First, a look at the Victory conditions. For once, they are very straightforward hold 4 VP hexes for a Minor Victory, 5 for a Major.
I immediately gave up any hope to get a Major Victory: unless the German suffer very heavy casualties, attacking them would be suicide. I plan to slowly give ground and killing them with point-blank fire when they come adjacent to my units. In the meantime, I will try to bring the substantial engineer force (and the A** leader) sitting on the last VP hex forward (if I lose the other 3 VP hexes, I have lost the game anyway [:D]).
Apart from the initial massacre of those units that start adjacent to German units, the plan worked quite well, with Russian stacks firing point-blank (24 to 36 FP with a +1/+2 DRM) at the Germans in the defensive fire (and in the subsequent Fire segment, if there were any survivors) the German made a very limited advance, but never managed to advance beyond the hex column 17.
Fire from the Russian MMG's prevented most Germans from crossing the road leading to the southern building block and to the VP hex in 16,23.
In the north, the engineers, moving double time whenever possible, arrived just in time to stop the Germans and then started pursuing the broken Germans through the ruins. Their move could have become an envelopment of the German forces around 16,21... with a 3-4 more turns [:D].
The StuG's, which could have been a problem, since the Russians only have a 76mm gun and a Molotov projector, didn't seem especially eager to support the infantry (the Molotov projector crew never fired its weapon, even though it fired many times with its inherent firepower).
The game ended with a Russian Minor Victory, with a 9.5:7 loss ratio (Russian/German). The AI, for once, suffered less casualties than the human player.
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