything for a particular scenario from how a platoon is armed right the way up to the experience of tank crews...provided the scenario justifies it. All you need is the agreement of your opponent. The historical scenarios provided generally suggest fighting off ten tanks and a full company with one anti-tank gun and a handful of soldiers. And the most interesting thing is that even if you have a preponderance in tanks and infantry, you cannot simply expect to win: maybe most of your troops never arrive!
The game has no maximum range of fire. There is a Close range, Effective range, and after that there are no restrictions. From table edge to table edge, if you see the enemy, you can shoot at him. As a result, an active firefight can begin on the first move of the game. However, to ensure that the game does not bog down to firefights at long distances, missions set specific tasks and deadlines for their completion.
The game has a hidden movement system, but we didn't test this. Perhaps this has already been considered and I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the element of hidden manoeuvre in the game done this way (paper Blinds on the table) spoils how the game looks. I prefer the "hidden manoeuvre" in CoS.
We were surprised that the game does not require a lot of dice to determine the results of shooting. After FoW with 20+ dice, it seems unusual to throw one or two dice only. And the fact that you have to consult a table to determine whether you hit or not can be a pain.
Sometimes games of this scale lack mechanisms to deal with disabling rather than destroying tanks, or killing an artillery piece's individual crew members, but not in this game. In our game we had a duel between the Soviet and German tankers: after the first shot, the chassis was broken, the engine was damaged and stalled, but the crew was still fighting, not everything was lost! The next shot led to the damage to the gun sights, making it more difficult to hit anything, and the crew was shell-shocked. Another hit and the tank brewed up, the commander is killed. Another time, a tank's main gun jammed: the tank no longer represented a formidable combat unit and, as a target, was not interesting, but it wasn't destroyed.
The same with infantry: there is no need to kill everyone. The loss of 2-3 soldiers in a unit greatly affects its effectiveness, which makes it much harder for them to carry out their assigned combat mission. Yes, one soldier can display an act of heroism, but the rule is that one individual trying something in the field does not work very often.
Some things do make the game complex: you have to constantly keep in mind the number of Actions available to each squad or vehicle. You need to know what strike value each tank has and/or whether a unit has lost casualties etc. The problem can probably be solved by using info cards or by the "friendly" atmosphere of the game (until the furious duel of gambling players of the tankers begins!). But here's what you can not do at all: it's to show newcomers such a wargame with a historical miniature. They are horrified by all the mathematical calculations and rules. Modifiers, indicators, etc.
Valderech