A long time ago I wrote a weekly column which always ended in a witticism. Since the column was about drinking students and the dives where they drank it was a relatively easy task. I find that PG scenarios give me plenty of chances to relive that experience (without the heavy drinking of course - I might spill something).

In this lovely little piece the Slovaks bring every aspect of their arsenal into play including some decent artillery (OBA), an armored train,the best tanks the Hungarians have ever seen and planes, too. The Hungarians have about 15 tankettes (thank you Fronte Russo for the "right" name for these silly things), some AT guns and a bunch of grunts.

The focus of the scenario is for the Slovaks to get the Hungarians off the rail line (the main east west roadway) and take towns. The Hungarians set up to stop the Slovaks in the first town they come to and have flank and deep penetration protection further on.

The Slovaks send a pinning force sufficient to root the Hungarians out of the town but also send pretty much a battalion on a flanking run to the south.

The direct assault ends up giving the Slovaks a bloody nose as the train is taken out in an ill advised assault, but the flanking attack begins to gain some traction after about two hours.

The attack on the town is unproductive for 4 hours until finally some losses occured. With a 7/5 morale any loss in assault combat is quickly fatal. Given the six hour timeframe of the scenario one shouldn't be surprised that the town didn't completely fall until the last 15 minutes of the scenario.

Back to the flanking attack. Although a Stotnik (Cpt) accompanied the movement the real leadership was provided by a Porocik (Lt) whose 1-10-2 ratings totally changed the abilities of his troops. They quickly disposed of a company which the Hungarians had posted to the woods on the south flank and then another which had moved up to its support. At that point the Slovak OBA began to hit the prepared positions of the Hungarians astride the railroad behind the town (where needless to say, plenty of combat but few results were happening). The Hungarian tankettes were "massed" (can anything ending in -ette mass? consider, for example, a mass of Rockettes, better yet, don't consider that, it can have a very negative effect) in the fields south of the rail line and the Slovak tanks and armored cars ran off to do battle (the Hungarians have no AT fire while the Slovaks would have a +2 AT shot).

At this point the game seemed to be trending the Slovaks way despite terrible die rolls. The Hungarian leader in the town was constantly disrupted leaving the troops unable to reinforce assault hexes (he can only command those in his own hex) and the flanking attack seemed destined to roll through the rest of the Hungarian positions. Having said this, the astute reader knows that something is about to happen to change that statement completely.

The Slovaks tanks rushed into the fields to see the Hungarian, gaining adjacency to one tankette. Since they couldn't fire back, the Hungarians, advocates no doubt of Foch, assaulted the Slovaks while bringing up their other tankettes, unfortunately for them to no avail. The Slovaks gleefully rubbed their hands together, looking at their +2 AT fire and reinforced the assault hex in the next turn with their armored cars. They fired their AT (rolled a 3 on 2d6) assaulted (the dreaded "-" result) and watched in horror as the defending tankettes got a "1" result on the assault table. The Slovaks completed the disaster by spectacularly failing their morale rolls and en masse abandoning their vehicles (4 steps of mechanized/motorized losses at 2 VPs per step). Suddenly the Hungarians ruled the world.

Unfortunately for the Hungarians 2 1/2 hours of time remained and the ultimate fall of the town and a Hail Mary attack on the furthest town gained the Slovaks sufficient VPs to earn a minor victory. Possession of the field would also ultimately regain the abandoned tanks for the Slovaks so no long term losses would have occured. I can only imagine the situation if the Slovaks didn't have the 1-10-2 Porocik.

A very tense little battle with the early war exasperating condition of a stout defense suddenly dissolving as one side or the other fails morale - a wonderful simulation of the actual situation.

In reality the Hungarians say that they pulled back at the request of the Germans. The scenario indicates that the Slovaks had the ability to drive them out in any event.